General Education: Breadth, Accuracy, and the Classic Distractors
What the test measures
General Education checks functional literacy across five clusters: English (grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension), Filipino (wastong gamit ng wika, tayutay, pagbasa), Mathematics (percentage, ratio and proportion, elementary algebra and geometry), Science (earth science, biology, chemistry, physics), and Social Sciences (Philippine history, the 1987 Constitution, geography, economics).
Concepts you must hold
In English: subject–verb agreement, pronoun reference, tense consistency, and figures of speech. In Math: the percent relationship, ratio, average, and order of operations. In Science: the difference between hypothesis, theory and law, energy transfer, and Earth processes. In Social Studies: key documents and dates (Malolos Constitution, Commonwealth period, 1987 Constitution) and the three branches of government.
Traps
- Percentage base confusion: the base is the number after 'of', and successive discounts never add.
- Grammar items with a long phrase between subject and verb ('The box of old letters ___ on the shelf').
- Science misconceptions such as 'heavier objects fall faster'.
- History items that swap the Malolos Constitution with the 1935 Constitution.
Worked example
A jacket priced at 800 pesos is marked 25% off, then an extra 10% is taken at the counter. Many takers answer 35% off, or 520 pesos. Correct: 800 × 0.75 = 600; 600 × 0.90 = 540. The real discount is 32.5%. Never add successive percentages - multiply the multipliers.
Rule of thumb
For every percentage item, write 'base = ___' before computing. For grammar items, find the true subject by crossing out prepositional phrases.