Aptitude tests are set by many different bodies — recruitment commissions, banks, and the employers and assessment companies behind campus placements — so there is no single set of "previous year papers" that covers them. What carries across all of them is the question type: a percentage-change trap, a letter series, a syllogism or an unstated assumption looks much the same wherever it appears. The fourteen questions below are drawn from the Myndaq practice bank and are not reproductions of any official item. They are grouped by the course's topic areas, each with a worked answer and the method it rewards, alongside the Myndaq aptitude course.
What the tests you are practising for look like
Two official examples show the range:
- SSC CGL Tier-I — four sections of 25 questions (Reasoning, General Awareness, Quantitative Aptitude, English Comprehension), 50 marks each, one hour with a 15-minute timer per section, and 0.50 marks deducted for each wrong answer.
- SBI PO preliminary exam — English Language 40 questions, Quantitative Aptitude 30, Reasoning Ability 30; 100 marks in one hour, 20 minutes per section.
Both allow well under a minute per question on average. Speed is part of what is being tested, and so is deciding when to guess. That decision depends on each exam's own marking: in SSC CGL Tier-I a question is worth 2 marks (50 marks over 25 questions) against 0.50 deducted for a wrong answer, so even eliminating one option makes a guess worthwhile on average — but work it out for your exam rather than assuming.
Numerical reasoning
Question 1 — successive percentage change. A television's price is first increased by 25% and then decreased by 20%. What is the overall percentage change from the original price?
- A. 5% decrease
- B. 5% increase
- C. No change
- D. 45% increase
Answer: C. Multiply the factors: 1.25 × 0.80 = 1.00. The trap is adding the percentages (+25 − 20 = +5). Successive percentage changes always multiply, because the second change applies to a new base.
Question 2 — weighted averages. Over 5 games a player averaged 18 points; over the next 3 games she averaged 26. What must she average in her final 2 games to finish with an average of 22 over all 10?
- A. 20
- B. 22
- C. 24
- D. 26
Answer: D, 26. Work in totals, not averages: she needs 10 × 22 = 220. She has 5 × 18 + 3 × 26 = 90 + 78 = 168. That leaves 52 for two games, 26 each. Averaging the averages (B, C) is the error this question is built to catch.
Question 3 — ratio. Oats and raisins are mixed 7 : 2 by weight in a 450 g batch. How much is raisins?
- A. 90 g
- B. 100 g
- C. 225 g
- D. 350 g
Answer: B. 7 + 2 = 9 parts, so one part is 50 g and raisins are 2 × 50 = 100 g. D is the oats.
Pattern reasoning
Question 4 — number series. What replaces the question mark? 7, 11, 19, 35, 67, ?
- A. 99
- B. 127
- C. 131
- D. 135
Answer: C, 131. The differences are 4, 8, 16, 32 — doubling — so the next difference is 64, and 67 + 64 = 131. Method: when a series grows fast, write the differences first; if they grow too, look at their ratio.
Question 5 — letter series. Find the next letter: B, C, E, H, L, Q, ?
- A. U
- B. V
- C. W
- D. X
Answer: C, W. Convert to positions: 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 17 — steps of +1, +2, +3, +4, +5. The next step is +6, giving 23, which is W. Writing the alphabet positions down is faster than counting on your fingers every time.
Question 6 — letter analogy. ZY : WV :: TS : ? (each letter moves back by the same number of places)
- A. RQ
- B. QP
- C. PO
- D. SR
Answer: B, QP. Z→W and Y→V are each three places back, so T→Q and S→P.
Deductive reasoning
Question 7 — syllogism. Premises: Some managers are not accountants. All accountants are graduates. Which conclusion necessarily follows?
- A. Some managers are accountants.
- B. No manager is a graduate.
- C. Some graduates are accountants.
- D. Some managers are not graduates.
Answer: C. "All accountants are graduates" means the accountants sit inside the graduates, so some graduates are accountants (taking, as these tests conventionally do, that accountants exist). D is the classic trap: a manager who is not an accountant may still be a graduate — being outside the smaller circle says nothing about the larger one. Method: draw the circles; a conclusion is valid only if it holds in every drawing the premises allow.
Question 8 — conditional logic. Rule: "If the elevator is overloaded, then the buzzer sounds." The buzzer is not sounding. Which conclusion follows?
- A. The elevator is not overloaded.
- B. The buzzer is broken.
- C. The elevator is overloaded.
- D. The elevator is empty.
Answer: A. This is the contrapositive: if P then Q, and not Q, therefore not P. B invents a fact the rule does not mention; D goes further than "not overloaded" allows.
Question 9 — seating arrangement. Six friends — F, G, H, I, J, K — sit in a row facing north, seats 1 to 6 from left to right. J is at seat 2. H is immediately to the right of J. F is at seat 6. I sits somewhere to the left of J. K is not adjacent to F. Who is at seat 5?
- A. H
- B. K
- C. I
- D. G
Answer: D, G. J is at 2, H at 3, F at 6, and the only seat left of J is 1, so I is at 1. G and K share seats 4 and 5; seat 5 touches seat 6, so K cannot be there. K takes 4, G takes 5. Method: place the fixed positions first, then use "not adjacent" rules to split the last pair.
Language and comprehension
Question 10 — sentence completion. The manager's memo was so ______ that even the interns, unfamiliar with the project, grasped the new policy on a single reading.
- A. perfunctory
- B. lucid
- C. verbose
- D. convoluted
Answer: B. Understood "on a single reading" by newcomers means clear. C and D would do the opposite; A means done with little care, which says nothing about clarity.
Question 11 — verbal analogy. COMPASS is to DIRECTION as which pair shows the same instrument-to-what-it-indicates relationship?
- A. MAP is to TERRAIN
- B. SAILOR is to VOYAGE
- C. NEEDLE is to CLOTH
- D. BAROMETER is to PRESSURE
Answer: D. An instrument and the quantity it reads. A is tempting because maps and compasses belong together, but a map represents terrain; it does not measure it. Method: state the relationship as a sentence ("A is an instrument that shows B") and test each pair in it.
Critical thinking
Passage. A regional water utility has announced a plan to replace all household water meters with digital models over the next three years. In a statement, the utility's operations manager argued that the new meters will help reduce the district's overall water consumption. She explained that the digital meters allow households to view their hourly usage through a mobile application, and she predicted that many customers, once able to see exactly when and how much water they use, will voluntarily cut back on wasteful habits such as long showers or running taps. The manager added that the replacement programme would be funded entirely from the utility's existing capital reserves, so customer bills would not rise to cover the installation. She concluded that the district would meet its published conservation target within four years of completing the rollout.
Question 12 — recognition of assumptions. In stating that customer bills will not rise to cover the installation, is the manager assuming that the capital reserves are sufficient to pay for the meter replacement?
- A. Assumption made
- B. Assumption not made
Answer: A. "Funded entirely from existing reserves, so bills will not rise" works only if the reserves are big enough. If they were not, the gap would have to come from somewhere — possibly customers. In Watson-Glaser-style assumption questions, ask: would the statement still make sense if this were false? If not, the assumption is made.
True / false / cannot say
Question 13. Passage: A regional survey found that households recycling glass increased from 40% to 65% over five years, while those recycling plastic rose from 55% to 70%. Statement: More households recycle plastic than glass at the end of the five-year period.
- A. True
- B. False
- C. Cannot say
Answer: A. 70% against 65% at the end of the period. The larger increase was in glass (25 points against 15), which is the distraction; the statement is about the end point, and the passage gives both end figures.
Speed and accuracy
Question 14 — error checking. The ordered code is AB7C-Q92-Z44. Which shipped code has a substitution error (a character changed), not a transposition (characters swapped)?
- A. AB7C-Q92-Z84
- B. AB7C-Q29-Z44
- C. AB7C-9Q2-Z44
- D. BA7C-Q92-Z44
Answer: A. A 4 has become an 8. B, C and D each swap two characters that were already there. Method: compare block by block, left to right, and decide the error type only once you have found where the codes differ.
How to use practice like this
Keep an error log by topic and by error type — a slip in calculation, a misread rule, or running out of time — because the fix is different for each. Build speed only once accuracy is steady: in a test that deducts marks for wrong answers, every careless error costs you twice — the marks you missed and the deduction. For the topic map and how it fits specific exams, see the aptitude syllabus and topics; for a diagnostic routine, see the aptitude test preparation guide.
Quick answers
Are there previous year papers for aptitude tests?
Recruitment bodies each run their own exams, and campus tests are set by individual employers, so there is no single set. Practise by question type, which carries across tests.
Is there negative marking in aptitude tests?
It depends on the test. The SSC CGL Tier-I notice deducts 0.50 marks per wrong answer; check each exam's notification.
How fast do I need to be?
In SSC CGL Tier-I, 25 questions per 15-minute section; in SBI PO prelims, 30 to 40 questions per 20-minute section — well under a minute each.
Which topics come up most?
SSC CGL's indicative Tier-I syllabus names, among others, percentages, ratio and proportion, averages, profit and loss, time and distance, series, analogies, coding and decoding and syllogistic reasoning. Other exams set their own mix.
Should I guess?
Check the exam's marking. Without negative marking, always answer. With it, compare the marks for a right answer with the deduction for a wrong one: in SSC CGL Tier-I (2 marks against 0.50) a guess after eliminating even one option is worth making on average.
