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dMAT Syllabus 2026: What Is Actually Tested

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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The single most common question about the dMAT is where to find the syllabus. The honest answer is that there isn't one, not in the way GATE, CAT or a university exam has one. The dMAT is an aptitude test: it measures how you reason and solve problems, not how much theory you have memorised. There is no chapter list to revise from.

That does not mean there is nothing to prepare. It means what you prepare is format fluency and speed rather than content. Below is what each part actually asks.

The two modules

Core Module subtest 1: Figure Sequences

You are shown a series of matrices in which figures change their position, colour and/or orientation from one matrix to the next according to fixed rules. Your job is to continue the series and determine what the next two matrices look like, choosing from the given options.

The rule set is closed and published, which means it can be learned completely. Knowing it cold is most of the battle:

• Figures may change colour.
• Figures may rotate around their own axis.
• Figures may move vertically, horizontally or diagonally.
• A figure cannot switch from one type of diagonal movement to another.
• Movement, colour or orientation may change by x + 1: a figure moving one step between matrices 1 and 2 moves two steps between 2 and 3, then three, and so on.
• Figures never disappear and never overlap.
• On reaching an outer boundary, a figure does exactly one of two things: it bounces off, or it moves along the outer boundary.

The practical technique: work symbol by symbol, not matrix by matrix. Fix one figure's rule across all four given matrices, eliminate the options that contradict it, then move to the next figure. The answer usually falls out before you have checked every figure.

Core Module subtest 2: Mathematical Equations

Each task gives a system of equations with unknowns written as letters. Two constraints make it tractable and are worth memorising: every letter is a whole number between 1 and 20, and there is always exactly one solution.

Low-difficulty systems use two unknowns. At high difficulty you juggle four across four chained equations, typically including one mixed equation of the form A − B + C − D = k that collapses to a single variable once the other relations are substituted in.

The method every official solution path uses is the same: find the most constrained equation, substitute it into the equation carrying the most unknowns, reduce, then back-substitute. What is being tested is not algebra knowledge. It is disciplined mental bookkeeping at speed, without paper.

Core Module subtest 3: Latin Squares

A 5x5 grid is partially filled with the letters A to E. Each letter appears only once in each row and each column. One cell contains a question mark and you determine which letter belongs there.

If that sounds like a miniature Sudoku, that is the right instinct. Easy items resolve in a single glance because four of the five letters already appear in the question mark's row or column, leaving one candidate. Harder items require you to fill neighbouring cells mentally first, chaining two to four forced deductions. Since you cannot write anything down, the trainable skill is holding one or two derived placements in working memory while scanning for the next forced cell.

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

After the break comes the discipline-specific half. You read an input text — which may contain figures, tables and formulas — and answer single-choice questions about that material. Every Indian APS candidate sits the same General Academic Module, whatever the bachelor's field was — the subject-specific modules exist, but German universities use them for particular programmes, not for the APS route.

The tasks are knowledge-based but application-oriented. The official materials state plainly that the dMAT requires subject knowledge and application skills, not memorised factual knowledge. The published sample module is Computer Science and covers things like the four goals of computer security and combinational logic through to canonical disjunctive normal form — nothing exotic, but you must use the concept within minutes of reading it rather than merely recognise the term.

So the preparation that works here is not branch revision. Because every Indian APS candidate sits the General Academic Module rather than a module matched to their degree, the useful practice is reading unfamiliar academic prose at speed and answering from it — not refreshing the syllabus you already studied.

What to do with this

Since there is no content to cram, preparation time is best spent on repeated timed exposure to the three core formats until the rules are automatic and your pacing is calibrated. That is exactly what our full-length mock tests are built for.

Frequently asked questions