Aptitude Tests

At some point in your academic or work career you may be asked to take an aptitude test. Aptitude tests are intended to determine an individual’s personality traits and knowledge of a variety of categories and areas. They are used to assess one’s suitability for particular career paths or types of employment, but may also be used to determine an individual’s suitability for some college and university programs.

Aptitude tests are not the same as intelligence tests, which assess your processing skills and intelligence, or achievement tests, which are used to measure the knowledge and skills you have learned. At the same time, there are many features and factors in intelligence and achievement tests that overlap aptitude testing. While aptitude tests may incorporate skills, knowledge and processing abilities, they also cover a greater area of information, and tend to include various aspects of all these tests. Where intelligence tests focus only on base intelligence and processing, and achievement tests explore what you have retained or learned, aptitude tests go deeper, often comprising of both learned skills and personal characteristic components.

There are a vast variety of aptitude tests, including ones that determine an individual’s aptitude for life in the military to those that explore suitability for study at medical schools. Among the many types of aptitude tests are those that measure mental, physical and psychological aptitude, as well as others that test in a combination of areas. SAT’s fall under this last category of combination tests.

Aptitude tests also vary widely in form. While many are multiple choice they also are in other formats, and they may be as short as a single page or as long as hundreds of questions. As they don’t tend to measure specific knowledge of a given topic, it isn’t really possible to study for most aptitude tests, though sometimes you can find sample tests to practice the test format. Improving one’s physical fitness for a physical aptitude test is one way to prepare, but that’s only for a specific test, and it’s still challenging to prepare for specific aspects of that test.

Rather than cramming for tests like these, it’s more important to be well rested before you take one, and to make sure you take the time to read all the directions carefully and follow them precisely for maximum success.

By: Jon Ginsburg

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