The TOLC-B is the test for the Biology, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences degree courses, and it has a feature that makes it treacherous: it is prepared by people who love biology, and biology is the section that weighs least. Every year students come to me who can tell me oxidative phosphorylation step by step and then freeze on a fractional inequality. The result is a mediocre score in a test that, on paper, was theirs.
If you are taking the test in September and are reading this now, you have four to five weeks. That is enough, but only if you spend them where the points are — not where you enjoy studying. Here you will find how the test is built, what to study in what order, and the mistakes I see repeated every session.
How the TOLC-B is built
The TOLC-B is run by the CISIA consortium (the body that organises the TOLC tests for Italian universities), is taken online (from home with remote supervision, or at the university depending on the institution) and belongs to the same family as the TOLC-S and the TOLC-F: 50 multiple-choice questions in 1 hour 50 minutes, divided into separately timed sections.
The typical layout is this:
- Basic Maths — 20 questions, 50 minutes
- Biology — 10 questions, 20 minutes
- Physics — 10 questions, 20 minutes
- Chemistry — 10 questions, 20 minutes
Plus an English section (30 questions in 15 minutes) assessed separately: it does not count towards the ranking score, it is used by the university to decide whether to assign you a language training requirement.
The scoring: +1 for a correct answer, −0.25 for a wrong one, 0 if you leave it blank. Maximum 50 points.
Structure, number of questions and syllabus can change from one year to the next, and some universities weigh the sections differently in their rankings. Before setting up your plan, download the official CISIA syllabus for the current year and read the call of your university: ten minutes that save you from studying topics outside the programme or optimising the wrong section.
The figure from which the whole strategy derives is already in front of you: maths is 40% of the questions and 45% of the time. Biology is 20%. If you have 40 hours to invest, at least 20 should go on maths — even though, and I understand, it is not the reason you chose Biology.
Another thing that is worth points: the TOLC can be retaken once a month (in different months) and almost all universities take the best score among the valid attempts within the deadline of the call. The first attempt is therefore not a one-shot: it is the most precise diagnosis that exists. If you can still book two sessions, book them.
Basic maths: the section that decides the test
The programme is the high school one, asked quickly and with no discounts on prerequisites. The topics that come back every session:
- Elementary algebra — powers and radicals, factorising polynomials, algebraic fractions, absolute value. It looks like Year 3 stuff and it is where most points are lost through calculation errors under the clock.
- Equations and inequalities — second degree, fractional, irrational, with absolute value, systems. Fractional inequalities with sign study need to be practised until they are automatic.
- Functions — domain, graphs of elementary functions, translations and reflections, composite and inverse functions. Many questions are “which of these is the graph of…”: twenty seconds if you know the shapes by heart, two minutes if you reconstruct them by trial and error.
- Exponentials and logarithms — properties, equations and inequalities. Two or three questions guaranteed, and almost all are solved with three properties. Add the logarithmic scale: pH is a logarithm, and it is no coincidence that it comes back.
- Analytic geometry in the plane — line, parabola, circle, distances, parallelism and perpendicularity.
- Trigonometry — special values, basic addition formulas, simple equations, solving triangles.
- Euclidean and solid geometry — areas, volumes, similarity, Pythagoras and Euclid. The surface-to-volume ratio, by the way, is pure biology disguised as geometry.
- Probability and combinatorics — favourable cases over total cases, compound probability, permutations and combinations. For those studying Biology this is not a “passing” section: it is Mendelian genetics. If you are weak here, I have written a whole post on probability and combinatorics explained properly.
- Descriptive statistics — mean, median, mode, variance and standard deviation, reading histograms and frequency tables. Neglected by almost everyone, and for those aiming at Biotechnology it is the future trade.
Fifty minutes for twenty questions is two and a half minutes per question. Time is gained on the “at a glance” questions and spent on the two or three elaborate ones. If you notice halfway through the section that you are behind, the right move is to skip the long question and come back to it: a question is worth one point, whether it is hard or easy.
Biology: ten questions, a lot of programme
The biology section is broad but shallow. The topics that come up regularly:
- The cell — prokaryotic and eukaryotic, organelles and their function, membrane and transport (diffusion, osmosis, active transport).
- Molecular biology — DNA and RNA, replication, transcription, translation, the genetic code. The central dogma has to be known the way you know a nursery rhyme.
- Metabolism — glycolysis, Krebs cycle, respiratory chain, photosynthesis: balances and location, not every single intermediate. They ask you “where does it happen” and “how much ATP”, not the names of the twelve enzymes.
- Cell division — mitosis and meiosis, differences, crossing-over, when and why.
- Genetics — Mendel’s laws, dominance and recessiveness, blood groups, autosomal and sex-linked diseases, family trees. It is the most rewarding topic: questions solvable with a Punnett square in thirty seconds.
- Basic human anatomy and physiology — the main systems, fundamental hormones, the immune system in broad terms.
- Evolution and ecology — natural selection, speciation, food chains, biogeochemical cycles.
Ten questions on all this means that depth does not pay: coverage does. Those who spend three weeks on metabolism and can’t do a dihybrid cross have optimised badly.
Physics and Chemistry: the two most underestimated sections
They are two separate sections, ten questions and twenty minutes each, and they are the ones that people coming from a non-science high school fear most. In fact this is the block with the best points-to-effort ratio, because the level required is low and the topics are few and predictable.
Chemistry — atomic structure, the periodic table and periodicity, chemical bonds, basic nomenclature, the mole and stoichiometry, solutions and concentrations (molarity, percentages), acids and bases with pH, a few notions of redox. The mole is the bottleneck for half of students: if you get stuck there, I wrote a post on typical stoichiometry mistakes that covers exactly these stumbles.
Physics — quantities and units of measurement, kinematics, dynamics and Newton’s laws, work and energy, fluids (pressure, Stevin’s law, Archimedes — very useful in physiology), basic thermodynamics, elementary electricity. The questions can often be solved with dimensional analysis: if you check the units of measurement of the five options, those that are dimensionally impossible fall away at once.
Together they are worth as much as biology — twenty points out of fifty — but they need much less preparation time because the programme is more circumscribed. It is the place where those with normal high school foundations recover the most points in the fewest hours.
The mistakes I see repeated
- Studying biology because it is the one you like. It is 20% of the test. Maths is double. The study plan has to be built on the weights, not on tastes.
- Preparing for the TOLC-B as if it were the TOLC-MED. They are different tests: the MED asks for biology and chemistry at a much higher level and has a heavy logic section; the TOLC-B asks for a bit of everything with maths at the centre. Those who train on medicine quizzes are studying with the wrong book.
- Skipping stoichiometry. Two or three questions per session, and they are the same every year: moles, concentrations, limiting reagent. Six hours of targeted work, almost guaranteed points.
- Answering everything because “−0.25 is small”. A false friend. If you guess on 8 completely unknown questions, with five options you get on average 1.6 right (+1.6) and 6.4 wrong (−1.6): net gain zero and high variance. It becomes worthwhile as soon as you confidently rule out at least one option (about +0.06 per answer; +0.17 with two ruled out). If you can’t rule out any, leave it blank.
- Doing only theory until the last week. Timed mock exams start in the second week, not the last. The TOLC is as much a test of time management as of knowledge.
- Ignoring that genetics is maths. Those who treat crosses as facts to memorise instead of compound probability lose points in two different sections with the same mistake.
- Turning up with only one attempt available. It can be retaken monthly and the best counts. Not using that is giving away points.
A realistic plan from now to September (4-5 weeks)
Week 1 — diagnosis. One complete timed mock exam (CISIA publishes official ones; on the site you will also find the TOLC-B mock exam, questions in Italian). The aim is not to get a good score, it is to produce the list of wrong topics with specific names: not “maths”, but “irrational inequalities”, “properties of logarithms”, “limiting reagent”. That list is your programme.
Weeks 2-3 — maths in blocks. Recommended order: algebra and radicals → equations and inequalities → functions and graphs → exponentials and logarithms → analytic geometry → trigonometry → probability and statistics. Two hours of theory per block, then 25-30 exercises. Don’t move to the next block below 70-80% correct answers. In parallel, 20 minutes a day of biology with diagrams: it costs little and pays a lot.
Week 4 — sciences. One day on chemistry (with stoichiometry practised, not just read), one day on physics, two days of biology with active revision (questions to yourself, not re-reading), and a complete mock exam mid-week.
Last 7-10 days — mock exams only. Two or three complete ones, timed, reviewed question by question. No new topics. The last two days: maths formula sheet, special values, properties of logarithms, table of formulas for areas and volumes, diagram of the central dogma and Mendel’s laws. Then stop, and sleep: a bad night before the test costs more points than an extra week of study.
Realistic total time: 35-50 hours of targeted study if you come from a recent science course; 70-90 hours if you come from a classical high school, from a technical school with little maths or if you have been out of study for a few years. If you notice that it is anxiety blocking you before the mock exams and not the preparation, here is how I handle it with my students.
How we work in lessons
I always start from a diagnosis. We use the first hour to do a mini-test reasoned through together: I’m not only interested in what you get wrong, but why. Is the theory missing, is the method missing, are you reading the question in a hurry, or is it carelessness in the calculation? These are four different causes and they are cured in four different ways — those who go wrong through carelessness don’t need more theory, they need a checking procedure.
From there I build a weekly plan. For the TOLC-B, typically two lessons a week on maths, one every two weeks on chemistry and physics, and biology handled independently with diagrams that I correct — it is the part that a motivated student can do alone, and it makes no sense to pay for it. In the last three weeks, mock exams reviewed together question by question. We work online with a graphics tablet and shared screen, and we take the mock exams on the CISIA platform, so that on the day of the test the interface is already familiar.
On numbers: you will find up-to-date rates for the single lesson and the 10-hour package on the pricing page. A 10-hour package covers a month of intensive preparation well; the single lesson makes sense if you need two or three topics unblocked and you manage the rest yourself.
If you want to understand whether it makes sense to work together, I offer you a free 30-minute introductory call: you tell me where you are, we do a couple of quick questions and I tell you honestly how many hours you need and on what. If I see that you are managing on your own, I’ll tell you.
For the full picture of the tests I prepare for there is the Admission tests page; for individual subjects, maths, sciences and physics. If you prefer the summary picture with packages and FAQs, there is also the TOLC-B preparation page. If you are aiming at Pharmacy or at Sciences, the twin guides are those on the TOLC-F and the TOLC-S; for biology in depth, Cell and molecular biology for the medicine test and Mitosis and meiosis: differences, phases and exercises cover two central blocks of the programme.
The TOLC-B is not a hard test: it is a test that is unbalanced relative to what those preparing for it expect. Those who accept that it is above all a maths test, and study accordingly, pass it with room to spare.
