A TOLC practice test (the TOLC is Italy’s university admission test) done badly is worse than no practice test at all: it gives you a number, that number reassures or frightens you, and nothing changes in what you study afterwards. Done well, on the other hand, it is the quickest tool you have for understanding where you are losing points. The difference is not in the practice test, it is in what you do in the twenty minutes after finishing it.
Here I explain how I set it up with my students, whichever TOLC it is — SU, B, I, E, F, S, PSI — and how to read the result section by section. For how the score is calculated in general there is already TOLC score: how it is calculated; here I talk about how to use it.
Before starting: the real conditions
A practice test is only worth something if it resembles the real test. Four rules, all non-negotiable.
- Real time, section by section. The stopwatch does not stop and you cannot make up the time: every TOLC has a time per section, and when it is over you move on. Doing it “a bit more calmly” skews the score upwards and hides the problem that matters, which is how many questions you manage in the time you have.
- A single session, without breaks. The TOLC-I lasts 110 minutes of subject sections, plus English. If you split the test over two afternoons you are not measuring stamina, which halfway through the test is one of the things that lose the most points.
- No phone, no book, no calculator if your TOLC does not allow it (always check the call for applications and the CISIA regulations, CISIA being the consortium that runs the TOLC, for your test).
- Scrap paper as in the test. Use only what you will have. How to reread the scrap paper afterwards to find calculation errors is explained in Practising against the clock.
Every TOLC has its own structure and it is best to use the right practice test: TOLC-I (maths 20 questions, logic, science and verbal comprehension 10 each), TOLC-B, TOLC-SU (30 text-comprehension questions, 10 on knowledge, 10 on logic), TOLC-E, TOLC-F, TOLC-S, TOLC-PSI and TOLC-SPS (the questions in these practice tests are in Italian, plus a separate English section). For the national healthcare-degrees test there is the dedicated practice test, with a different penalty. Timing, sections and scoring are those of the test; the questions are original, written in the style of the TOLC, not copies of the real test. The correct answer to each question is free, the guided solution is unlocked with your first lesson.
During: two passes, not one
No section should be done in order from the first question to the last. The method that works is in two passes:
- First pass: answer straight away the questions you recognise and that can be solved in under a minute. Whatever makes you hesitate, you mark and move on.
- Second pass: you go back to the marked ones, and only here do you decide whether to answer, reason through the options or leave blank.
The reason is the penalty: leaving blank costs zero, getting it wrong costs a quarter of a point. If a question steals three minutes from you and then you get it wrong, you have lost the time of two easy questions. As for when it is worth taking a risk, the rule is in the post on the score: it is enough to have eliminated options with real reasoning, not “this one feels right”.
Straight afterwards: the error table
Don’t look at the final score first. Look at every wrong or blank question and assign it to one of these three columns:
| Type of error | What it means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| I didn’t know | Topic never studied or forgotten | Go back to the theory, then 10 questions of the same type |
| I knew, but got it wrong | Calculation error, hasty reading, sign | Redo the question cold and write the mistake in one line |
| Time | I hadn’t got to it or I left it blank because it was long | Train speed on that type, with the stopwatch |
This table is worth more than the score, because the three columns require three different cures. If most of your mistakes are in the second, studying more theory is wasted time: you need to slow down by ten seconds when reading, not a new lesson.
How to read the score: an example
Suppose you have done a TOLC-I practice test (50 subject questions, +1 correct, 0 blank, −0.25 wrong) and got this result. The examples below are numerical and invented to illustrate the method, not real data from a student.
| Section | Questions | Correct | Wrong | Blank | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maths | 20 | 12 | 5 | 3 | 10.75 |
| Logic | 10 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 7.75 |
| Verbal comprehension | 10 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 6.50 |
| Science | 10 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3.00 |
| Total | 50 | 31 | 12 | 7 | 28.00 |
The total is recalculated with a single formula:
From this table you read three things, and none of them is “I got 28”.
The section with the most room for improvement. Maths has 8 questions not correct out of 20 and weighs 40% of the test: that is where you gain the most. Science has 6 out of 10 not correct but accounts for a fifth.
The answers given blindly. In science the wrong answers (4) are as many as the correct ones (4). If for all 4 you had nothing to eliminate any option, leaving them blank was worth +1 net point: . In general, every wrong answer given at random and turned into a blank wins back a quarter of a point.
The order of study. Here the plan is: maths (the 5 wrong and 3 blank, classified in the table), then a targeted science block, then logic and verbal at maintenance level. A plan that starts from “I revise everything” is not a plan.
For a second example: if you were reading a TOLC-SU practice test, where text comprehension is worth 30 questions out of 50, the picture is reversed: the blanks on those passages are worth more than everything else, and there the “time” column has to be looked at first. For the strategy of that test there is the TOLC-SU guide; for the engineering test, the TOLC-I guide.
How many practice tests and how far apart
There is no right number, but there is a right order:
- A diagnostic one at the start, cold, to start from data and not from impressions.
- One every two weeks during preparation, with the error table filled in after each.
- Two or three complete ones in the last two weeks, a few days apart, with the rhythm of the real day (same time as the test, same breakfast).
- None the day before. The day before you review your schemes.
Redoing the same practice test after a few days measures your memory of the questions, not your preparation. Redo it only after studying your mistakes, and compare the columns of the table, not the score. You can take the real test at most once per calendar month for each type, and it is worth choosing the moment well: it is discussed in When it is worth taking the TOLC.
And if the practice test goes badly
A low practice score six weeks before the test is useful information, not a sentence: it tells you where to work while you still have time to do it. The thing not to do is to redo three in a row hoping the number goes up. The number goes up when what you study changes.
If you would like us to look at the results together, the quickest way is to bring the error table to a first lesson: it takes us half an hour to read it and I tell you where to work first. Alternatively write to me through the contact page for a free 30-minute introductory call; for the list of tests I prepare students for there is the admission tests page, and if maths is your weak point the maths tutoring starts from there.
To try straight away, choose your TOLC from the admission practice tests page or start from the TOLC-SU practice test. Stopwatch on, phone far away, and the error table ready.
