The written placement test has proven a valuable teaching aid in General Botany at Iowa State College, particularly when used to segregate students into high, medium, or low sections. In the fall of 1938 it was used to segregate 350 students into 5 high, 2 medium and 5 low sections. The administrative difficulties of sectioning were met by placing the 90 students who were classified for the same class period into 3 sections of about 30 each. This test has been evolved over a period of ten years; and is composed of ten comprehensive questions of the following types: information, interpretation of data, testing of hypotheses, methods of proof and deductive reasoning. The effectiveness of the placement test is indicated by a correlation of .57 between it and the comprehensive final examination administered to 323 students in the fall of 1938
