Aptitude for placements: questions by topic, with answers
The aptitude section of a placement test is a speed test. Nobody fails it for not knowing what a percentage is; people fail it by solving a three-line problem in twelve lines. The skill is recognising the shape of a question — a base that changes, a rate that adds, a total dressed up as an average, a ratio hiding a common multiple — and reaching for the one method that finishes it before the clock does.
Quantitative aptitude is a small set of families that recur in every company's paper: percentages and the profit-and-loss and interest problems built on them, ratio and proportion, time and work, time, speed and distance, averages, probability, and number systems with their divisibility rules. Logical reasoning adds pattern families — number series, coding-decoding — where the whole question is finding the rule.
Each page below takes one family: the shapes that recur, the method for each, worked numbers, and one question exactly as the diagnostic asks it. The diagnostic samples across every aptitude topic in the bank and shows you which families cost you time.
Aptitude topics, one page each
11 of the 17 Aptitude topics in the bank have a page so far; the diagnostic draws from all 17.
- Time, speed and distance questions
Average speed, relative speed, trains crossing poles and platforms, boats and streams, late-and-early problems — placement questions, worked out.
- Percentage aptitude questions
Successive percentage changes, the increase-then-decrease asymmetry, x% more vs x% less, expenditure, growth and pass-mark questions — worked out.
- Time and work questions
Work rates and the LCM method, working together, leaving midway, men-days, efficiency ratios, pipes and cisterns, wage splits — worked out.
- Profit and loss questions
Profit percent on cost, cost price from selling price, marked price and discount, equal profit and loss, false weights, successive discounts — worked.
- Ratio and proportion questions
Dividing in a ratio, combining A:B and B:C, ratios that change, direct and inverse proportion, partnership shares, mean proportional, coins — worked.
- Simple interest questions
The SI formula and its rearrangements, rate or time from interest, amount vs interest, doubling and tripling, two rates on one sum, SI vs CI — worked.
- Averages questions
Total from average, a member joining or leaving, a wrongly entered value, consecutive numbers, weighted averages, combined groups, cricket averages.
- Probability questions
Favourable over total, dice and coins, the complement rule, addition with overlap, cards, without replacement, independent events, odds — worked.
- Number system and divisibility questions
Divisibility rules for 3, 4, 8, 9 and 11, units digits of powers, remainders of powers, HCF and LCM, common-remainder problems, factors, trailing zeros.
- Number series questions
How to crack a number series fast: differences and second differences, ratios, squares and cubes, alternating series, double-and-add, the wrong term.
- Coding-decoding questions
Letter-shift codes, reversal codes, letter-to-number codes, symbol substitution, word-substitution puzzles, position-dependent codes, classifying each.
One question, exactly as the diagnostic asks it
From the Aptitude bank — 84 questions across 17 topics. The answer is marked because this one is public; in a sitting you choose first, then see why each option is right or wrong.
In a class of 80 students, 65% passed the mathematics exam. How many students passed?
- 155
- 252correct
- 360
- 448
65% of 80 = (65/100) x 80 = 52. So 52 students passed the exam.
Measure it
Reading the answers tells you what’s true. A diagnostic tells you what you get wrong.
10 Aptitude questions across its topics, easy to hard, about fifteen minutes. You get a readiness figure with the arithmetic shown, the topics you missed named, and a practice set sized for today. Free: 1 diagnostic a month and 15 problems a day. No card.