Tanguay, Allison J. Practice Exams

Info and Advice

Plan to take at least 3 practice exams, under exam conditions, in the week or two before classes begin.

• Set aside time and a few of the more recent past exams for this purpose. Click here for copies of past Comps. 
• Take your practice exams by yourself, without any notes or books.
• Make sure you have a quiet place to take each practice exam. For students on campus, we have reserved a room in SMUD for this purpose. Please see the main page for more info. 
• Time yourself. The time limits, without accommodations, are 2 hours for seniors taking Comps and 3 hours for juniors taking Quals. You will be given all parts of the exam at the same time and it is recommended that you spend about one hour on each topic: that is, one hour for multi, one for linear, and one hour for algebra/analysis (juniors only). Students taking the exam with accommodations should adjust these times accordingly. 

Exams

Click here for copies of old Comps. We suggest setting aside a few of the more recent exams to use as practice exams. Make sure not to look at these exams ahead of time! 

The QCenter has also created three additional practice exams, with solutions, below. Many of these problems have been taken from older Comps, but these are not actual past exams. We have also included a few questions that we think are a little harder than usual on these, so that you can push yourself a bit. 

You can use these solutions to check your answers to the practice exams. Do not look at the solutions until after you have taken the exam! Note that these documents give one solution for each problem and there may be other possible answers. You can visit the QCenter to go over any questions you have.

Please email qcentermath@amherst.edu if you find any errors with these solutions.