How to prepare for the TOLC-AV: Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences

The TOLC-AV is the CISIA test for Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences degrees. The name misleads in two ways: it is not an agriculture test (nobody asks you to identify a crop or describe a rotation) and it is not the veterinary medicine entrance test either. It is a basic-sciences test: five school subjects plus a reading comprehension section, where speed and not being punished by the negative marking are what count.

Below you will find how it is built, who needs it, where points are lost according to the figures CISIA has published, and how to prepare section by section with worked examples. One thing right away: the section where candidates do worst is maths, not biology, and that changes the order in which it pays to study.

What it is and who requires it

CISIA, the consortium that runs the TOLC tests, says on the test page that the TOLC-AV is required by some universities for admission to Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences degrees. The key words are some and degrees: which test applies is decided by the university, course by course. Two examples from 2026/27 (already closed; I quote them to show how it works, not as a call to follow):

• Padua, School of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine: the test required for the selections for Animal Science and Technology and Veterinary Technical-Assistant Sciences was the TOLC-AV (university page read on 29 October 2026).
• Sassari, the professional degree in Horticulture and Floriculture (class LP-02, 40 places): you needed a TOLC-AV result obtained between 1 January and 16 September 2026, and the ranking was based on the test score, English excluded.

Note that the Sassari degree is a professional one but uses the TOLC-AV and not the TOLC-LP: which test applies is stated in the call, not by the name of the degree class. And CISIA’s 2025 report notes that some courses that use other TOLCs (B, F, E) also accept the TOLC-AV as equivalent.

Single-cycle veterinary medicine is different: from 2026/27 it goes through the filter semester (Ministerial Decree 941/2026), not the TOLC-AV. If that is your goal, the right guide is the one on the biology syllabus of the filter semester.

Structure, section by section

From the CISIA «Structure and syllabus» page (2026 syllabus, read on 29 October 2026):

Each section has its own time limit: 2 minutes per question, in the sections of 8 and in the reading section of 10 alike, and time from one section does not carry over to another. Scoring is +1 per correct answer, −0.25 per wrong answer, 0 per blank, maximum 50. English is 1 per correct answer and 0 otherwise, with no penalty; it points you to a language course (A1 to B1) or to an exemption.

A check you can run yourself on CISIA’s own data: the minimum score of an 8-question section is −2.00, that is eight wrong answers at 0.25 each. A section can end below zero, which tells you the penalty is real.

The figure that changes your strategy: most courses are open access

In CISIA’s statistical report on 2025, of 71 degrees using the TOLC-AV 57 (80%) were open access and 14 (20%) had programmed, selective access. In open-access courses the test excludes nobody: it assigns additional learning requirements (OFA in Italian), and almost every university uses it that way (98.6%). The most common rule looks only at the Maths section (23 degrees), then all sections (21), then Maths, Chemistry and Biology together (15). The Sassari call is typical: an OFA if you score fewer than 3 points in Maths.

If your course has programmed access instead, the total decides the ranking and every half point matters. Either way, maths weighs more than it seems, as you will see below.

Where points are lost: CISIA’s numbers

Average scores by section in 2025 (table A.3 of the CISIA report, all candidates, penalties included):

They add up to about 17.8, the 2025 overall average (it was 18.4 in 2023). The two bottom rows are Maths and Physics: if you come from a non-scientific high school, or from an agricultural technical school, that is where almost all your margin is. These are not targets, they are a map: the easiest points to gain are where almost everyone loses them.

How to prepare, section by section

Maths: eight questions, but they are the ones that separate candidates

The CISIA syllabus lists set theory, arithmetic, algebra, exponentials and logarithms, analytic geometry, plane and solid geometry, mathematisation. Mistakes almost always come from domain conditions. An example in the style of the test:

Solve the equation

Both expressions are defined only for $x>3$. By the logarithm rules the left side is ${\log }_2((x+3)(x-3))$, so

With $x>3$ only $x=5$ remains. Whoever forgets the domain marks $x=\pm 5$ or $x=-5$ and loses a point and a quarter. For the rest of the syllabus review the maths topics of the TOLC tests: the core (algebra, equations, functions, analytic geometry) is the same.

Chemistry: the mole is the bottleneck

Structure of matter, the atom, the periodic table, bonds, reactions, solutions, basic organic chemistry. The way into half of the numerical questions is the mole. Example:

How many grams of NaOH ($M_m=40g/mol$, the molar mass) are needed to prepare 250 mL of a 0.40 M solution?

The typical slip is forgetting to convert millilitres to litres and getting 4000 g. More recurring mistakes are collected in the post on typical stoichiometry mistakes.

Physics: units before formulas

Quantities and units, mechanics, fluids and thermodynamics, electromagnetism. With eight questions you almost always lose points on a conversion. Example:

A tractor at 72 km/h brakes with a constant deceleration of 5 m/s². How far does it travel before stopping?

Conversion first: 72 km/h = 20 m/s. Then

with a braking time of $v/a=4\mathrm{s}$. If you plug in 72 instead of 20 you get 518.4 m, and one of the options is usually the result of exactly that slip.

Biology: genetics and the cell

Chemistry of life, the cell, genetics, reproduction and evolution, the cell’s energy processes, diversity of living organisms. Genetics pays most because it is solved with a Punnett square. Watch out for conditional probabilities:

Two heterozygous parents $Aa$ have a child with the dominant phenotype. What is the probability that the child is heterozygous?

From the cross: $\frac{1}{4}AA$, $\frac{1}{2}Aa$, $\frac{1}{4}aa$. Given the dominant phenotype the $aa$ are excluded:

and not $\frac{1}{2}$, which is the answer of whoever skipped «has the dominant phenotype». For the cell and molecular biology there is the guide on cell and molecular biology; for a similar test, the guide to the TOLC-B.

Logic and reading comprehension: no syllabus, but a method

CISIA writes that these two sections assess aptitude and not school knowledge. Logic covers necessary and sufficient conditions, syllogisms, orderings. An example:

«If a field is irrigated, the soil is damp. The soil of a field is damp.» What can you conclude?

Nothing for certain: the dampness may have other causes (rain). Concluding that the field is irrigated is the classic error of mixing up a sufficient and a necessary condition. More types and worked examples are in logical reasoning: question types.

Reading comprehension is two passages with five questions each in 20 minutes: 10 minutes per passage. A method that holds up: read the questions first, then the passage once with them in mind, and answer from the text, never from what you already know.

Time and negative marking, with the sums

With $n$ options per question, an answer given at random is worth on average

CISIA does not state the number of options on the structure page I read; in the site’s mock exams there are five. With five options:

• random among five: $E=0,20-0,20=0$;
• ruling out one option for certain ($n=4$): $E=0,0625$;
• ruling out two ($n=3$): $E\approx 0,17$;
• ruling out three ($n=2$): $E=0,375$.

The practical rule: answer when you can remove at least one option, leave blank when you have nothing to go on. With 2 minutes per question and time that does not move between sections, do a first pass on the questions you can see at a glance, mark the long ones and come back before time runs out. The guide to the TOLC score explains what penalties do to the totals.

Mistakes that keep recurring

1. Treating maths as the section you will make up later. It has the lowest average and, in many courses, it is the only one that decides the OFA.
2. Preparing only biology because it is your course. Biology is 8 questions out of 50, the same as each of the other four sciences.
3. Forgetting conversions and domain conditions: they are procedure errors, not knowledge errors, and a ten-second final check removes them.
4. Answering everything. With the penalty, a reasoned blank beats a random guess.
5. Not practising against the clock. Two minutes per question sounds like a lot until a reading passage gets in the way.

Dates and registration

The TOLC is taken in several sessions at several universities and you can retake it once per calendar month (CISIA rule). I did not find the 2027 calendar or the 2027/28 calls published on 29 October 2026, so I give you no dates: they would be invented. Check the CISIA calendar for the TOLC-AV and your university’s call. To choose the moment, see when to take the TOLC.

A six-week plan

1. Week 1. A complete, timed mock exam, the site’s TOLC-AV practice test. Your total does not matter: you need the list of topics you got wrong, with precise names.
2. Weeks 2-3. Maths and physics, in blocks of 25-30 exercises. Move on only above 70% correct.
3. Weeks 4-5. Chemistry (mole and stoichiometry first) and biology by active revision. One mock exam in the middle.
4. Last week. Two complete mock exams, reviewed question by question. No new topics.

If you want to understand where you stand before deciding, you can book an introductory call: I tell you where the margin is and whether it is worth working with someone or going alone. The full picture of the tests is on the admission tests page; for the subjects, maths, physics and science.

Sources

Structure and scoring from the CISIA «Structure and syllabus» page for the TOLC-AV (2026 syllabus) and the CISIA statistical report «TOLC-AV: statistical analysis of the data» (year 2025), read on 29 October 2026; the University of Padua page on programmed-access degrees of the School of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine and the Sassari call for Horticulture and Floriculture (a.y. 2026/27), read the same day. Not verified: minimum scores and places in individual calls (figures on test-prep sites are not an official source), number of options per question, 2027 session dates.