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dMAT Exam Questions: What They Actually Look Like

By Moksh Khatri · Founder, DMAT Club · Updated 20 August 2026

Exam facts verified 11 September 2026 against g.a.s.t. (d-mat.de) and APS India (aps-india.de). Answer formats checked against the official dMAT demo exam, sat 23 August 2026. The dMAT is a first-year exam and its rules move — confirm anything date-sensitive at the official source before you act on it.

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Most candidates go into the dMAT having never seen its question types. This page fixes that. Below is what each Core Module subtest asks, how to solve it, and the mistakes that cost marks.

Question type 1: Figure Sequences

Format: four matrices are shown in sequence. Figures inside them move, rotate and change colour according to fixed rules. You choose the pair showing matrices five and six from four options. Twenty items, twenty-five minutes.

The rules you must know cold: figures may move vertically, horizontally or diagonally; they may rotate about their own axis; they may change colour. A figure cannot switch from one type of diagonal movement to another. Movement, colour or orientation may change by x + 1 — one step, then two, then three. Figures never disappear and never overlap. At an outer boundary a figure either bounces off or travels along the boundary.

Worked approach. Take one figure and verify its rule across all four given matrices before looking at any other figure. Say a triangle sits at row 3, column 1 in matrix 1, then row 3 column 2, then row 3 column 4, then row 3 column 3 — it moved 1, then 2, then bounced off the right edge. That is horizontal movement with x+1 acceleration and a bounce. Now eliminate every option inconsistent with that. Usually two options die immediately. Repeat with the next figure and you rarely need the third.

Most common error: reading the acceleration as constant movement. Second most common: assuming a figure bounces when it actually travels along the boundary. Both are trained out by review, not by volume.

Question type 2: Mathematical Equations

Format: a system of equations with letters for unknowns. You are asked for the value of one letter. Twenty items, twenty-five minutes, four options.

The constraints: every letter is a whole number from 1 to 20, and there is always exactly one solution. Low-difficulty items use two unknowns; high-difficulty items use four across four chained equations.

Worked example. Consider a high-difficulty style system:

A − B + C − D = 2
C = 4 × B
A = 2 × B
D = 10 + B

Substitute the last three into the first: 2B − B + 4B − (10 + B) = 2, which reduces to 4B − 10 = 2, so B = 3. Back-substitute for whatever the question asked. The algebra is trivial; doing it in your head under a 75-second clock is the actual test.

Method: always start from the most constrained equation, push it into the equation carrying the most unknowns, reduce to one variable, then work backwards.

Question type 3: Latin Squares

Format: a 5x5 grid partially filled with A to E, each letter appearing once per row and once per column. One cell holds a question mark. You pick the letter that belongs there. Sixteen items, twenty minutes.

Easy items resolve at a glance: four of the five letters are already present in the question mark's row or column, so one candidate survives.

Harder items need chained deduction. A typical path: column gamma is missing C and D; C already appears in row 4, so gamma-4 must be D; therefore the question mark takes C. Since you cannot write, the trainable skill is holding one or two derived placements in working memory while scanning for the next forced cell.

Most common error: scanning only the question mark's own row and column on hard items, concluding it is unsolvable, and guessing. It is always solvable — you simply need to place a neighbouring cell first.

The Subject Module — which for you is the General Academic Module

You read an input text that may contain figures, tables and formulas, then answer single-choice questions with four options. Every Indian APS candidate sits the General Academic Module regardless of degree field. The published Computer Science sample covers, for instance, the four goals of computer security and asks you to classify real attack scenarios against them, and works from logic gates through truth tables to canonical disjunctive normal form.

Nothing there is exotic. The demand is that you apply a concept within minutes of reading it, rather than recognise a term.

Try them under real conditions

Reading about question types is not the same as answering fifty-six of them against a clock with nothing to write on. That gap is where scores are made and lost. Our first full mock is free.

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