Almost every English-language page about the Saudi General Aptitude Test — GAT, known in Arabic as اختبار القدرات العامة (Qudurat) — describes one exam with 68 verbal and 52 quantitative questions. ETEC's current candidate guide does not publish that split. It publishes two different versions of the test, each with its own domain weights, sharing one structural spec: five sections, 24 questions per section, 120 multiple-choice questions, two hours and five minutes.
Which version you sit is not a preference you select at booking. It follows your high-school track. And the gap between the two versions is not cosmetic: algebra is 4% of the science-track GAT and is not tested at all on the theoretical-track GAT. A candidate on the Sharia or Business Administration track who studies from a generic "GAT syllabus" can spend weeks on a topic their exam will never ask.
This guide reproduces the domain weights ETEC publishes in الدليل الإرشادي لاختبار القدرات العامة, its official General Aptitude Test candidate guide, works through every question type using ETEC's own examples, and explains what the 0–100 score actually reports. For appointments, results, and retake mechanics, use our companion Qiyas GAT registration, results, and retake guide.
The blueprint ETEC actually publishes
ETEC's guide gives each domain as a percentage of the whole 120-question exam — not of its own section. The question counts below are those percentages applied to 120.
Verbal part (الجزء اللفظي)
| Domain | Science-track GAT | Theoretical-track GAT |
|---|---|---|
| Verbal analogy — التناظر اللفظي | 17% (≈20 questions) | 21% (≈25 questions) |
| Sentence completion — إكمال الجمل | 7% (≈8 questions) | 13% (≈16 questions) |
| Contextual error — الخطأ السياقي | 10% (≈12 questions) | 16% (≈19 questions) |
| Reading comprehension — استيعاب المقروء | 21% (≈25 questions) | 25% (≈30 questions) |
| Verbal total | 55% (≈66 questions) | 75% (≈90 questions) |
Quantitative part (الجزء الكمي)
| Domain | Science-track GAT | Theoretical-track GAT |
|---|---|---|
| Arithmetic — حساب | 23% (≈28 questions) | 13% (≈16 questions) |
| Geometry — هندسة | 10% (≈12 questions) | 8% (≈10 questions) |
| Algebra — جبر | 4% (≈5 questions) | Not tested |
| Data interpretation — تفسير البيانات | 8% (≈10 questions) | 4% (≈5 questions) |
| Quantitative total | 45% (≈54 questions) | 25% (≈30 questions) |
Two things fall out of this table immediately. First, the science-track version is roughly 66 verbal to 54 quantitative — close enough to the "68/52" figure circulating in English content to explain where that number came from, but the theoretical-track version is roughly 90 verbal to 30 quantitative, and no English page in the current search results mentions it. Second, reading comprehension is the largest single domain on both versions. It outweighs every quantitative domain, including arithmetic, on the theoretical paper and is beaten only by arithmetic on the science paper.
Which GAT you sit is decided by your high-school track
ETEC's guide maps Saudi Arabia's Tracks System (نظام المسارات) directly onto the two versions:
- Theoretical-track GAT (اختبار القدرات العامة للتخصصات النظرية) — students of the Sharia track (المسار الشرعي) and the Business Administration track (مسار إدارة الأعمال).
- Science-track GAT (اختبار القدرات العامة للتخصصات العلمية) — students of the General track (المسار العام), the Health and Life Sciences track (مسار علوم الصحة والحياة), and the Computer Science and Engineering track (مسار علوم الحاسب والهندسة).
Eligibility is grade 11 (الصف الثاني الثانوي), grade 12 (الثالث الثانوي), or high-school graduate status. Before you buy a single prep resource, confirm which of the two blueprints applies to you — that decision changes your study plan more than any other choice on this page.
The verbal part, item type by item type
Verbal analogy — التناظر اللفظي
Two words in a fixed relationship, then four candidate pairs. ETEC's worked example: ساعة : وقت (clock : time). The published answer is ميزان : ثقل (scale : weight) — a clock measures time as a scale measures weight. The guide rejects ترمومتر : زكام (thermometer : head-cold) with a precise reason worth internalising: a thermometer measures the heat produced by the cold, not the cold itself. Near-miss relationships are the entire difficulty of this item type.
ETEC lists the relationship families it draws on: synonymy, difference, cause and effect, part and whole, category membership, and association. Name the relationship in a short sentence before you look at the options, then test each option against that sentence.
Association and difference (odd one out) — الارتباط والاختلاف
Four words, three sharing a link and one that does not. ETEC's example: رمح / سيف / درع / سهم (spear / sword / shield / arrow). The answer is درع — all four are instruments of war, but the shield is defensive while the rest are offensive. Notice how fine the discriminator is: the obvious category ("weapons") captures all four, so the item is decided by a second-order property. In ETEC's blueprint, "association" sits inside the analogy family rather than forming its own weighted domain.
Sentence completion — إكمال الجمل
A short sentence with one or more blanks. ETEC's example: الإسراف سلوكٌ ..... فتجنب الوقوع فيه ("Extravagance is a ..... behaviour, so avoid falling into it"). The answer is مذموم (blameworthy). The guide's rejection of منتشر (widespread) is the teachable part: a behaviour being common is not a reason to forbid it, so the option fails on logic rather than vocabulary. This domain is only 7% of the science-track exam — the smallest verbal domain there — but 13% on the theoretical version.
Contextual error — الخطأ السياقي
This is the most misdescribed GAT item type in English-language content, where it is routinely presented as grammar error-spotting. ETEC's own instruction line settles it: identify the word whose meaning does not agree with the general meaning of the sentence, followed by an explicit parenthetical — "الخطأ ليس إملائيًا ولا نحويًا": the error is neither spelling nor grammar.
ETEC's example, translated: "The student obtained high results and excelled in every subject he was tested in; this is the harvest of deep immersion in negligence." Four words are underlined; the answer is الإهمال (negligence), because the sentence describes excellence and negligence produces the opposite. Every word in the item is spelled and inflected correctly. If you are hunting for a grammatical fault, you are solving the wrong problem — and you are burning clock on 10–16% of the exam.
Reading comprehension — استيعاب المقروء
The largest domain on both versions. ETEC's sample passage describes an age of "knowledge explosion" and asks what the text implies about our era. The correct answer is that information and its sources have multiplied. The guide's analysis of the wrong options is the useful part: one option is called a strong verbal decoy because it reuses the word "explosion" from the passage — but attaches it to population growth, which the text never mentions. Another is rejected for narrowing the claim to "certain fields," a restriction the passage does not make.
Two rules follow. Reuse of a passage word is evidence of a trap, not of an answer. And an option that is true in general but unsupported by this passage is wrong.
The quantitative part, item type by item type
Arithmetic — حساب
The heaviest quantitative domain: 23% of the science-track exam, 13% of the theoretical one. ETEC's example: an athlete takes 10 jumps, earning 5 riyals per successful jump and 2 riyals per failed jump, and finishes with 41 riyals — how many jumps failed? The answer is 3.
What matters is how the official guide solves it. It solves by trying values first, and only then shows the algebraic route (2x + 5(10 − x) = 41). ETEC's covered concepts here are broad: operations, number patterns, powers and roots, speed and time, fractions, estimation, place value, number comparison, ratio, proportion, percentage, scale drawing, unit and currency conversion, measures of central tendency, and probability.
Geometry — هندسة
10% science, 8% theoretical. ETEC's example gives a straight line with a 50° angle and asks for 3x; since x = 180 − 50 = 130, the answer is 390. The figure carries the standing caption "الرسم ليس على القياس" — the drawing is not to scale. Never measure or eyeball a GAT diagram; solve it from the stated values. Covered concepts include shapes, angles, areas, volumes, perimeters, lines, triangles and quadrilaterals, the Pythagorean theorem, polygons, triangle similarity, circles, solids, and the coordinate system.
Algebra — جبر
4% on the science-track exam — roughly five questions — and absent from the theoretical-track exam. ETEC limits it to applications of equations and inequalities plus simplifying algebraic expressions and basic identities. This is the single biggest allocation error in generic GAT prep: our own exam pages and most commercial courses weight algebra several times higher than ETEC does.
Number-property reasoning shows up here too. ETEC's example: if L is odd, which value must also be odd? The answer is L + 4, and the guide's method is to test all four options rather than reason abstractly.
Data interpretation — تفسير البيانات
8% science, 4% theoretical, covering bar charts, pie sectors, curves, tables, and Venn diagrams. ETEC's example is a monthly-budget pie chart in which food is x% and school expenses are 2x%, with 14%, 25%, 22%, and 3% given. Since the sectors total 100, 3x + 64 = 100, so x = 12, and 12% of a 5,000-riyal salary is 600 riyals. The pattern to rehearse is not chart-reading; it is recovering an unknown from the constraint that the parts must sum to the whole.
Comparison questions — أسئلة المقارنة
A distinct format inside the quantitative part: two quantities, and four fixed options — the first is greater, the second is greater, the two are equal, or the given information is insufficient. ETEC's example compares 3 bags at 30 riyals against 4 bags at 20 riyals: 90 versus 80, so the first is greater. Because the option set never changes, the format is worth drilling separately until the four responses are automatic.
Why calculators are banned
ETEC's reminder page states the reason plainly: because the questions use easy numbers, calculators are not permitted, and candidates may use the question booklet itself as scratch paper to test solutions. Treat that as a diagnostic. If a route is producing ugly arithmetic, you have almost certainly taken the wrong route — back out and look for the intended one.
The 62-second clock
Twenty-four questions in a 25-minute section is 62.5 seconds per question, and that budget is confirmed by ETEC's own practice appendix: 26 training questions with a stated allowance of 27 minutes. Sections alternate between verbal and quantitative content, so you cannot bank time from a strong section for a weak one.
Convert the blueprint into a realistic per-domain budget instead of a flat average. Reading comprehension needs passage time that analogy items do not, and comparison items should be fast:
| Item type | Realistic target | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Verbal analogy | 30–40 seconds | Name the relationship, test four pairs |
| Association / odd one out | 30–40 seconds | One category test, one discriminator |
| Sentence completion | 35–45 seconds | Predict the missing word before reading options |
| Contextual error | 45–60 seconds | Requires reading the whole sentence for meaning |
| Reading comprehension | 90+ seconds per question | Passage time is shared across its questions |
| Arithmetic / algebra | 60–75 seconds | Trying values often beats setting up equations |
| Geometry | 60–75 seconds | Values only; the figure is not to scale |
| Data interpretation | 60–90 seconds | Chart reading plus one constraint equation |
| Comparison | 30–45 seconds | Fixed four-option set |
What a Qudurat score of 78 actually means
The GAT reports a score out of 100, and it is not the percentage of questions you answered correctly. ETEC states there is no pass or fail on the General Aptitude Test, that a GAT score should not be compared against a high-school percentage because the two use different scales, and that what matters is your position among everyone who sat the test. The guide publishes that position table:
| GAT score | Where it places you |
|---|---|
| 81 or higher | Top 5% of test-takers |
| 78 or higher | Top 10% of test-takers |
| 73 or higher | Top 20% of test-takers |
| 70 or higher | Top 30% of test-takers |
| 65 | The average test-taker |
| 60 or below | Bottom 30% of test-takers |
Read the table as gradient information. The distance from 65 to 70 moves you from the middle of the field into the top 30%. The distance from 78 to 81 — three points — is the difference between the top 10% and the top 5%, which tells you how densely candidates are packed at the top and why marginal accuracy gains matter more the higher you already are.
That position is then fed into a university's own weighted admission formula alongside your high-school GPA and Tahsili result, and each institution sets its own weights. Our registration and results guide works through that composite calculation with published university formulas.
GAT is not Tahsili — the official distinction
ETEC's guide draws the line precisely, and it is the distinction most often blurred in English content. The General Aptitude Test measures comprehension, application, inference, and analysis through language and mathematics content; it targets mental abilities that develop over years of educational stimulation and does not depend directly on isolated facts. The Achievement Test (اختبار التحصيل الدراسي, Tahsili) measures knowledge acquired from school subjects — mathematics, chemistry, history, grammar — and is tied to defined content.
The practical consequence: re-reading your chemistry textbook will move a Tahsili score and will do almost nothing for a GAT score. GAT gains come from item-type fluency and timed execution.
Turn the blueprint into study hours
Weight your preparation by the published percentages, not by what feels productive.
- Science-track candidates: roughly 55% of study time on verbal, with reading comprehension and analogy taking the largest shares; 45% on quantitative, dominated by arithmetic. Cap algebra at a few hours — it is five questions.
- Theoretical-track candidates: roughly 75% of study time on verbal. Skip algebra entirely. Your quantitative work is arithmetic first, then geometry, then a small amount of data interpretation.
- Both: treat contextual error as a meaning skill, not a grammar skill, and drill comparison items until the four fixed options are reflexive.
Five GAT claims worth correcting
- "The GAT has 68 verbal and 52 quantitative questions." ETEC publishes percentage weights, and they differ by track: about 66/54 on the science version and about 90/30 on the theoretical version.
- "Contextual error questions ask you to find the grammatical error." ETEC's instruction explicitly says the error is neither spelling nor grammar; you are finding the word that contradicts the sentence's meaning.
- "The test takes three hours." ETEC's guide states two hours and five minutes — five sections of 25 minutes.
- "Algebra is a major GAT topic." It is 4% on the science version and untested on the theoretical version.
- "A score of 90 means you answered 90% correctly." The score reports your standing against all test-takers; ETEC's own table puts 81 in the top 5%.
Practice against the real blueprint
One last check before you build a plan: open ETEC's General Aptitude Test page, confirm which track version you will sit, and write the eight domain percentages for that version at the top of your study schedule. Everything else follows from those eight numbers.