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Thinking Skills Assessment Guide

I applied for PPE last year and created a bit of a guide for myself for the TSA. This is based on a TSA preparation course I attended, lots of reading about the test online and doing the past papers.

I thought I'd stick it on here as it might be of some use to people applying.

To be clear, it obviously isn't perfect, I only achieved a score of:

Problem Solving: 47.7
Critical Thinking: 72.9
Overall: 59.2

So I've deleted the bits on problem solving.

And I didn't receive an offer.

The only thing that I can really contribute that isn't available in any of the other resources on line is that I noticed the pattern that the questions always come in the same order. For example, questions on finding flaws are always 3, 10, 21 and 34 and questions on finding assumptions are always questions 5, 16, 29 and 40.

I found this really helped as I could go through the paper in the order of the questions and not have to apply a new way of thinking to all 50 questions.

If anyone has any questions I'm more than happy to answer.
Original post by patrickwahins
I applied for PPE last year and created a bit of a guide for myself for the TSA. This is based on a TSA preparation course I attended, lots of reading about the test online and doing the past papers.

I thought I'd stick it on here as it might be of some use to people applying.

To be clear, it obviously isn't perfect, I only achieved a score of:

Problem Solving: 47.7
Critical Thinking: 72.9
Overall: 59.2

So I've deleted the bits on problem solving.

And I didn't receive an offer.

The only thing that I can really contribute that isn't available in any of the other resources on line is that I noticed the pattern that the questions always come in the same order. For example, questions on finding flaws are always 3, 10, 21 and 34 and questions on finding assumptions are always questions 5, 16, 29 and 40.

I found this really helped as I could go through the paper in the order of the questions and not have to apply a new way of thinking to all 50 questions.

If anyone has any questions I'm more than happy to answer.


Wow thanks for sharing!
I did the TSA last year and yeah, advice is really appreciated :yep:
So thank you!
I actually never found out my score :ninja: but I didn't get an offer so it can't have been amazing xD

:ta: again, this would've helped me prepare this time last year :yy:
Original post by CheeseIsVeg
Wow thanks for sharing!
I did the TSA last year and yeah, advice is really appreciated :yep:
So thank you!
I actually never found out my score :ninja: but I didn't get an offer so it can't have been amazing xD

:ta: again, this would've helped me prepare this time last year :yy:


No worries.

I got a piece of paper on the day I did it with log in details so you could check!

What subject did you apply for?
Original post by patrickwahins
No worries.

I got a piece of paper on the day I did it with log in details so you could check!

What subject did you apply for?


Oh right, I did not :nope:

Chemistry!
Original post by patrickwahins
I applied for PPE last year and created a bit of a guide for myself for the TSA. This is based on a TSA preparation course I attended, lots of reading about the test online and doing the past papers.

I thought I'd stick it on here as it might be of some use to people applying.

To be clear, it obviously isn't perfect, I only achieved a score of:

Problem Solving: 47.7
Critical Thinking: 72.9
Overall: 59.2

So I've deleted the bits on problem solving.

And I didn't receive an offer.

The only thing that I can really contribute that isn't available in any of the other resources on line is that I noticed the pattern that the questions always come in the same order. For example, questions on finding flaws are always 3, 10, 21 and 34 and questions on finding assumptions are always questions 5, 16, 29 and 40.

I found this really helped as I could go through the paper in the order of the questions and not have to apply a new way of thinking to all 50 questions.

If anyone has any questions I'm more than happy to answer.

So helpful!! Thank you. Which grade do your scores correspond to?

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