Graduate admissions reasoning practice questions

About this practice suite

This suite prepares candidates for graduate admissions reasoning selection in the academic admissions, scholarships, and placement sector with 5 skill areas: critical thinking, verbal reasoning, reading comprehension, numerical reasoning and logical reasoning. Every question was written by Novus editors for this suite (none are taken from live or leaked exams), and the full bank holds 52 scored questions across three modes, plus 8 reserve questions used to vary repeat attempts. Answer keys never ship to the browser: your answers are scored server-side, and results stay on your device.

Skills this suite practises

• Critical thinking: Evaluating evidence, assumptions, arguments, credibility, and alternative explanations.
• Verbal reasoning: Drawing conclusions from written information without relying on outside assumptions.
• Reading comprehension: Understanding passages, instructions, policies, technical material, and workplace documents.
• Numerical reasoning: Arithmetic, fractions, percentages, ratios, rates, estimation, word problems, and number relationships.
• Logical reasoning: Conditional logic, syllogisms, ordering, grouping, argument structure, and constraint problems.

Sample questions from the guided bank

Two of the 10 guided-practice questions, shown exactly as they appear in a session. Answers and explanations are not printed here, because keys stay on the server. Open guided practice to answer them and see how you did.

1. A strong graduate research question is mainly marked by:

   • A. A clear, answerable focus with scope a project can actually address
   • B. Being broad enough to cover every topic in a field
   • C. Matching whatever data are easiest to download
   • D. Avoiding any mention of methods

2. A proposal claims a workshop caused higher grades but only compares attendees to non-attendees with no baseline. Best research-readiness critique?

   • A. Attendance always proves causation
   • B. Self-selection and missing baselines weaken causal claims; note confounds
   • C. Workshops never affect grades
   • D. Skip methods and praise the sample size alone

Practice modes and timing

Guided practice is untimed-feeling and instructional; the mini-test is a short timed check; the full simulation mirrors a complete sitting. All three draw on separate question sets, so moving up a mode never repeats what you practised.

Study outline

Read the study outline for this suite’s skills, timings, and recommended lessons on one printable page, or take the full study guide away as a PDF, a spreadsheet, plain text, or HTML. Each download contains every skill’s complete lesson, not a list of links.

• Download full study guide (HTML) Opens in any browser, works offline.
• Download full study guide (PDF) Paginated, print-ready, opens anywhere.
• Download full study guide (CSV (spreadsheet)) Opens in a spreadsheet, one row per item.
• Download full study guide (Plain text) Plain text for notes apps and screen readers.