Psychometric tests

What should you expect?

Psychometric – or aptitude – tests are a way of assessing your skills in certain areas, typically, numerical, verbal reasoning and diagrammatic reasoning and data interpretation.

You may be asked to do them in advance of the assessment centre, or on the day.

How can you prepare?

We offer free online aptitude and personality tests from several organisations to University of Leeds students and graduates:

Profiling for Success© - to request the passwords/weblink, please email us with details of your course, level and student ID number, or year of graduation. Please also include 'Online test password request' in the subject header of the email. Alternatively, you can call into the Careers Centre to collect the passwords.

Test Partnership© - click on 'candidate preparation' for each type

For the Graduates First© and TalentLens© tests you will need register with your University of Leeds email address.

Assessment Day © also has a comprehensive website that offers advice and a wide range of practice tests to help you prepare. There are some tests which they charge for but they do have downloadable tests in pdf format with answers that demonstrate the working out required.

Norton Assessment are developing new psychometric tests which you can trial free of charge. You can choose from inductive reasoning, numerical reasoning and/or verbal reasoning. The website also includes useful tips and advice for taking tests.

Personality tests

You cannot prepare for a personality test. Remember that there are no right or wrong answers. The application process should be seen as a two-way process; so if you are not a good fit for the organisation, it’s unlikely you would be happy there.

Find out more

Prospects - Aptitude tests - Advice on taking tests and some examples to try.
The Online Test Centre - Free service that offers numerical, verbal, diagrammatic and logical reasoning tests for students.
GraduatesFirst - Free tests and feedback reports developed by ex-SHL consultants.
Practice psychometric test links - A comprehensive list compiled by Dr Mark Parkinson, a leading Chartered Occupational Psychologist, Test & Questionnaire Designer and a Press Spokesman for the British Psychological Society.
Practice Aptitude Tests - Free industry standard numerical,verbal reasoning and diagrammatical tests.
FAQs for test takers from Realise Potential - covering many of the issues that people taking tests and other assessments often ask.
SHL test preparation - Helpful hints and tips to prepare you both physically and mentally for psychometric tests.
Saville Consulting - Practise and prepare for a range of aptitude tests.
Grad Diary - Free practice numeracy tests.
Practice Aptitude Tests - Free numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, diagrammatic reasoning and situational judgment tests.
WikiJobs - Videos and free practice tests to improve your numerical reasoning and verbal reasoning.
EU Careers - Sample tests including verbal and numerical reasoning tests, e-trays, group exercises and translation examples.
Improve your maths from the Skills@Library website.

Help from the Careers Centre

We have lots of specialist books you can borrow or ebooks you can download if want practise a range of different questions in addition to the on-line tests above.

We also offer psychometric test workshops. Check the assessment centre homepage for more details.

Psychometric tests