If you are in Year 4 or Year 5 of high school and thinking about engineering in Turin, the calendar already concerns you. The 2027 TIL-I (the Politecnico di Torino engineering admission test) sessions will be spread between February and July, with the calls usually coming out from December: there are about twelve weeks to January, and the first useful session is a little over four months away. Enough to prepare well, too little to put off until after the Christmas holidays.
Every year I find students arriving at the TIL with their heads on the TOLC-I (the CISIA engineering admission test). They are two different tests: whoever is aiming for the Politecnico di Torino has to take the TIL, and the TOLC-I replaces nothing there. Here I explain how it is built, how the score is calculated, what has changed recently and how to set up your preparation. For the dates and rules of the year you are interested in check the call: what you find here describes the structure I use in the site’s simulator.
TIL-I and TIL-A: they are not the same test
The TIL is the admission test of the Politecnico di Torino, and it should be read with a distinction: the TIL-I is for Engineering, the TIL-A for Architecture. They have different calendars. The five sessions of the 2026 edition (February, March, April, May and July) are those of the TIL-I; the TIL-A has a single window instead, 21 and 22 July 2026. If you are studying for engineering, it is the TIL-I that concerns you: more dates, so more chances.
The test is computer-based and taken in person, in the Politecnico’s computer laboratories: there is no at-home mode like the one you know from the TOLC. For registration, deadlines and laboratory venues, look at that year’s call.
If you are aiming for Milan instead, the story is different: there is the TOL, with different weights, thresholds and windows. I tell it in TOL Politecnico di Milano: how it works and thresholds. The comparison between the two Politecnici is one of the first I make with an undecided student: two different structures need two different kinds of training.
The four sections
In the simulator the TIL-I is structured like this: 42 questions in 90 minutes, with four sections timed separately. Each question has five options.
| Section | Questions | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Maths | 16 | 36 minutes |
| Text comprehension and Logic | 10 | 20 minutes |
| Physics | 10 | 22 minutes |
| Basic technical knowledge | 6 | 12 minutes |
The average time per question, recalculated on the columns: maths minutes; comprehension and logic minutes; physics minutes; technical knowledge minutes. In all the sections we are around two minutes a question. It isn’t much: it means that no question can “eat” five minutes without costing elsewhere.
The clock is per section, so the time you save in one doesn’t carry over to another. It is a detail that changes the strategy: you can’t rush through physics to have more minutes for maths. Within each section you learn to decide quickly which questions to do straight away and which to leave pending.
The new feature: Basic technical knowledge
The section many people don’t expect is “Basic technical knowledge”: six questions in twelve minutes that are added to Maths, Physics, and Text comprehension and Logic. It brings together drawing and representation on one side, basic computing on the other.
Six questions are few, but they are 14% of the total questions, and whoever has never seen them tackles them untrained. The advice I give is practical: you don’t need a course, you need familiarity with the type of question. Half an hour a week on representations (views, projections, sections of solids) and on elementary computing reasoning (what a sequence of instructions does, how to read a flow chart, what a condition is) is enough not to lose easy marks. The rest of the time stays for the sections where the points are many.
Be careful not to confuse this section with other tests: in the Milan TOL this section doesn’t exist, and in the TOLC-I the sections are different. If you have already done practice tests for other tests, the TIL will feel different precisely here.
The score
The score is the one you know: +1 for each correct answer, −0.25 for each wrong answer, 0 for one left blank. With 42 questions the maximum is 42 points.
An example with numbers (calculations done twice):
- Maths: 10 correct, 3 wrong, 3 blank →
- Comprehension and Logic: 7 correct, 2 wrong, 1 blank →
- Physics: 5 correct, 3 wrong, 2 blank →
- Technical knowledge: 4 correct, 1 wrong, 1 blank →
Total: points out of 42. You can see something I like to point out: in physics that candidate gave 8 answers out of 10, but got 3 of them wrong and collected only 4.25 points. Three mistakes cost points, but above all they are three answers that with a little more caution could have stayed blank.
On guessing the calculation is the same as for the TOLC. With five options, a completely random answer is worth on average: it adds nothing, it only adds variance. If you can eliminate two options, three candidates remain and the expected value rises to . The rule I give is the same as you find in TOLC score: how it is calculated: answer when you have eliminated something, leave blank when you have no criterion.
On thresholds: for the TIL-I I don’t have an official minimum score to give you here, and admission scores depend on the year and the session. For the values that matter in your case check the call.
How to prepare: maths and physics first of all
The two biggest sections are Maths and Physics: together they are 26 questions out of 42, more than 60% of the test. It is where the game is won or lost.
Maths. The programme is that of high school, without calculus: algebra, equations and inequalities (also with absolute values and parameters), functions, trigonometry, exponentials and logarithms, analytic and synthetic geometry, basic probability and statistics. The part that trips up the most people is quick algebra: expanding a square, simplifying an algebraic fraction, solving an inequality in under two minutes. For the list of topics with worked exercises I refer you to maths for the TOLC-I: topics and exercises: the chapters are largely the same.
Physics. Ten questions in 22 minutes, so a little over two minutes each. You need the basics: kinematics and dynamics, work and energy, momentum, waves, thermodynamics and basic electricity. A typical difficulty is getting the units of measurement in order: very many mistakes come from converting metres, seconds or grams badly. Before every calculation, write down the units.
Text comprehension and Logic. Twenty minutes for ten questions. It is trained with active reading and with the recurring types of logic; for the latter I have collected some examples in logical reasoning: question types and worked examples.
Technical knowledge. Little but regular, as said above.
A plan for the next twelve weeks
- Weeks 1-2. A complete TIL-I practice test, with no revision, cold. The aim isn’t the score but the map: in which section you lose most, and whether you lose for lack of content or of time.
- Weeks 3-8. Maths and physics in blocks: one chapter, a set of timed exercises, a summary of mistakes. A notebook where you copy every wrong question with the reason.
- Weeks 9-10. Comprehension, logic and technical knowledge, plus a revision of what seemed fine and wasn’t.
- Weeks 11-12. Complete practice tests every four to five days, with the real section times.
If you aim for a session later in the window (spring or summer) you have more time, but the method doesn’t change: practice test, mistakes, targeted revision, practice test.
Recurring mistakes
- Training on the TOLC-I timings. The sections and the clocks are different: practice tests with the wrong structure don’t give you the right habit.
- Ignoring the technical section to concentrate only on maths and physics: six questions are six points that can be picked up with little effort.
- Answering at all costs. With −0.25 per mistake, a question with no criterion is better left empty.
- Not reading the call. Dates, registration arrangements, number of sessions and requirements change from one year to the next.
Where to start
The most useful thing you can do today is to try the free TIL-I practice test: four timed sections, +1/−0.25 marking and the correct answer to every question at the end. If you then want to build a plan on your weak points, we can start with a free 30-minute introductory call: we begin from the results of the practice test and decide how to use the weeks you have ahead.
