Provides strategies designed to help both mainstream and underrepresented students meet the rhetorical demands of placement exams and gain control in these situations. Describes the University of California Santa Barbara's Preparatory Program which serves a large, culturally diverse student population, acknowledges the variables embedded in the…

Explores the history of testing, motivations for testing, testing procedures, and the inevitable limitations of testing. Argues that writing program faculty and administrators must clarify and profess their values, decide what they want students to know and what sort of thinkers they should be, and develop tests reflecting those needs. (SR)