How to prepare for the TOLC-PSI: the Psychology test

The TOLC-PSI is the entrance test for Psychology and Psychological Sciences degree courses, and every year I hear the same sentence: “but I chose Psychology precisely so I wouldn’t have to do maths”. Then the mock exams open up and the discovery is a nasty one: out of 50 questions that count towards the score, 20 are maths and numerical reasoning. That is 40% of the test. Those who ignore them are staking their admission on a prejudice.

The good news is that the level required is not high. The TOLC-PSI doesn’t ask for calculus, it doesn’t ask for science-high-school trigonometry: it asks you to be able to read a table, solve a proportion, and not panic when faced with a percentage. It is a test you can catch up on in a few weeks, if you know where to look. Here I explain how it is built, what to study in what order and the mistakes I see repeated every session.

How the TOLC-PSI is built

The test is run by the CISIA consortium (the body that organises the TOLC tests for Italian universities), is taken at a computer (from home with remote supervision in the TOLC@CASA version, or on site according to what the university provides) and is made up of 50 multiple-choice questions in 100 minutes, divided into five separately timed sections. An English section is added to these.

The layout is this:

• Reading comprehension — 10 questions, 20 minutes (two passages)
• Basic maths — 10 questions, 20 minutes
• Verbal reasoning — 10 questions, 25 minutes
• Numerical reasoning — 10 questions, 20 minutes
• Biology — 10 questions, 15 minutes
• English — 30 questions, 15 minutes (assessed separately)

The scoring: +1 for a correct answer, −0.25 for a wrong answer, 0 if you leave it blank, for a maximum of 50 points. English does not count towards the ranking score and has no penalty for mistakes: the university uses it to decide whether to assign you a language training requirement. In that section, therefore, answer everything — getting it wrong costs nothing.

Structure, timing and syllabus can change from one year to the next, and each university weighs the TOLC in its own ranking as it sees fit (some add the school-leaving grade, others set a minimum threshold). 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.

One last thing that is worth points: the TOLC can be retaken once a month (in different months) and almost all universities consider the best score among the valid attempts within the deadline of the call. The first attempt is not a one-shot: it is the most precise diagnosis that exists. If you can still book two sessions, book them.

The four “head” sections are worth 80% of the test

Look at the weights coldly: reading comprehension, verbal reasoning, maths and numerical reasoning make up 40 points out of 50. Biology — the only pure-content section, the one you study from books — is worth 10. Yet it is the one on which most students spend half their preparation time, because it is the only one that seems studiable.

It is a mistake of allocation. The reasoning sections seem “innate” (“either you’re logical or you’re not”) and so they are left to chance. In fact they are the most trainable of all, because the types of question are few and repeat. After 150 exercises you recognise the exercise before you have finished reading it, and the time per question collapses.

Basic maths: what it really asks

The syllabus covers number sets, algebraic expressions, equations and inequalities, elementary functions, plane and analytic geometry. In practice, the topics that come back every session are:

1. Fractions, powers, percentages and proportions. Lower-secondary-school stuff (Year 8 in Italy), asked against the clock. This is where the most points of all are lost, and not through ignorance: through haste.
2. Literal expressions and special products. Recognising a difference of squares lets you solve in ten seconds an exercise that would otherwise take two minutes of calculation.
3. First- and second-degree equations and inequalities, including fractional ones with sign study.
4. Elementary functions and reading graphs — line, parabola, and above all being able to answer questions about the graph without redoing the calculations.
5. Basic plane and analytic geometry — areas, perimeters, Pythagoras’ theorem, distance between two points, equation of the line.
6. Elementary probability and combinatorics — a couple of questions per session, often disguised (“how many possible combinations…”, “what is the probability that…”). If this part has always seemed hazy to you, I wrote a guide on probability and combinatorics that covers exactly the level required here.

A technical note that is worth real points: in the TOLC you don’t need to find the solution, you need to find the right answer among five. They are two different things. On many questions it is better to substitute the options into the equation instead of solving it, or to estimate the order of magnitude and discard the two absurd options. It is not cheating: it is the correct strategy for a timed multiple-choice test.

Numerical reasoning: the most underestimated section

Ten questions, twenty minutes, and for me it is the best points-to-effort ratio of the whole test. It asks you to work on number series, proportions, tables, graphs and data interpretation. There is no theory to study: there is a method to acquire.

The recurring types:

• Number series — find the next term. The method is mechanical: calculate the differences between consecutive terms, and if the differences say nothing try the ratios, then the differences of the differences, then alternation (two interleaved series).
• Reading tables and graphs — the question is almost always a percentage change or a comparison between two rows. The classic mistake is calculating the percentage on the total instead of on the starting value.
• Problems with proportions — speed, discounts, mixtures, “if 3 workers in 4 days…”. They are all solved by setting up the right proportion; the time is lost working out which one.
• Reasoning with insufficient data — questions in which the correct answer is “it cannot be determined”. Careful: it exists, and those who don’t believe it get it wrong.

Twenty minutes for ten questions is two minutes per question. If one resists after ninety seconds, flag it and move on: the next question might be worth the same point in twenty seconds. The TOLC-PSI is won as much on the order in which you tackle the questions as on what you know.

Reading comprehension and verbal reasoning

Reading comprehension — two passages, ten questions, twenty minutes. The counterintuitive advice: read the questions first, then the passage. You know what to look for and you read with a goal. And above all: the correct answer is the one supported by the text, not the one that is true in the world. The typical pretext of distractors is a plausible, agreeable statement that the passage does not say. If you can’t find it written down, it is not the answer.

Verbal reasoning — ten questions, twenty-five minutes (the section with the most time per question, and that is a clue: they are slow to read). It asks for logical deductions, premise-conclusion relationships, identifying rules. Three things to automate:

1. The correct negation of a statement. The negation of “all cats are black” is “there exists at least one cat that is not black”, not “no cat is black”. Half the errors start here.
2. The difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. “If A then B” does not imply “if B then A”. In verbal reasoning tests this illicit inversion is the most frequent distractor there is.
3. Reasoning on form, not content. If the premise says that all dragons fly, inside the exercise dragons fly. Your common sense about the real world is, here, an enemy.

Biology: ten low-cost points

The programme is circumscribed: molecular composition of organisms (water, carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids), cell biology (membrane, organelles, prokaryote/eukaryote differences), mitosis and meiosis, genetics (Mendel, dominance and recessiveness, DNA and protein synthesis), basic human anatomy and physiology.

Ten questions out of fifty, fifteen minutes: they are the quickest questions in the test, because either you know the notion or you don’t. It is worth studying it properly for exactly that reason — it is predictable score — but in diagrams, not in chapters. Three one-page diagrams (cell, cell cycle + meiosis, from DNA to protein) and Mendel’s laws practised as probability, not as notions to memorise. Mendelian crosses are probability calculation in disguise: if you treat them that way, one topic gives you points in two different sections.

The mistakes I see repeated

1. Studying only biology because it is the only “subject”. It is worth 20%. Maths and numerical reasoning together are 40%. The study plan is built on the weights, not on what seems studiable.
2. Considering the logic sections untrainable. They are the most trainable of all. Two hundred well-corrected exercises change the score more than ten hours of biology.
3. 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.
4. Leaving blanks in the English section. There is no penalty there. Answer all 30, always.
5. Digging in on one question. Every question is worth an identical point. Three minutes spent on the hardest are two easy questions not read.
6. Doing mock exams without a stopwatch. The TOLC is half a test of time management. A mock exam without a timer measures something that doesn’t exist on the day of the test.
7. Marking mock exams by looking only at the score. The score teaches nothing. It has to be reviewed question by question, asking for each mistake why: I didn’t know, I misread, I got the calculation wrong, or I got anxious? Four different causes with four different cures.
8. 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 in 4 weeks

Week 1 — diagnosis. One complete timed mock exam (CISIA publishes official materials; on the site you will also find the TOLC-PSI mock exam, questions in Italian). You don’t need a good score: you need the list of errors with specific names. Not “maths”, but “percentages on the starting value”, “fractional inequalities”, “negation of universal statements”. That list is your programme.

Week 2 — maths. Recommended order: fractions-powers-percentages → proportions and problems → special products → equations and inequalities → functions and graphs → basic geometry → elementary probability. Half an hour of theory per block, then 20-25 exercises. Don’t move on to the next block below 70-80% correct answers.

Week 3 — reasoning (numerical + verbal) and biology. Four days alternating number series, tables and graphs, logical deductions; twenty exercises a day, corrected one by one. On the other days biology in diagrams, active revision (questions to yourself, not re-reading). One complete mock exam mid-week.

Week 4 — mock exams only. Two or three complete ones, timed, reviewed question by question. No new topics. The last two days: maths formula sheet on one page, diagram of percentages and proportions, the three biology diagrams. Then stop, and sleep: a bad night before the test costs more points than an extra week of study.

Realistic total time: 25-35 hours of targeted study if you come from a high school with decent maths and read a lot; 50-70 hours if maths has always gone down the wrong way for you or if you have been out of study for a few years. If you notice that in front of the mock exams it is anxiety blocking you and not the preparation, here is how I handle it with my students; and if the problem is further upstream — your relationship with the subject itself — I discuss that in studying maths without stress.

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 theory missing, is method missing, are you reading in a hurry, or is it carelessness in the calculation? Those who go wrong through carelessness don’t need more theory: they need a checking procedure.

For the TOLC-PSI, typically: two lessons a week focused on maths and numerical reasoning — which is where the recoverable points are — and the verbal sections trained with exercises that I assign and correct, because there the leap comes from volume, not from explanation. Biology you manage independently with diagrams that I review: it is the part that a motivated student does alone, and it makes no sense to pay for it. In the last two 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: the rates for the single lesson and the 10-hour package are on the pricing page. A 10-hour package covers a month of 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.

You will find the summary of the path — programme, typical lesson and prices — on the page dedicated to TOLC-PSI preparation.

For the full picture of the tests I prepare for there is the Admission tests page. If your course is in politics or social science there is the guide to the TOLC-SPS; for Economics, the one on the TOLC-E, which shares part of the logic with this test.

The TOLC-PSI is not a hard test: it is a test that asks for exactly the skills that those preparing for it have decided not to train. Those who accept that forty points out of fifty are decided on reading, logic and numbers — and study accordingly — pass it with room to spare.