Test General Academic Prerequisites

The Test of General Academic Prerequisites is an important part of the National Comparative Exams.

For a university, the deciding factor is not the extent to which an applicant has mastered the basics of a given field of study (these are otherwise part of individual university courses), but rather the extent to which the applicant is able to master learning itself. This can be determined by a test of academic prerequisites. Applicants with certain (confirmed) academic prerequisites display extensive and realisable academic potential.

The number of universities that use the Test of General Academic Prerequisites (GAP) is growing year by year. The result of this test does not depend on knowledge, but primarily on the applicant’s basic ability to learn. More depends on the qualities of the applicant. Unlike tests concerned with the knowledge of a subject, the GAP result is much less affected by the type and quality of school or whether the applicant had a good or bad teacher in the given subject. Thus, the GAP test is more reliable.

This test is not similar to subject tests or tests of “general knowledge”. Rather, the test that Scio developed is derived from the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations, see www.ets.org) test model, which has been used in tertiary education in the United States since 1966.

The Test of General Academic Prerequisites does not examine the applicant’s level of knowledge, but rather the ability and skill that determine whether a person can successfully study at university. The GAP test determines the most various operational, combinational, comprehension and other abilities which directly shape the learning process:

work with text (precise comprehension, vocabulary, relationships within a text, ability to differentiate meanings)
work with information (speed of orientation, selection, precise evaluation, combining)
logical consideration (precise comprehension, work with several conditions, conveyance of given conditions to new relationships)
work with quantities (variables, operations, functiions, graphic expression of quantities)
...

As of 2010, two versions of the General Academic Prerequisites (GAP) test are available. Basic, and Extended. The result from the first three sections of the Extended version of the test is equivalent to and can be used instead of the result of the Basic version of the test.

GAP Basic

The GAP-B (Basic) test is comprised of three - verbal, analytical and quantitative. In the verbal section, it is primarily concerned with how well the applicant comprehends language, or rather information, and his or her ability to use language not only in its broadest extent, but also with the greatest possible precision. The analytical section of the test is always partially linguistic (interpretation of the text in a problem) but in these tasks and in combinational tasks (which present concrete relationships which the applicant combines and according to which solves the problems) the applicant’s level of logical thought is examined. The third part of the GAP test is the section dedicated to quantitative ability. This section, as its name indicates, is primarily concerned with mathematical operations and requires a certain amount of basic knowledge (e.g. knowledge of percentages, the rule of proportion, addition of fractions, the Pythagorean theorem). Such knowledge represents the mandatory skills that should be possessed by a person with basic education and it is thus assumed that applicants possess this knowledge.

GAP Extended

GAP-E (Extended) includes the same first three sections (verbal, analytical and quantitative section), but adds also additional two test sections - critical thinking and abstract reasoning (both sections have 20 questions and the time limit is 40 minutes).