ApprenticeEdge›Interview preparation›Online assessments
Apprenticeship Online Assessments and Psychometric Tests
The online tests are the stage that removes the largest number of applicants, and the stage where preparation makes the most difference, because the formats are published and practisable. Here is what each test is, how it is scored, and worked examples.
What you will be asked to sit
Exact combinations vary by employer, and some run all of these in a single sitting. Most school leaver schemes use some mix of the following, delivered by an external provider such as SHL, Korn Ferry, Cubiks or Talent Q rather than built in-house.
Situational judgement test (SJT)
Workplace scenarios with several possible responses. You either rate how effective each one is, or pick the most and least effective. It is scored against the employer's own competency framework, so the 'right' answer is the one that best matches how they say they work.
Numerical reasoning
Data interpretation under time pressure: percentages, ratios, rates and reading figures out of a table or chart. The maths itself rarely goes beyond GCSE. The difficulty is the clock and the deliberately similar answer options.
Verbal reasoning
A short passage and a set of statements to mark True, False or Cannot say. The single most common error is bringing in outside knowledge. You are only ever judging the statement against the passage in front of you.
Cognitive or logical reasoning
Pattern and sequence questions, often adaptive: get one right and the next gets harder. Because it adapts, accuracy early on matters more than finishing every question.
Gamified assessments
Some employers now use short game-style tasks measuring risk appetite, attention and processing speed. There is little you can revise, but doing a practice run so the interface is familiar removes most of the disadvantage.
Worked examples
Four questions in the style you will actually see, with the reasoning written out. The working matters more than the answer: nearly every one of these has a trap option that catches people who guess the method.
A firm's advisory division billed £4.2m in Q1 and £5.04m in Q2. If Q3 grows by the same percentage again, what will Q3 billings be?
- £5.88m
- £6.05mcorrect
- £6.30m
- £5.44m
Working
Q1 to Q2 is 5.04 ÷ 4.2 = 1.20, so 20% growth. Applying 20% again: 5.04 × 1.2 = £6.048m, which rounds to £6.05m. The trap answer is £5.88m, which is 5.04 plus the same absolute increase of £0.84m rather than the same percentage.
A team of 6 completes an audit in 10 working days. Assuming everyone works at the same rate, how long would 4 people take?
- 12 days
- 13 days
- 15 dayscorrect
- 16 days
Working
Total work is 6 × 10 = 60 person-days. With 4 people, 60 ÷ 4 = 15 days. These questions are almost always about finding the constant, in this case total person-days, before dividing.
Passage: "The firm has committed to net zero across its own operations by 2030, and expects its largest suppliers to publish transition plans by 2027." Statement: "The firm requires all of its suppliers to reach net zero by 2027."
- True
- Falsecorrect
- Cannot say
Working
The passage says largest suppliers, not all suppliers, and says publish transition plans, not reach net zero. The statement contradicts the passage on both counts, so it is False rather than Cannot say. Cannot say is only correct when the passage is silent on the point.
You are two days from a client deadline and you notice an error in a spreadsheet a senior colleague prepared. What is the most effective response?
- Fix it quietly and say nothing, to avoid embarrassing them
- Raise it with the colleague directly, showing them what you foundcorrect
- Mention it to your manager rather than the colleague
- Leave it, as a senior colleague is more likely to be right than you are
Working
Situational judgement tests reward the response that is direct, timely and proportionate. Going straight to the manager escalates unnecessarily. Fixing it silently hides a problem someone else needs to know about. Saying nothing because of seniority is the lowest-scoring option in nearly every bank.
Free prep pack
Practising is the whole game here
The full PwC School Leaver pack is free: application stages, the competencies they score, real interview questions, commercial awareness, and a pre-submission checklist. The process it walks through is close enough to the other big schemes to prep you for all of them.
How to prepare, in order
Find out which provider your employer uses
It is usually named in the invitation email, and often on the employer's careers site. Provider matters more than employer: an SHL numerical test looks the same whichever company sent it.
Sit the provider's own free sample first
SHL, Korn Ferry, Cubiks and Talent Q all publish free practice tests. Doing the real interface once is worth more than doing ten generic aptitude quizzes on an app.
Do one full run under real time pressure
Untimed practice tells you whether you can do the maths. It does not tell you whether you can do it in 75 seconds a question, which is the actual test.
Review the ones you got wrong, not the ones you got right
For numerical, work out whether you picked a trap option or made an arithmetic slip, because they need different fixes. For SJTs, work out why the highest-scoring answer beat your choice. That is how you build the intuition the test is measuring.
Set the day up properly
Laptop rather than phone, strong connection, quiet room, and sit it when you are alert. Technical problems part way through rarely result in a resit.
On situational judgement tests specifically
There are no trick options and no hidden personality trap. Answer as a competent professional would: raise things directly and early, escalate only when it is genuinely beyond you, and never hide a problem to avoid an awkward conversation. Your instinct as a student is often to handle things privately or ask a friend, and that instinct is what scores badly.
Free prep pack
Before you pay for anything, take the free pack
The tests are one stage of five, and candidates who fail rarely fail on the maths. The full PwC School Leaver pack is free and walks through the whole process the assessments sit inside: the application stages, what each one scores, real interview questions, commercial awareness and a pre-submission checklist. The timed practice tests themselves are the Season Pass below, not the free pack.
Timed practice for a specific employer
The Season Pass includes timed numerical, verbal and situational judgement practice tests written in each employer's style, with worked explanations for every question, plus an AI mock interview coach for each of the ten schemes. That part is paid. Everything on this page and the guide below is not.