General Aptitude and Reasoning
General Aptitude and Reasoning in FCI AGM Phase I tests whether you can extract a unique answer from verbal, analytical and spatial clues. The section rewards formal rules and clean diagrams rather than guesswork.
Core rules
- Syllogisms: draw Venn diagrams. Treat “some” as at least one and “no” as disjoint. Do not assume the converse of “all A are B”.
- Linear and circular seating: fix the most definite clue first, then mark facing direction before applying left or right.
- Blood relations: build a family tree; add gender only when the question states it.
- Coding-decoding: test position shifts, reversals and letter-pair patterns against every term, not just one.
- Series: check differences, ratios, alternating patterns and squares or cubes before choosing.
Worked example
In a row of 40 candidates, A is 12th from the left and B is 17th from the right. How many candidates sit between them?
B’s position from the left is 40 − 17 + 1 = 24. A is at 12. Candidates between them = 24 − 12 − 1 = 11. The “+1” converts a rank from the right into a rank from the left; omitting it produces 12, a common wrong option.
Traps
- Choosing “either/or” in syllogisms when neither conclusion follows individually and the two are not complementary.
- Reversing left and right when a row faces south instead of north.
- Treating an assumption as a conclusion, or importing outside knowledge not stated in the passage.
- Ignoring qualifiers such as “only”, “all”, “not all” and “some not” in puzzles.