The CUNY Proficiency Examination (CPE) requires students to demonstrate their competence in aspects of academic literacy that the CUNY faculty considers important for success in upper-division studies. The CPE has been designed to resemble typical college assignments in which writing is produced in response to reading material, data or observations. It is read and scored by members of the CUNY faculty from a range of disciplines and departments.
The CPE reflects the types of skills which students need to succeed in college and the workplace. Because the CPE involves the type of reading, writing, and thinking that you do in your regular classes, most CUNY students pass the test.
The CPE tests some of the skills that you have developed through the course work that you have taken: reading and interpreting text books and materials of general interest; organizing and presenting your ideas about what you have read and connecting those ideas to other information or concepts; writing clearly and effectively for an audience; and interpreting and evaluating material presented in charts and graphs.
