The Proficiency Profile (formerly the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress) is a test of general education competencies designed by ETS. UAB has been using it since the spring of 2004 as an external assessment instrument. It provides us with norm- and criterion referenced scores that enable us to compare ourselves to other institutions and to ourselves over time. It has been administered to a randomly selected sample of roughly a third of each entering class and to a self-selected group of graduating seniors. Several of the competencies that the MAPP addresses are consistent with the QL Core Competency Learning Outcomes.

These include:

• Solve word problems
• Find information, interpret a trend in a graph
• Solve problems requiring insight or logical reasoning.
• Recognize valid inferences from reading material
• Evaluate competing causal explanations
• Evaluate hypotheses for consistency with facts
• Evaluate the appropriateness of procedures for investigating a question of causation
• Evaluate data for consistency with known facts, hypotheses or methods
• Recognize flaws and inconsistencies in an argument