Aptitude Exam

Can you apply your knowledge?

In stage 2, every applicant must sit the two-hour Arkwright Aptitude Exam.

This is not an academic exam, it is a test of your ability to creatively apply your technical knowledge to develop innovative solutions real-world engineering problems. The exam is sat in your school, under national exam conditions, on the first Wednesday afternoon in February (everybody sits the exam on the same afternoon).

After ten minutes reading time, in which candidates read and consider the exam questions, each candidate must answer one of the three questions in Section A and one of the three questions in Section B.

Section A - you are asked to provide a brief overview of three of your ideas to solve one of the set engineering problems.

Section B - you are asked to provide a single creative and innovative solution to a more focussed engineering problem, developed in some depth.

 

Marking Criteria

The marking criteria for the Arkwright Aptitude Exam can be found in Appendix A of the Arkwright Handbook.

 

Arkwright Aptitude Exam Drawing Sheet

Candidates must use the standard Arkwright A3 drawing sheets in the exam. Download the formatted Arkwright Drawing Sheet [pdf] and print onto A3 paper (80 or 100 gram) for use in the Exam. We recommend 2 sheets per question (4 sheets per candidate).

 

Past Papers

Below are copies of past Arkwright Aptitude Exam papers, markers' comments and exemplar material.