The New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test (NJCBSPT) is designed to measure basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills of students entering New Jersey colleges. The test consists of five sections: Essay, Reading Comprehension, Sentence Sense, Mathematical Computation, and Elementary Algebra. The test is intended to answer the question of whether an incoming student will profit more from placement in the regular first-year English or mathematics program than from placement in courses that the college is offering to prepare students for the regular program. The test is developed by committees made up of New Jersey college faculty, and assisted by high school teachers. The distribution of scores on the NJCBSPT is a consequence of the purpose of the test: the mean raw score tends to be within two standard deviations of the maximum possible raw score. Because the requirements of freshman courses vary from campus to campus, no particular score can serve as the cut off score; teachers should allow themselves to be guided by their experience in teaching students and by the expectations they have of their particular students. A discussion of the reliability of the test, and served sample score reports are included in this document. (BW)