GAT (Qudurat) study guide
GAT (Qudurat) · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The General Aptitude Test (GAT), known in Arabic as اختبار القدرات العامة (Qudurat), is an aptitude examination used in Saudi Arabia to measure the reasoning skills that underlie academic study rather than memorised subject content. It is most often associated with university admission and with selection decisions made by Saudi institutions, and candidates usually sit it in the final years of secondary school or shortly before applying. Each institution sets its own requirement, so confirm the exact one with the body you are applying to. The exam is organised into two broad domains: a Verbal section, covering Arabic reading comprehension, vocabulary in context, sentence completion and verbal analogy, and a Quantitative section covering arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data interpretation. The published profile gives the two domains comparable weight, so neither can be carried by the other. Because the test is timed and reasoning-based, preparation is mostly about fluency and strategy rather than content coverage: learn the recurring question patterns, practise short timed sets, and keep an error log that records why each mistake happened. Topics on this exam: Verbal and Quantitative. The GAT (Qudurat) study guide has 2 sections and about 620 words.
01Verbal Reasoning
The Qudurat verbal section measures how precisely you handle Arabic meaning under time pressure. Five item families appear: sentence completion (إكمال الجمل), odd word out (المفردة الشاذة), verbal analogy (التناظر اللفظي), contextual error (الخطأ السياقي), and reading comprehension (استيعاب المقروء). For analogies, name the relationship in a full sentence before you look at the options: synonym, antonym, part-to-whole, cause-to-effect, tool-to-object, category-to-member, or degree (warm : hot). Then apply that same sentence to every choice.
322 words, about 2 min02Quantitative Reasoning
Quantitative items mix arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data interpretation. High-yield topics: percentages and successive changes, ratios and proportions, averages, rates and work, linear equations, angle and area rules, divisibility and primes, and reading values from tables or charts. Two habits decide most scores. First, translate the words into an equation or a multiplication factor before computing.
298 words, about 1 minMore study resources for GAT (Qudurat)
- FlashcardsSynonym. A word or phrase that has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word in a specific context, not merely a related idea or topic.
- Cheat sheetSynonym items: the correct option must preserve the exact sense of the stem word in context; a related topic word is not automatically a synonym.
- Key termsAnalogy. A question that presents two pairs of words and asks you to identify the same logical link between them, such as tool and user, cause and result, or part and whole.
- Study planBuild a 150-item academic vocabulary deck drawn from your own reading and review 20 items daily with spaced repetition.
- Common mistakesSchool habit encourages full comprehension before task focus, but on timed aptitude tests this wastes minutes on details the question never asks about.
- Exam-day guideBring the exact ID type named on your registration record - for most candidates in Saudi Arabia this means the original national ID or Iqama, not a copy, photo, or expired card.