How the Raven’s APM-III test works
APM stands for Advanced Progressive Matrices, the harder of the classic Raven’s tests. APM-III is its online version. Each question shows a grid or series of designs with one piece missing and eight pieces to choose from. You get four practice questions, then 23 scored ones with 40 minutes on the clock.
It is not adaptive. Your 23 questions are picked from a large bank so that every candidate’s set is about equally hard, and two candidates are unlikely to see the same set. Pearson describes it as the test for graduates, managers and future leaders, and points employers hiring for other roles towards the DAT Next Generation Abstract Reasoning test instead.
APM-III is no longer on TalentLens’s main list of cognitive tests, which names Raven’s Adaptive. You can still be sent it: Hogan Assessments offers Raven’s APM under licence from Pearson, and TalentLens France still publishes its APM-III guide for employers. If your invitation mentions 23 questions or 40 minutes, this is your test. If it says 15 questions and no time limit, you have Raven’s Adaptive.
How to work through the 23 questions
Forty minutes for 23 questions is generous at the start and tight at the end, so pace as well as solve.
- Bank time early. Aim to answer the first eight in about a minute each, so the last eight can have two minutes or more.
- On each grid, find the rule along the rows, then check whether a different rule runs down the columns. Advanced grids usually have both.
- Take features one at a time: shape, number, shading, direction, position. Trying to see everything at once is how a rule gets missed.
- Write down or say the missing piece feature by feature, then find the option that has all of them.
- If you are stuck after two minutes, eliminate what you can, choose from what is left and move on.
Worked example
Picture a grid of arrows. Top row: one black arrow pointing up, one white arrow pointing right, one striped arrow pointing down. Middle row: two white arrows pointing up, two striped arrows pointing right, two black arrows pointing down. Bottom row: three striped arrows pointing up, three black arrows pointing right, and the missing piece.
- Number runs down the grid: one arrow in the top row, two in the middle, three in the bottom. The missing piece has three arrows.
- Direction runs across: up, right, down in every row. The missing piece points down.
- Shading is the hidden rule: each row and each column holds one black, one white and one striped cell. The bottom row has striped and black, and the third column has striped and black, so the missing piece is white.
- Answer: three white arrows pointing down.
- The near misses each break one rule: three white arrows pointing right, two white arrows pointing down, three striped arrows pointing down. Check all three features on your chosen option before you confirm.
How Raven’s APM-III is scored
The score weighs three things for every question: whether you were right, how hard the question was and how well it separates stronger from weaker candidates. A right answer on a hard grid is worth more than one on an easy grid, so two people with 15 correct can get different results.
The outcome is an ability estimate from -4 to +4, converted to a percentile against a reference group such as managers. The top result is the 99th percentile, and there is no published pass mark.
If you sit it at home, expect that it may be checked. Pearson tells employers to confirm unsupervised results later in the process, with a supervised re-test or an interview or exercise that measures the same ability.
Tips for the real APM-III
- Use the four practice questions to get used to the screen. They are not scored.
- Answer everything. Nothing in Pearson’s guidance takes marks off for a wrong answer, and a blank cannot be right.
- Glance at the clock after question 8 and question 16. You want at least 25 and 12 minutes left.
- Do not stay on one grid for four minutes. That time is worth two later questions.
- Use a computer or a large tablet. Pearson recommends a big enough screen and a reliable connection.
Practise Raven’s APM-III on CogniPrep
Our APM-III game gives you 23 generated grids with eight options on one 40-minute countdown, weighted towards the harder rules and served in rising order of difficulty. You can move back and forward, mark a question for review and change answers until you hand in, because the real test’s navigation is not published. Unanswered questions count as wrong when time runs out.
The result is an ability estimate that gives more credit for the harder grids, plus a percentile against other CogniPrep users. The difficulty levels are ours, and the four practice questions of the real test are left out.