Free CCAT practice test

What the CCAT measures

The Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test, or CCAT, is a pre-employment aptitude test with 50 questions in 15 minutes: 18 seconds per question. It mixes four kinds of item. Verbal questions test vocabulary, analogies and word relationships. Maths questions are arithmetic word problems and number series without a calculator. Logic questions ask what must follow from a few stated rules. Spatial questions show a figure and ask which option is its rotation, its mirror image or its folded form.

The mix, not the difficulty, is what catches people. A strong reader can lose a minute on one cube net; a strong mathematician can stall on an analogy. Practising the whole format teaches you where your time goes.

How this free practice test works

• 50 original questions in 15 minutes, drawn per attempt from a bank of 293 items: 18 verbal, 16 mathematics, 6 logic and 10 spatial. A retake excludes the questions you saw last time.
• Spatial questions with generated diagrams: rotations, reflections, odd-one-out mirror images and cube nets, drawn as figures on the page and in every answer option.
• Timed or untimed. Rehearse the pace with the clock, or switch it off while you learn the question types.
• A question navigator to skip and return. Every question is worth one point, so spend your time on the ones you can do.
• Worked answers after you finish, with a breakdown across the four skills.
• An optional shareable result with a permanent link, preview image and an Add to LinkedIn profile button.

Sample CCAT questions

Which word is opposite in meaning to “voluntary”? Optional, willing, unpaid, compulsory. Three options are close to the meaning of voluntary itself; the opposite is compulsory.

Four painters take 6 hours to paint a hall. At the same rate, how long would 8 painters take? The job needs 4 × 6 = 24 painter-hours. With 8 painters that is 24 ÷ 8 = 3 hours. The trap answer, 12 hours, comes from treating the relationship as direct rather than inverse.

Spatial. A figure is shown on a grid with four options. Three of the options are rotations of the figure and one is a mirror image; you pick the mirror image. On the page, rotate the figure in your head one quarter-turn at a time and eliminate options that match. The one that never matches is the reflection.

How to improve your CCAT score

1. Bank the fast questions first. Vocabulary and word relationships take seconds. Use the navigator to skip long arithmetic and come back.
2. For spatial items, eliminate rather than solve. Check one distinctive feature of the figure, such as a cell in a corner, against each option before you try to picture the whole rotation.
3. Estimate before you calculate. If the options are 3, 6, 12 and 24, deciding whether the answer should be bigger or smaller than the starting value removes half of them.
4. Read the rule twice in logic questions. “Only” and “some” change what follows. Most logic errors come from reading a stronger rule than the one written.
5. Do not aim to finish. Criteria says very few candidates answer all 50. Accuracy on 35 beats guesses on 50.

Reading your result

Your percentage is the share of the 50 questions you answered correctly, the same raw count the official test reports. The result guide explains the score ranges and what to practise for each of the four skills. The questions are original and the run is unsupervised, so the score does not convert into an official CCAT score, percentile or an employer’s range, and it is not a certificate.

CCAT and Criteria are trademarks of Criteria Corp. This practice test is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Criteria Corp.

Related free tests

• Wonderlic practice test: the other widely used 50-question aptitude format, 12 minutes without spatial items.
• Spatial reasoning test: the rotation, reflection and cube net questions on their own, with more time each.
• Abstract reasoning test: pattern sequences and matrices, the figural questions some aptitude tests add.