STUDENT GUIDE TO COLLEGIATE ASSESSMENT OF ACADEMIC PROFICIENCY TEST (CAAP)

Assessment & Teaching Enhancement Center
Morse Hall, Rm 23
Office Phone: (620)-341-5103 Fax: (620)-341-6102

CAAP is a set of standardized tests developed to test basic college skills. There are three CAAP tests: Reading, Mathematics and Writing (Skills & Essay)

Bring the following to the test administration:
1) Two #2 pencils with erasers
2) Photo bearing I.D. (Drivers License or Student ID)
3) Black Ink Pen
4) A wristwatch to pace yourself during the test.
5) Simple calculators are allowed for the mathematics test. Check the ACT website www.act.org/caap/sample/calc.html if you have questions about a particular calculator. However, all problems on the test can be solved without using a calculator. The use of scratch paper, notes, or dictionaries is NOT permitted. Scratch work is to be done in the test booklet.

The following test-taking strategies are recommended:
• Pace yourself to allow time for each question
• Read the directions for each test carefully
• Read each question carefully
• Answer the easier questions first
• Use logic in more difficult questions
• Review your work
• Answer every question because there is no penalty for guessing
• Be precise in marking your answer sheet - stay within the circles
• Erase all unintended marks completely

Test results will be mailed to you approximately six weeks after the test from the Assessment Office. You can obrain scores in-person at the Assessment Office or through postal mail.  Please contact our office if you have any questions.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CAAP TEST

Each test requires 40 minutes for completion. An additional 10 minutes are needed to complete background information. Three of the CAAP tests are multiple choice: Reading, Math and Writing Skills. The Writing essay portion involves writing two brief essays.

Reading Test:

This 36-item test measures reading comprehension as a combination of skills that can be conceptualized in two broad categories: Referring Skills and Reasoning Skills. The test consists of four prose passages of about 900 words each that are representative of the level and kinds of writing commonly found in college curricula. Passages are selected from published sources on topics from prose fiction, the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Each passage is accompanied by a set of nine multiple-choice test items.

Mathematics Test:

The 35-item test is designed to measure your mathematical reasoning ability. It assesses the ability to solve mathematical problems encountered in many postsecondary curricula. It emphasizes quantitative reasoning rather than the memorization of formulas. The content areas tested include pre-algebra; elementary, intermediate, and advanced algebra; coordinate geometry; and trigonometry.

Writing Skills Test:

This 72-item test measures your understanding of conventions of standard written English in punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, strategy, organization, and style. Spelling, vocabulary, and rote recall of rules of grammar are NOT tested. The test consists of six prose passages, each of which is accompanied by a set of twelve multiple-choice test items. A range of passage types is used to provide a variety of rhetorical situations. The student must decide which response is most appropriate.

Writing Essay Test:

This test consists of two parts and requires 20 minutes for each part. You must respond to both parts to receive an essay score. Because this is a test of your writing skills, your response to each section should be an essay of complete sentences and paragraphs, as well as organized and clearly written as you can make it in the allotted time. There are four pages in your answer booklet to write your responses to each part of the test. Essays that are illegible cannot be scored. Each of the two-20 minute writing tasks is defined by a short prompt that identifies a specific hypothetical situation and audience. The situation involves an issue on which you must make a decision. You then take a position and explain why the position taken is the better (or best) alternative. The background knowledge and experience required to carry out the task are well within the command of college sophomores.

 

The following examples illustrate the kind of questions you might find on the CAAP test.

SELECTED SAMPLE CAAP QUESTIONS

Reading
Sample Passage:

On Union Boulevard, St. Louis, in the 1950's, there were women in their eighties who lived with the shades drawn, who hid like bats in the caves they claimed for home. Neighbors of my grandmother, they could be faintly heard through a ceiling or wall. A drawer opening. The slow thump of a shoe. Who they were and whom they were mourning (someone had always just died) intrigued me. Me, the child who knew where the cookies waited in Grandma’s kitchen closet. Who lined five varieties up on the table and bit from each one in succession, knowing my mother would never let me do this at home. Who sold Girl Scout cookies door-to-door in annual tradition, who sold fifty boxes, who won The Prize. My grandmother told me which doors to knock on. Whispered secretly, “She’ll take three boxes- wait and see.”
Hand-in-hand we climbed the dark stairs, knocked on the doors. I shivered, held Grandma tighter, remember still the smell which was curiously fragrant, a sweet soup of talcum powder, folded curtains, roses pressed in a book. Was that what years smelled like? The door would miraculously open and a withered face framed there would peer oddly at me as if I had come from another world. Maybe I had. “Come in,” it would say, or “Yes?” and I would mumble something about cookies, feeling foolish, feeling like the one who places a can of beans next to an alter marked For the Poor and then had to stare at it- the beans next to the cross - all through the worship. Feeling I should have brought more, as if I shouldn’t be selling something to these women, but giving them a gift, some new breath, assurance that there was still a child’s world out there, green grass, scabby knees, a playground where you could stretch your legs higher than your head. There were still Easter eggs lodged in the mouths of drainpipes and sleds on frozen hills, that joyous scream of flying toward yourself in the snow. Squirrels storing nuts, kitten being born with eyes closed; there was still everything tiny, unformed, flung wide open into the air!
But how did you carry such an assurance? In those hallways, standing before those thin gray wisps of women, with Grandma slinking back and pushing me forward to go in along, I didn’t know. There was something here which also smelled like life. But it was a life I hadn’t learned yet. I had never outlived anything I knew of, except one yellow cat. I never had saved a photograph. For me life was a bounce, an unending burst of pleasures. Vaguely I imagined what a life of recollection could be, as already I was haunted by a sense of my own lost baby years, golden rings I slipped on and off my heart. Would I be one of those women?
Their rooms are shrines of upholstery and lace. Silent radios standing under stacks of magazines. Did they work? Could I turn the knobs? Questions I wouldn’t ask here. Windows questioned me. Never asked where the money went, had the price gone up since last year, where there any additional flavors. They bought what they remembered- if it was peanut-butter last year, peanut-butter this year would be fine. They brought the coins from jars, from pocketbooks without handles, counted them carefully before me, while I stared at their thin crops of knotted hair. A Sunday brooch pinned loosely to the shoulder of an everyday dress. What were these women thinking of?
And the door would close softly behind me, transaction complete, the closing click like a drawer sliding back, a world slid quietly out of sight, and I was free to return to my own universe, to Grandma standing with arms folded in the courtyard, staring peacefully up at a bluejay or sprouting leaf. Suddenly I’d see Grandma in her dress of tiny flowers, curly gray permanent, tightly lace shoes, as on of them-but then she’d turn, laugh, “Did she buy?” and again belong to me.
Gray women in rooms like the shades drawn...weeks later the cookies would come. I would stack the boxes, make my delivery rounds to the sleeping doors. This time I would be businesslike, I would rap firmly, “Hello Ma’am, here are the cookies you ordered.” And the face would peer up, uncertain...cookies?...as if for a moment we were floating in the space between us. What I did (carefully balancing boxes in both my arms, wondering who would eat the cookies - I was the only child ever seen in that building) or what she did (reaching out with floating hands to touch what she had bought) had little to do with who we were, had been, or ever would be.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “The Cookies.” © 1982 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Sample Items for Passage

1) Which of the following statements represents a justifiable interpretation of hte meaning of the story?

A. The girl’s experience selling Girl Scout cookies influenced her choice of careers.
* B. The girl’s experiences with elderly women made her aware of the prospect of aging.
C. Because she spent so much time with her grandmother, the girl preferred the company of old people to that of other children.
D. The whole experience of selling Girl Scout cookies was a dream or hallucination and had nothing to do with who the girl really was.

2) When she delivered the Girl Scout cookies, the girl most likely adopted a businesslike attitude because:

A. She hoped that such an attitude would persuade the elderly women to buy more cookies.
B. Her grandmother had urged her to be more polite.
* C. She wanted to avoid recalling the thoughts she had during her previous visit.
D. The elderly women really wanted little to do with her.

3) The girls was taken aback by the sight of her grandmother (5th paragraph) because:

A. The grandmother has a look of disapproval on her face.
B. It seems odd that her grandmother should be staring at a bluejay.
C. The grandmother asks if the woman bought any cookies.
* D. It occurs to the girl that her grandmother is an old woman.
4) What conclusion can most justifiably be drawn about the adult woman who narrates the story?

*A. She understands her reaction to the elderly women better now than she did as a girl.
B. She now looks down on elderly women and their way of living.
C. She is concerned about living conditions of the poor.
D. She believes she should never had tried to sell cookies to the women.

Mathematics
Pre-Algebra (Basic Skills)

1) How much greater is the product of -3, -7, and 5 than their sum?
A. -100 B. -100 C. 90 D. 100 *E. 110

Pre-Algebra (Application)

2) Mark bought 3 shirts at a clothing store. If he paid a total of $15.00 for 2 shirts and the average (arithmetic mean) cost of the 3 shirts was $8.00, how much did mark pay for the third shirt?
A. $7.00 B. $7.67 C. $8.50 *D. $9.00 E. $11.50

Coordinate Geometry (Basic Skills)

3) A straight line in the coordinate plane passes through the points with (x,y) coordinates (-1, 1) and (2, 3). What are the (x,y) coordinates of the point at which the line passes through the y-axis?
A. (0, 2/3) *B. (0, 5/3) C. (0,2) D. (0, 5/2) E. (-2,0)

Intermediate Algebra (Application)

Items 4 and 5 are based on the following information:

Astonville currently has a property tax of 2% of the market value of each house. Senator Smith has proposed a change in the property tax. Under the Smith Proposal, there would be no tax on a house unless the market value was above $20,000. The tax on a house whose market value was over $20,000 would be 2.5% of the difference between the house’s market value and $20,000.

4) Sue Miller would pay the same tax on her house under the Smith Proposal as under the current plan. What is the market value of her house?
A. $10,000 B. $40,000 *C. $100,000 D. $120,000 E. $400,000

5) What percentage of Senator Smith’s constituents would save money under his new tax proposal?
A. 25% B. 33 1/3% C. 50% D. 66 2/3%
*E. The answer cannot be determined from the given information.

College Algebra (Basic Skills)

6) If -4 x 2 + 4 x +3 > 0, then which of the following inequalities must be true?
A. x > 0 B. x < 0 C. x < -1/2 or x >3/2 *D. -1/2 < x < 3/2 E. -2/3 < x < 1/2

Trigonometry (Basic Skills)

7) Which of the following is equivalent to sin x tan2 x + sin x, for 0 < x < 90 0?
tan x
A. sin x + cos x
B. 2 sin x tan x
* C. sec x
D. cos x
E. sin 2x
cos3x

Writing Skills

Question refers to underlined word or phrase.

In the end, everyone gives up jogging.  Some find that their strenuous efforts to earn a living (1) drains away their energy.	A. NO CHANGE *B. drain C. has drained D. is draining
Others (2) suffering from defeat by the hazzards of the course, hard from pavement to muddy tracks, and from smog to sleet and snow.	2) A. NO CHANGE B. suffered *C. suffer D. suffering with
(3) These can also collapse in their sneakers.	3) A. NO CHANGE B. Still others C. They can also D. They also can
My experience (4) having been different, however; I had a revelation.	4) A. NO CHANGE B. being different, C. was a difference, *D. was different,
It happened two summers ago at Lake Tom. I had been accustomed to running every day, but that week I decided to be lazy. I sailed, basked in the sun, and (5) ate wonderfully: the best meals I’ve ever eaten.	Which of the following would most specifically illustrate the point that the writer ate wonderfully? 5) A. NO CHANGE B. nutritious and healthful meals. *C. Lobster, steak, and baked potatoes. D. breakfast, lunch and dinner.
By the fourth day I had to face the truth; my body was slowly changing to (6) becoming dough.	6) A. NO CHANGE B. become C. being *D. OMIT the underlined portion.
So I tied my running shoes and loped out to the main road in search of a five-mile route.  (7) Out of curiosity I turned onto Lookout Hill Road and soon discovered how the road had come by it’s name.	7) *A.  NO CHANGE B. Out of curiosity, Lookout Hill Road was turned onto C. Having become curious, Lookout Hill Road was the route I turned onto D. Curious, a turning into Lookout Hill Road was what I did.
I was chugging up one of the (8) longest, steepest inclines in the region.  Perched at the top was a ramshackle house, and only a desire to get a closer look kept me going.	8) *A.  NO CHANGE B. longest, steepest, C. longest steepest, D. longest and steepest,
I was exhausted when I reached the crest of the hill.  There I found a native new Englander rocking on the front porch of the (9) house which was painted. “Mister,” I panted “you sure live on a big hill!”	9) A. NO CHANGE house (painted). C. house, and it was painted. *D. house.
He studies me closely for a moment and then responded, “Yep, and I’ve got the good sense not to un up it. (10)“That night I tied the laces of my running shoes around a rock and dropped them in Lake Tom.	10) Which of the following sentences would provide the conclusion that best supports the point made in the first paragraph that the write gave up jogging because of a revelation? *A. NO CHANGE B. I realized that the New Englander was, indeed correct, and walked back down the hill. C. After that, I sat down on the porch and we talked for more than an hour. D. Jogging may be good for you, but it’s also tiring-especially if you jog up hills.

 

Writing Essay

(Two 20-0minute writing tasks will be given. The following is an example task.)

Your college administration is considering whether or not there should be a physical education requirement for undergraduates. The administration has asked students for their views on the issue and has announced that its final decision will be based on how such a requirement would affect the overall mission of the college. Write a letter to the administration arguing whether or not there should be a physical education requirement for undergraduates at your college.

 

Last Updated March 19, 2007