The Placement Examination in Spanish is an online, multiple-choice format exam that you may take at your convenience, even before your arrival on campus (see link below). It consists of questions on vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension. There is no oral or listening part to the exam. Since it is an adaptive test, the length varies from one individual to another, with an average time of 20 minutes.

At the exam welcome screen (see link below) you must provide all the information requested. Your score and placement recommendation will be notified to you and to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese immediately upon completion of the exam. We recommend that you print your results as well.

After receipt of the report, you may register in the designated course during Orientation or the add/drop period. The online placement test is for diagnostic purposes only and will be supplemented by your instructor's evaluation during the first week of classes, at which time he or she may recommend a change in registration. Under no circumstances may you register for a level lower or higher than the one to which you are assigned without the explicit permission of the Director of the Language Programs.

If your score in the online test qualifies you for exemption from the language requirement at Columbia, you will be required to take another version that will be offered every year on the Thursday before the beginning of classes in the fall semester from 11:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. in Room 352 of the International Affairs Building (the Language Resource Center Computer Lab). You do not need to make an appointment to sit for this exam. Continuing students should contact the Director of the Language Programs.

You may take this online exam only once. Should you have any questions about your placement, please contact the Director of the Language Programs.

The exam must represent your own work. When taking it you will be bound by Columbia University's Code of Academic Integrity, and must refrain from any activity constitutive of academic dishonesty as defined therein. (If you are a Barnard student do not proceed any further and go to: http://www.barnard.edu/spanish/placement.html)

To take the Columbia placement exam please go to:

Address: http://webcape.byuhtrsc.org/?acct=columbia
password: roaree1 [ends with the number one]

If you wish to declare a major or concentration in the department please download the requisite form below:

Major in Hispanic Studies Declaration Form

Concentration in Hispanic Studies Declaration Form

Concentration in Portuguese Studies Declaration Form

Please complete the form and make an appointment with the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Prof. Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco (jrvelasco@columbia.edu or 854-8486). He will discuss with you your proposed program of studies. He must sign this form before you hand it in, or your declaration will not be recognized by the College.

School of General Studies students may obtain a major declaration form by making an appointment with their adviser.

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Columbia University, located in the Casa Hispánica at 612 West 116th Street in New York, has long enjoyed an international reputation as a center for Hispanic and Lusophone studies. In addition to providing students with a commanding linguistic preparation in Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan, the department offers a flexible and varied undergraduate program that enables them to study the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds in all historical periods—from the medieval to the globalized present—and in a variety of cultural contexts: the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, the former colonies of Portugal, and the United States.

The aim of the department's graduate program is to train students to become first-rate scholars and teachers who are theoretically sophisticated and attuned to the issues, polemics, and approaches that define the profession currently as a field of intellectual endeavor.

Casa Hispánica is also the home of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University. Founded in 1920 as the Instituto de las Españas, the Hispanic Institute's central aim is to sponsor and disseminate research on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian culture. The Institute has also published since 1934 the Revista Hispánica Moderna, a distinguished journal in the field of Hispanic criticism and theory.