TestAS study guide
TestAS · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
TestAS is a centralised, standardised aptitude test for international applicants who plan to study at a German university. It is offered by g.a.s.t. (Gesellschaft für Akademische Studienvorbereitung und Testentwicklung e. V.), a non-profit organisation, and is used at many German universities as an instrument for valid, fair and objective selection. The test measures general and subject-specific aptitude, so it serves two audiences at once: prospective students, who can use a good result to strengthen their application or meet a prerequisite, and universities, which use it to place foreign qualifications in context and to make comparable admission decisions. TestAS is available in two formats, digital and paper-based, which test the same skills and place the same demands on participants. Topics on this exam: General aptitude (allgemeine Studieneignung) and Subject-specific aptitude (fachspezifische Studieneignung). The TestAS study guide has 2 sections and about 787 words.
01General Aptitude (Core Module / Kerntest)
The General Aptitude domain is the Core Module (Kerntest) of TestAS. It is compulsory for every candidate and measures study-relevant reasoning rather than school knowledge. It has four separately timed subtests: Solving Quantitative Problems, Inferring Relationships, Completing Patterns, and Continuing Numerical Series. Items are short, time is tight, and the score is reported separately from the subject module.
374 words, about 2 min02Subject-specific Aptitude (Fachmodul)
The Subject-specific Aptitude domain is the Fachmodul. You choose one module matching your intended degree: Humanities, Cultural Studies and Social Sciences; Engineering; Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences; or Economics. Each module lasts about 145 minutes and contains several separately timed subtests. The test does not ask you to reproduce school facts; it asks you to use the working methods of the field - reading subject-specific texts precisely, formalizing relationships, and solving multi-step problems.
413 words, about 2 minMore study resources for TestAS
- Practice questionsA sequence of figures is built so that figure 1 has 5 small squares, figure 2 has 8, figure 3 has 11, and the count keeps growing by the same amount.
- FlashcardsFigure sequence rotation rule. In Figurenfolgen, a shape that turns by a constant angle each step (e.g., 90° clockwise) follows a rotation rule; check whether the rotation direction or angle changes after several steps.
- Cheat sheetSolving Figure Sequences (Figurenfolgen): track rotation (90°/180°), reflection, translation, size change, shading inversion, and element count; apply the simplest recurring rule first.
- Key termsTestAS. Standardised aptitude test for international applicants to German universities.
- Study planDiagnose baseline performance by completing one full timed Core Module simulation (Figure Sequences, Mathematical Equations, Latin Square) and logging raw scores, per-subtest timing, and error types.
- Common mistakesCandidates treat the 3x3 grid as one puzzle and freeze when no single 'story' fits; TestAS figure items usually combine two or three independent rules, one per row or column, so a holistic search burns the roughly one-minute budget per item.
- Exam-day guideBring the same ID document type you used for registration.