Schaum's College Algebra vs. UC Davis's Placement Test

Schaum’s Outline of College Algebra covers most of what UC Davis’s Math Readiness Assessment (MRA) actually tests, but not all of it. The MRA carries a separate trigonometry sub-score requirement for two of the four placement tracks, and Schaum’s College Algebra has no trigonometry chapters at all. Whether the book is “enough” depends entirely on which course you’re trying to place into.

Skip to the picks

What the UC Davis Math Readiness Assessment actually tests

The MRA is a 60-question multiple-choice exam with a 90-minute time limit, proctored remotely through Honorlock, which monitors your camera and screen activity during the test. Calculators are not allowed. It’s offered twice each academic quarter and once during summer session, and a passing score stays valid for five years. Notably, UC Davis does not exempt students from the MRA for AP, IB, or SAT scores, or for math coursework completed at another institution — everyone testing into MAT 12, 17A, 19A, or 21A takes it, and a student who enrolls in one of those courses without a qualifying score gets administratively dropped.

The exam covers rational expressions, polynomials, functions, word problems, linear equations and inequalities, and trigonometry, and UC Davis reports it as two numbers: a total score and a separate trigonometry sub-score. The cutoffs are:

• MAT 12 (pre-calculus for non-STEM majors): total score of 25 or higher, no trig sub-score requirement
• MAT 19A (calculus for biological sciences): total score of 30 or higher, no trig sub-score requirement
• MAT 17A (calculus for social sciences): total score of 30 or higher, plus a trig sub-score of 2 or higher
• MAT 21A (calculus for physical sciences and engineering): total score of 35 or higher, plus a trig sub-score of 3 or higher

That split matters more than it looks. A student could clear the total-score bar for MAT 17A or 21A on algebra questions alone and still get placed lower because the trig sub-score came in under 2 or 3.

Where Schaum’s College Algebra lines up with the MRA

The fifth edition of Schaum’s Outline of College Algebra, by Murray R. Spiegel and Robert E. Moyer, is a chapter-by-chapter worked-problem review: fundamental operations, factoring, fractions, exponents, radicals, equations in general, ratio/proportion/variation, functions and graphs, linear equations, simultaneous equations, quadratic equations, inequalities, polynomial and rational functions, sequences and series, and logarithms, backed by more than 300 supplementary problems and 30 online video walkthroughs.

Map that against the MRA’s stated topic list — rational expressions, polynomials, functions, word problems, linear equations and inequalities — and the overlap is close to complete. The fractions chapter is rational expressions. The functions-and-graphs and ratio/variation chapters are where word problems get built and solved. The linear equations, simultaneous equations, and inequalities chapters are named almost identically to the MRA’s own categories. Because the exam is multiple choice and calculator-free, the format Schaum’s uses — every problem worked out by hand, step by step, with no computational shortcuts — trains exactly the skill the test rewards rather than the skill a graphing calculator rewards.

The gap: trigonometry has its own score

Look through that same table of contents again and trigonometry isn’t there. Not a chapter, not a section, not an appendix. That’s fine if trig sub-score isn’t part of your target course’s requirement — but for MAT 17A and MAT 21A, it explicitly is. A student who works every problem in this book and walks in having never touched a unit circle, a right-triangle ratio, or a trig identity is going to answer the trig portion of the exam by guessing, which is exactly the failure mode the separate sub-score is designed to catch.

This is the single most important thing to check before treating “Schaum’s College Algebra” as a complete answer to “how do I prepare for the UC Davis placement test”: it depends which of the four courses you’re aiming at.

If you’re placing into MAT 12 or MAT 19A

Neither course carries a trig sub-score requirement. For this track, Schaum’s Outline of College Algebra by itself is a reasonable, sufficient tool — work through the fractions, equations, functions, linear-equations, and inequalities chapters in order, since those map onto the bulk of a 60-question test drawn from pre-algebra through algebra content, and treat the supplementary problems as timed practice rather than open-book review, since the real exam gives you 90 minutes and no calculator.

If you’re placing into MAT 17A or MAT 21A

Both carry a trig sub-score floor (2 for MAT 17A, 3 for MAT 21A), and College Algebra alone won’t get you ready for that part of the exam. You have two honest options: pair the algebra outline with a dedicated trigonometry review, or replace both with a single combined volume.

Schaum’s Outline of Trigonometry, by Robert E. Moyer and Frank Ayres, covers angles and general trig functions, right-triangle and oblique-triangle solutions, identities, sum and difference formulas, and trigonometric equations, with more than 600 solved problems. It’s a complement to College Algebra, not a replacement — buy it specifically because the algebra outline stops exactly where the MRA’s trig sub-score starts.

Schaum’s Outline of Precalculus, by Fred Safier, runs algebra and trigonometry through one table of contents — functions, quadratics, exponential and logarithmic functions, then trigonometric functions, graphs, angles, and identities — with 738 solved problems across the combined material. That’s fewer problems per topic than the two dedicated outlines would give you together, which is the real trade-off: one purchase and one book to carry, at the cost of shallower coverage of each individual subject. It’s the better call if you’re starting from zero and don’t already own College Algebra; if you’ve already bought and started College Algebra, adding Trigonometry rather than switching books is less wasted effort.

Do UCSD’s practice tests actually match UC Davis’s difficulty?

This is worth untangling because “UCSD” points to two different things online, and only one of them is what UC Davis itself recommends.

The first is UCSD’s own campus placement exam, run through mathtesting.ucsd.edu for UCSD’s incoming students. It allows calculator use (with symbolic models like the TI-89 excluded) and exists to place UCSD students into UCSD courses — it isn’t the resource UC Davis points students toward, and its calculator policy alone makes it a worse practice match for a no-calculator MRA.

The second is the CSU/UC Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project, or MDTP, which is what UC Davis’s own math readiness page actually links to. MDTP isn’t a UCSD product — it’s a statewide project jointly run by the CSU and UC systems since 1977, with regional offices at eight campuses including Davis, and its main site happens to be hosted at ucsd.edu. MDTP publishes two static, free online practice exams: a Mathematical Analysis Readiness Test (no trig) and a Calculus Readiness Test (with trig), both 40 multiple-choice questions, both meant to be taken without a calculator. That format — multiple choice, no calculator — matches the MRA’s format closely, even though the question count differs (40 on MDTP versus 60 on the real exam). Because UC Davis’s own placement office is the one recommending these tests, and because UC Davis runs its own MDTP regional office, the practice tests aren’t a mismatched import from a different school’s system — they’re the same consortium test UC Davis participates in directly.

Practically: take the version matching your target course (the trig version if you’re aiming at MAT 17A or 21A, the non-trig version otherwise) before you buy anything, to see which topics actually need review.

How to combine Schaum’s with the free UC Davis and MDTP resources

Since the MRA is a fixed 60-question exam rather than an adaptive one, depth on your weak chapters matters more than breadth across every chapter. A sensible order: take the matching MDTP practice test cold to find which topics are actually shaky, work the corresponding Schaum’s chapters — College Algebra for anything algebraic, Trigonometry or Precalculus for anything trig-related — as timed, calculator-free problem sets, then retake the MDTP practice test to confirm the weak spots closed before you sit the proctored exam. UC Davis also posts its own algebra and trigonometry review packets and past Math Jumpstart videos through the same placement office pages, which are worth working through alongside Schaum’s rather than instead of it, since they’re built around the exact MRA topic categories.

If your score comes back below the cutoff for the course you need, UC Davis allows a retake at the next offered session — there’s no fee and no limit stated on the number of attempts across sessions, so a below-cutoff trig sub-score on a first attempt is a reason to add the Trigonometry outline and retest, not a dead end.