A few questions from this test, with the answer key and the method behind it. The full set of 27 runs under a timer, and every solution is on the analysis screen once you submit.
English Language · solved example
Rearrange the following six sentences (A), (B), (C), (D), (E) and (F) into a meaningful paragraph, then answer the question.
(A) Before the container, loading a vessel was slow and back-breaking work, with cargo carried aboard piece by piece in sacks, barrels and crates.
(B) The shipping container is rarely mentioned in histories of globalisation, yet few inventions did more to bring it about.
(C) A plain metal box, standardised so that it could move from truck to train to ship without being opened, sounds far too dull to deserve the credit.
(D) By collapsing the cost of moving goods to a fraction of what it had been, the box made it profitable to manufacture on one continent and sell on another.
(E) That very dullness, however, was the source of its power.
(F) A ship could therefore sit idle at the dockside for days while gangs of labourers handled its cargo by hand.
Which sentence comes immediately AFTER sentence (C)?
Solution
(C) says the box 'sounds far too dull to deserve the credit'; (E) picks that up with 'That very dullness, however, was the source of its power.' So (E) follows (C) directly.
Quantitative Aptitude · solved example
The table shows the number of loan applications a bank branch received over four months, and the percentage of those applications that were approved.
Month | Applications received | Percentage approved
April | 640 | 45%
May | 720 | 55%
June | 850 | 40%
July | 900 | 60%
How many applications were approved in April and June taken together?
- A612
- B628Correct
- C644
- D660
- E676
Solution
April approvals are 45% of 640. Take 40% and add 5%: 256 + 32 = 288. June approvals are 40% of 850, which is 340. The total is 288 + 340 = 628. Do not average the two percentages and apply the result to the combined applications, which is the usual shortcut error here, because the two months have different bases. Compute each month separately, then add.
Reasoning Ability · solved example
Statements: No cat is a dog. All dogs are pets.
Conclusions: I. Some pets are not cats. II. No cat is a pet.
- AOnly conclusion I followsCorrect
- BOnly conclusion II follows
- CEither I or II follows
- DNeither I nor II follows
- EBoth I and II follow
Solution
All dogs are pets and no dog is a cat, so those dog-pets are pets that are not cats - I follows. II overreaches: cats could still be pets by some other route, so it is not forced and does not follow.
English Language · solved example
In the sentence below, two highlighted words must be interchanged to make it meaningful. Identify them.
The survey (A) concluded that awareness of the scheme was (B) negligible in districts where field staff had been (C) appointed, and (D) widespread where no such appointment was made.
- AA and C
- BA and D
- CB and C
- DB and DCorrect
- EC and D
Solution
As written the sentence says awareness was negligible where staff had been appointed and widespread where they had not, which reverses the only sensible relationship between the two halves. Interchanging B and D repairs it: awareness was widespread where field staff had been appointed and negligible where no appointment was made. A and C are correctly used and are different parts of speech from the words that need moving. The signal here is a sentence whose two halves contradict what the rest of it implies, rather than a phrase that sounds odd on its own.
English Language · solved example
A crop insurance scheme is usually judged by how much it pays. A more revealing test is how quickly. A farmer whose claim is settled six months after a failed harvest has already borrowed to plant the next one, and has done so at whatever rate the local lender set, which is rarely the rate the scheme was meant to spare him. The payout, when it arrives, retires that debt rather than financing the sowing it was designed to protect. The money is not wasted, but its purpose has been quietly inverted.
Delay is built into the way losses are measured. Most schemes settle on the basis of crop-cutting experiments, in which sample harvests across a block are weighed and the average yield compared with a threshold. The method is defensible, and it is slow: it needs field staff, a harvest to sample, and a chain of approvals afterwards. Satellite assessment promises speed, and pilots have cut settlement times sharply, but it estimates area-wide vegetation rather than an individual field's yield, so a farmer whose own plot failed in a block that did well is left uncompensated and unconvinced. Faster settlement is therefore not simply a matter of better technology. It requires deciding whose loss the scheme insures: the block's, which can be measured quickly, or the farm's, which cannot.
What limitation of satellite assessment does the passage identify?
- AIt is considerably more expensive than crop-cutting experiments.
- BIt has not yet been tested anywhere in the field.
- CIt requires more field staff than the method it would replace.
- DIt measures vegetation across an area rather than the yield of a particular field.Correct
- EIt cannot be used until the harvest is complete.
Solution
The passage grants that satellite assessment is fast and that pilots have cut settlement times sharply, then names its one drawback: it estimates area-wide vegetation rather than an individual field's yield, which is why a farmer whose own plot failed inside a successful block goes uncompensated. Option B contradicts the reference to pilots. Options A and C are the kinds of objection one might expect, but the passage raises neither, and C describes the older method's requirement, not the new one's. Option E belongs to crop-cutting experiments, which need a harvest to sample.