Hi,
I am practicing the abstract reasoning tests on this website for the AD generalist computer test coming week. However, the result stays the same, I answer only 60% questions correct. This does not seem to change with more practice. What are your experiences are with the abstract reasoning tests on this website, did you improve much?
Best,
K.
I assume that you will do it better at CBT so don't worry :-) In my case, I always see a pattern, that in the "real" exams I do them better. I don't know how it works but works ;-) And I find AR at CBT a bit easier that tests on this site. So good luck :-) I have my exam on Wednesday and I can't look at AR and other parts :-)
HI
HI
dont you see the asnwers? in EPSO samples tests, does anybody see the answers?
Marta, good luck on Wednesday! :)
Just came back from the AD tests, I actually found numerical quite difficult and I didn't notice the time pass solving one question, afterwards I had to guess on the others:( For the abstract, I'd say they were medium difficulty and situational judgement I found quite easy. .. But of course you never know till you have the results, so wait and see;)
Thank you for sharing, Nida! :) Good luck with the results too!
Hi :)
I think it depends a lot on the difficulty of the abstract reasoning questions. In my experience, at least. I did the CBTs for the Ast-Sc competition and the 10 abstract reasoning questions that were in the test weren't difficult. When the results came out last week I saw that I'd answered them all correctly. But two weeks ago I did the CBTs for this AD competition and I found the questions to be harder. I didn't have time to answer them all and there were a few that I really coudn't see any pattern.
Strangely, I found the numerical reasoning questions for the AD competition easier than the ones for Ast-sc competition. At least the ones that were in my tests.
I also took the CBT a week ago and I found the abstract reasoning really tough...
just came from the exam. the abstract reasoning was morendifficult then i expected. patters that i have not seen beforehand.
I don't know if this was in your AR tests, but in mine there was a question with a square divided in 4 parts and each part had a different number of little dots in it. The number of dots would vary in the sequence. And there wasn't just one or two little dots in each part, they were 5 or 6. Bah. I didn't have time to be adding or subtracting, or whatever it was we had to do, so many dots. And there were two questions with these squares and dots in my test.
Did you practice the AR on this website? If so, I might even not go to the exam, :)
I confirm that this year's Abstract reasoning for Generalists was way more difficult from previous generalist competitions (and I have taken part in a few of them)... whereas Numerical was noticeably easier, but who cares, since its score doesn't count.
As things now stand, no single resource can CONCRETELY help you in the AR exam. Unlike, for example, situational judgment (in the latter case, if the practice tests are good, there may be a lot of SJT questions similar to the actual test).
It's just that, if you practice a lot, you will be able to be faster in AR. However, with the new advanced level of difficulty, luck seems to play a bigger role. Because, let's admit it, practice can greatly improve you, but only up to a certain degree (i am willing to discuss this, though).
True, I took the AD yesterday, on the final day of the test period. Verbal and numerical were easier from those on the AST/SC. Abstract reasoning was another story. About 12-14 out of 20 were compatible with the ones available on this website. The rest were altogether different from what I was used to. To make it even worse, there was no discernible pattern or rule as to which I could make a confident choice. SJT was a lot simpler than the practice tests here. The situations were up to 2 rows max and identical to the philosophy of the practice tests.
Thus, I have no idea if i'm gonna make it to the next phase. Maybe I made some lucky guesses or maybe I did not.
How did you all do in this competition?
I took the tests yesterday as well. What can I say, the abstract seemed really really difficult for me and I even couldn't answer them all, which I was really surprised about, cause this time I prepared quite a lot comparing with the previous years, but I feel like previously I have done better in abstract then this time... The questions seemed very tough and at least you need more time to think about it and not just one minute... I also agree that the questions on either of the websites or books were similar to the questions in the tests. Also I think it is a bit unfair, cause when you do sample tests on epso website, the abstracts are 10 times easÃer then in the real test....
So basically, i was so annoyed with the abstracts, that I didn't care about the sj anymore...
So no Assessment center for me this year unfortunately:(
I don't want to be the spoilsport here but I must say that I didn't find the abstract at all difficult. I even had 4 or 5 minium to review the few I marked.
However, the numerical reasoning of the audit was tough. So tough that I am really not sure to get the minimum 5 points :(
-minimum + minutes
I also sat the tests recently and found the abstract reasoning to be very hard. The jump from 10 to 20 questions really makes a huge difference and in my case, I found that successive questions using the same type of symbols (for example, questions 12-16 all involved squares with different numbers of dots) was incredibly distracting, much more so than if each question had featured clearly discernible difference (flower pots followed by squares followed by circles or whatever). My mind was literally "boggled" by the time I finished those five questions and it really affected my performance in the last few questions as I lost a lot of concentration.
My guess is that performance in abstract reasoning will be comparatively low this year, although there may be thousands of candidates out there who did very well and didn't find it that challenging. Fingers crossed that situational judgement scores can compensate for abstract reasoning!
Good luck everyone!
Ok, BUT are you referring to the Abstract part of the AUDIT exam? Because I took both audit and generalists and I did find AR questions for audit were SIGNIFICANTLY easier than AR questions in the Generalist exam. In the Abstract part of the test for Auditors, I was also able to revise a couple of dubious questions (so that answering 20 questions over 20 minutes wasn't too much a challenge) during the last minute or so.
I agree that Numerical for Audit was tougher than Numerical for Generalists, but one could relatively easily get at least the minimum score required, after some practice! Or perhaps it's just me, because I have done a lot of practice when the score of numerical counted towards the final score (and I remember that just because I couldn't figure out a simple equation in the last question in the last minute, I was left out of the Assessment centre)
I also took both and didn't find much difference in AR. However, SJT seemed easier in audit.
Well, I agree that the abstract for the audit were easier at least for me and numerical seemed more complicated on the other hand then in generalists. SJT I found easier in the audit competition... Again that is subjective opinion of mine and I am sure there will be enough people who did well in all the tests, as usual...
If you didn't find much difference in AR between generalists and audit, then you were especially lucky, since most candidates in facebook report a serious rise in the level of difficulty in AR for generalists. Can't quantify it, but for me at least it would be something like the difference in difficulty between tests in AST and tests in AD competitions...
I don't think it's a matter of fortune! I did both too and didn't find the abstract that different (however, I found the math in the audit test difficult) then what the majority think is not really that important as the majority won't pass the test!
It'll be interesting to see if your test results will be proportional to your confidence. Directly or inversely.
Well, I am afraid you are misunderstanding a few things.
First, it isn't purely a matter of luck, of course. Otherwise, you would see random candidates passing the threshold, without any preparation, all the time. But, you cannot exclude the fact that, due to factors we don't know, batches of questions for many candidates proved to be significantly more difficult than batches of questions for other candidates. This means that a degree of luck was certainly involved...
Second, people who post their test experiences in relevant groups (such as this forum) and confirm what I have written, are only among the most well-prepared candidates: no more than a couple of thousand people perhaps, roughly speaking, for this competition. Only these people prepare a lot of time or many years beforehand, ask questions in forums, etc. We are not talking about what "the majority of candidates" thinks, as you claim, which would be more than 20 thousand people... We are talking about "the majority of well-prepared candidates", a number much much smaller.
Simply due to laws of statistics, and unless we have more anecdotal evidence, what I said is easily confirmed (only 1 or 2 people have claimed the same thing as you)
Like I said, the AR was key this year:
Test a) : Verbal reasoning: 7.000/ 10.000 (pass mark: 5/10)
Test b) : Numerical reasoning: 5.000/ 10.000 (pass mark: 5/10)
Test c) : Abstract reasoning: 11.000/ 20.000 (pass mark: 10/20)
Test d) : Situational judgement: 35.500/ 40.000 (pass mark: 24/40)
Total: 46.500/60
so I didnt make the cut. so disappointed.
PS, why the .5 decimal came up in this result?
The cut was 50/60
10; 9; 13; 36. :( Just missed it. 49.
I recommend people do NOT buy the big packages for Abstract Reasoning. I got Diamond and did them all. My scores were 100% every test and done in half the time. Did i get better? No. Eutraining has actually a very limited range of questions. The same type kept coming up again and again, to the point where I was actually surprised to see something totally new. It was even worse than that - often the same question with the same answer was repeated! Not good value for money and actually counter productive. :( It actually got my brain *out of practice* with puzzling out difficult questions and I ended up screwing up my time management and guessing for the last 5 questions.
God, one point away. So close. One question...
Where can be found better abstart tests>
Don't get me wrong. I only made this post to confirm the general feeling on this thread that the abstract reasoning test for the generalists was exceptionally difficult this year which came as a surprise for me since in the AST/SC in April I scored 9/10.
Having said that, it seems it would be a good idea to prepare from multiple sources if you can afford to. Personally, I try to prepare myself on a tight budget. Thus, if any of you scored high on the AR at AD5 generalists, it would be great to share some insights on how to prepare for it in the future.
Thanks.
Hello!
Quite a few posters, I read, are bashing EU Training's Abstract Reasoning (AR) tests. Well, my experience is different. Actually, I found my AR CBT test to be quite similar to the exercises I had bought here on the website.
Now, I've never scored particularly high on EU Training's AR tests (I'm more in a 70%-80% range - do you guys really get "nearly 100% all the time" on those exercises? wow! :-)). But still, I consistently scored higher than "the average" - you know, that feature that lets you compare your scores with the bulk of test-takers here. So, I thought I stood a good chance of passing the CBT (after all, when chased by a tiger, you don't have to be the top sprinter; just run faster than your friends!). Turns out I was wrong - I got a mere 13/20 and failed to catch up on the SJT.
To me, what made the difference was the sheer number of questions. 20, no less! I looked at my statistics included with the EPSO letter, and I saw that I had failed the last 4 questions. Is it because they were really more difficult? Did you experience the same thing?
I already took the AD5 last year, and back then I found the (only 10) AR questions to be a breeze. I got 10/10, well within time limits. This year, by contrast, they were much harder. What's annoying is that I had genuinely prepared, as hard as I could - or so I thought.
So, yes - if you have tips on how to prepare better for the AR, I'd love to read them. There seems to be a lot of variation in personal experiences with the AR test. I do hope that if EPSO notices that some batches of AR questions seem to be chronically easy, while others entail massive failures, they'd conclude to a certain unfairness here...
Hello S_Keju
Same experience here, with the vast majority of wrong answers being after question 10/20 and all wrong after 15/20. But it was not fatigue. On June 17th I posted on this thread "About 12-14 out of 20 were compatible with the ones available on this website" the rest were not. But I'm not dissing eutraining for that. If anyone had experience with other exams organised by prometric (irrelevant to EPSO, like the GMAT), they know that some exam sessions are more difficult than others.
What is constructive at this point, is to hear from the ones who excelled in the AR.
Hey :-)
Based on akuyreyri's post on the other thread, one good tactic would be to play with AR mobile apps on the train (instead of Angry Birds or Dungeon Keeper - ahem).
Maybe such casual, on-the-fly practice over a longer period works better than intensive training sessions a few weeks before the CBT?
I think I'll give it a try. It'd be nice if EU Training provided such an app, enabling us to play around in short bursts with the exercises (AR or otherwise) we bought on our accounts!
Hi,
Hi,
Well, for me the disappointment came from a slightly different site. I performed more than 600 abstract reasoning test and at the end of the training the test were repetitive and I had the feeling that too easy. I thougth it would be because I had acquired a high level of practice, but on sitting the real test I realized that the level was a completely different one.
I.