A study was conducted at Florence-Darlington Technical College (FDTC) in South Carolina to assess the college's admissions testing program through a review of the current literature on placement testing and a statistical study comparing currently employed instruments, i.e., the Career Planning Program (CPP) test and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and a battery of tests developed in-house by FDTC faculty members. The literature review found: (1) studies had mixed findings about the effectiveness of scholastic ability tests as predictors of course grades or freshman grade point average (GPA); (2) some studies showed significant gains in retention and GPA for students who were tested and placed in courses meeting their skill needs; (3) locally developed instruments were more often used than any single published instrument in all areas but reading; and (4) there is a national trend linking assessment to quality of education. The second component of the study was the field testing of the in-house developed battery of tests, consisting of a two-section English test of sentence structure and language usage; a 100-item multiple-choice mathematics test used to measure numerical skills; and a reading test used to measure vocabulary and reading comprehension. Test scores were correlated with students' first-quarter GPA. The results of the field testing indicated that student success was best predicted by the SAT; that a moderate correlation was indicated for the in-house tests; and that the lowest correlation was with the CPP. (EJV)