The NOA Test (MCT-H, MCT-M, MCT-A) Explained

NOA is an Amsterdam test publisher that grew out of the work and organisational psychology department of the Vrije Universiteit in 1996, with a founding purpose that still shapes its tests: assessment that is fair to candidates of different cultural and language backgrounds. Its capacity test, the MCT, is what you are most likely to meet if you apply for hbo study through the 21+ route, for some university programmes, or for a job through a Dutch psychological consultancy. It is also, under another name, the cognitive module of the Harver hiring platform.

Three versions, and how to tell which one you have

The MCT, the Multiculturele Capaciteiten Test, now also sold as the Algemene Capaciteitentest, comes in three forms. Your invitation or your report will name one of them:

On the fixed versions, each subtest has its own clock and the items run from easy to hard. NOA says outright that most people do not finish. Your score on each is simply the number of items you got right, with nothing deducted for a wrong answer, so a blank is never better than a guess.

The adaptive MCT-A is a different experience. Each question has a one-minute limit, a right answer brings a harder question, and a wrong one, or a minute left to run out, brings an easier one. NOA does not publish how many questions each part has, and different candidates see different questions.

Eight subtests with three names each

When NOA moved to its new NOA Talent Portal in 2024 it renamed every subtest into plain Dutch, and the MCT-A factsheet uses a third set of names. Every preparation site still uses the old ones. So Exclusie on a prep site is "Logisch nadenken met plaatjes" on your report and "Plaatjes vergelijken" on the MCT-A factsheet. The full set:

• Exclusie, now Logisch nadenken met plaatjes: five figures, find the one that does not belong. 30 items in 7 minutes.
• Componenten, now Combineren van vormen: a figure cut into pieces; find the two shapes, out of six, that those pieces make. 30 items in 9 minutes.
• Spiegelbeelden, now Omdraaien van plaatjes: six turned copies of a figure; find the two that are also flipped. 30 items in 15 minutes. Not in the MCT-A.
• Rekenvaardigheid, now Rekenen: sums with one value missing, no word problems. 30 items in 5 minutes, ten seconds each.
• Cijferreeksen, now Logisch nadenken met cijfers: the next number in a row. 30 items in 15 minutes.
• Woordrelaties, now Vergelijken van woorden: four words, two of which mean about the same or the opposite. 45 items in 9 minutes.
• Woordanalogieën, now Logisch nadenken met woorden: A is to B as C is to what? 30 items in 9 minutes.
• Controleren, the speed subtest: are two rows of characters the same? 100 items. Not in the MCT-A.

Those counts and clocks are the MCT-M figures, published by three NOA staff in a 2018 research paper. NOA has published none for the MCT-H, which uses the same formats. Three of the eight ask for two answers rather than one, which is the single most surprising thing about the test on first sight: components, mirror images and word relations.

The report: Lager, Midden, Hoger, and no number

NOA reports on a stanine, a nine-point scale with a midpoint of 5. That is not the ten-point sten that TestGroup and Ixly use, and the difference matters if you have read about those. The adviser gets stanines for your overall level, for four factors (language, numbers, spatial and speed) and for every subtest, compared with people at the education level the organisation chose.

Your own report does something unusual: it leaves the number off. Each result is a bar in three bands, Lager, Midden and Hoger, and NOA explains why in a sentence: "Om verwarring met (school)cijfers te vermijden zijn de cijfers bij de stanines weggelaten." A Dutch reader sees a 5 and thinks of a failing school mark; a 5 on a stanine is the centre of the scale.

Measured off NOA's own report bar, Lager covers the lowest three stanines, roughly the bottom quarter of the comparison group, Midden the middle three, about the middle half, and Hoger the top three. NOA's words for a Midden result are that the level is achievable for you and probably as hard or as easy as for the people you are compared with. There is no pass mark in the test itself. The school or employer decides what it needs.

Because the comparison group is an education level, the same number of correct answers can be Hoger against one group and Midden against another. On the MCT-M the adviser can also calculate an IQ estimate.

The 21+ toets

If you are 21 or over and applying to an hbo programme without the usual entry diploma, you may be asked to sit a 21+ toets, and at many institutions that means NOA. In NOA's own account, Hogeschool Utrecht put every 21+ applicant, about 600 a year, through six MCT-H subtests: word relations, word analogies, arithmetic, number series, exclusion and components. Other institutions choose their own set and often add subject tests.

For admission testing NOA offers online proctoring through ProctorExam: your screen, webcam and microphone are recorded, optionally the room through a phone camera, and the recording is reviewed afterwards. It runs in Chrome only, and NOA recommends a desktop or tablet for its capacity tests anyway.

Where Harver fits

Harver, a Dutch-founded volume-hiring platform that sells worldwide, names its cognitive module "NOA Cognitive Ability" in its own knowledge base, and its five subtests are NOA item types: exclusion, components, number series, word analogies and checking. If a Harver invitation has timed reasoning questions of these kinds, practising the NOA item types is practising those. Harver reports the result on its own 0 to 100% norm scale rather than as a stanine.

How to prepare

Our NOA practice tests cover all eight subtests on NOA's published clocks, the adaptive MCT-A and the MP-B6 personality questionnaire, with feedback that reports your result in NOA's own Lager, Midden and Hoger bands. The items are in English; the real test is available in Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish, and the organisation chooses.