Everything you need to know about the General Aptitude Test in Saudi Arabia 2021

What is the General Aptitude Test in Saudi Arabia?

In accordance with the modern foundations of learning, which are primarily based on the spread of principles of measuring student abilities, and the rejection of old ideas related to teaching students information instead of acquiring new and living skills, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has organized the General Aptitude Test (GAT) , which is directed at high school graduates wishing to obtain a bachelor’s degree in higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The test is primarily based on measuring the analytical and deductive abilities of high school students in Saudi Arabia, through:

• Verbal (linguistic) test part
• Quantitative (Mathematical) Test Part

The General Aptitude Test in Saudi Arabia focuses on measuring the student’s ability to learn and his knowledge of language and sports in particular. Like its counterpart (the Emirates Standardized Test) , educational institutions in Saudi Arabia do not accept any student who does not pass this test with a percentage ranging between 30-40%.

The importance of general aptitude tests

This test is distinguished by being in classical Arabic, which makes it easy for you to understand the questions and answer them quickly. The general aptitude test is of great importance in the field of education in Saudi Arabia , and the most important of them are:

• Measuring students' abilities in terms of understanding Arabic readings.
• Learn logical thinking and how to activate it in practical life
• Evaluate the student's mathematical abilities in terms of solving basic mathematical problems.
• Assessing the student's ability to infer and reason
• Knowing the extent of the capabilities of secondary school students in Saudi Arabia to measure and analyze
• Evaluating the educational level in Saudi schools

Test sections

The General Aptitude Test in Saudi Arabia is divided into two sections, as we mentioned: the first section is the verbal section, and the second section is the quantitative section. It is worth noting that the test is directed to high school students in the literary and scientific sections, and the content of the test differs according to the student’s section, whether literary or scientific.

Verbal part:

The verbal section contains a set of questions that aim to measure the student’s knowledge of the classical Arabic language. These questions are:

• Reading comprehension: The student is asked a set of questions that measure his understanding of the texts he reads and his ability to analyze the text and understand its aesthetics.
• Completing sentences: The student is given a set of incomplete texts and has to deduce the missing sentences.
• Verbal analogy: knowing which words correspond to which pair of words.
• Contextual error: In this section, the student must discover the error in the context according to his understanding of the general meaning of the sentence, and identify the incorrect word in the sentence.
• Correlation and Difference: Identify the relationship between three choices and identify the choice that is different or inconsistent with the relationship.

Quantitative part

This section contains a set of important mathematical questions to measure the student's abilities in deduction, inference, and solving important mathematical problems.

The test is divided into:

• Arithmetic questions which comprise 36% of the test content
• Engineering questions which take up 18% of the test
• Algebraic questions, which account for 10% of the test questions.
• Analytical and statistical questions, which comprise 18% of the General Aptitude Test questions in Saudi Arabia.
• Comparative questions make up only 18% of the test questions.

The most important tips and advice for passing the General Aptitude Test

• Read all the information about the test
• Know how to apply for the General Aptitude Test in Saudi Arabia
• Conducting available mock tests
• Each section of the test is given 25 minutes to answer, so you should practice the test before taking it.
• The questions are arranged in order of difficulty, so it is important to solve the first questions quickly to save time thinking about the more difficult questions.
• Don't leave a question unanswered.
• Registration period starts from the end of August 2020 until mid-January 2021
• The test period is from February 19 to February 27 for females.
• Paper-based and computer-based tests
• The test results appear 3 weeks after the test.
• The Universities and Colleges Authority sends the test result via email or message to the mobile phone registered in the registry.