How to attempt CUET's General Aptitude Test

This page is about the paper, not the syllabus. The other revision sheets hold the facts and formulas; this one is about how to turn what you know into marks in sixty minutes.

What does the paper look like?

The General Aptitude Test has 50 questions and lasts 60 minutes. All 50 are compulsory, and every question is multiple choice with four options.

Item	Rule
Questions	50, all compulsory
Time	60 minutes
Correct answer	+5
Wrong answer	−1
Left blank	0
Maximum	250

NTA's syllabus names five areas: General Knowledge, Current Affairs; General Mental Ability, Numerical Ability; Reasoning; Logical and Analytical Reasoning; and General Science and Environment Literacy. NTA does not publish how many questions come from each area, so any split you read, including the one in our mocks, is a guess and not an official rule.

Is it worth guessing when you are not sure?

Work it out from the marking. With four options and no idea at all, a guess is right one time in four: on average it earns $\frac{1}{4} \times 5 - \frac{3}{4} \times 1 = 0.5$ marks. A blank earns 0.

• If you can rule out even one option, the guess is right one time in three and is worth $\frac{1}{3} \times 5 - \frac{2}{3} \times 1 = 1$ mark on average.
• If you can rule out two, it is a coin toss worth $\frac{1}{2} \times 5 - \frac{1}{2} \times 1 = 2$ marks.

So a question you have read and narrowed down should almost never be left blank. What costs you marks is not guessing; it is spending four minutes on one question and running out of time for five easy ones.

How should you spend the sixty minutes?

Sixty minutes for fifty questions is 72 seconds each, but the questions are not equal. A fact you know takes ten seconds; a seating puzzle can take three minutes. A plan that works for most students:

1. First pass, about 35 minutes. Go through all 50 in order. Answer everything you can do in under a minute. For anything longer, mark it and move on.
2. Second pass, about 20 minutes. Return to the marked questions, easiest first. Give each one a fair try.
3. Last five minutes. Every question still open gets a guess, after ruling out whatever options you can.

The first pass is the one that protects your score: it guarantees that you see every question you could have answered.

Which questions should you do quickly, and which can wait?

Usually quick	Usually slow
General Knowledge and Current Affairs recall	seating arrangements and puzzles with five or more clues
direct percentages, ratios and averages	data interpretation with several steps
series, analogies, coding and odd-one-out	time and work or speed with two moving parts
direction and blood-relation chains	syllogisms with 'possibility' conclusions
science facts and unit conversions	mensuration of combined solids

A slow question is not a question to skip. It is one to leave for the second pass, when every quick mark is already banked.

What are the common ways to lose marks?

• Answering the question you expected rather than the one asked: 'which is NOT', 'exactly two' against 'at least two', 'from the right end'.
• Stopping at an intermediate number. Many wrong options are the values you pass on the way, such as the principal when the question asks for the interest.
• Mixing units: minutes and hours, centimetres and metres, per cent and percentage points.
• Rushing a calculation you could have estimated. When the options are far apart, round and pick; when they are close, calculate.
• Letting one hard question eat the clock. Set yourself a limit, about two minutes, and move on when you reach it.

How should you use the full mocks?

The mocks on this site are fixed papers of 50 questions in 60 minutes, marked +5 and −1. Forty-three questions are written for each mock and appear nowhere else on the site, so a mock is always new to you. The other seven are current-affairs questions drawn fresh from the monthly digests when you start, so the paper never goes out of date.

• Take a mock in one sitting, with a timer, as if it were the real paper.
• Afterwards, go through every question you got wrong or guessed, not just the wrong ones. A lucky guess is a gap you have not fixed yet.
• Sort your mistakes into three piles: did not know it, knew it but slipped, and ran out of time. Each pile needs a different fix: the chapter notes, slower checking, or a better first pass.
• Space the mocks out. One or two a week, with chapter practice in between, does more than five in a row.

What should you do in the last week?

• Read the revision sheets: the formula sheet, the reasoning tricks, the science and General Knowledge quick facts.
• Read the last few months of current-affairs digests, since those questions test recent events.
• Take one final mock at the same time of day as your exam slot, to get used to thinking at that hour.
• The night before, stop studying early and sleep. A tired mind loses more marks in the first pass than a revision session can add.

What should you check on the day?

• Your admit card, photo identity and anything else the admit card lists; reach the centre early.
• Read each question to the end before you look at the options.
• Keep an eye on the clock at 35 minutes: that is when your first pass should be done.
• In the last five minutes, make sure no question is left without an answer you have at least thought about.