Most people preparing for the dMAT know about three subtests: Figure Sequences, Mathematical Equations and Latin Squares. Those three make up the Core Module. But the dMAT has two modules, not one, and the second catches people out.
The short version. Every Indian candidate going through APS sits the General Academic Module as their subject module. It is the same module regardless of whether your degree is in mechanical engineering, commerce or economics. It is not a test of your subject knowledge.
g.a.s.t. does offer genuinely subject-specific modules — Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science and others — but those are used by individual German universities for particular programmes, such as RWTH Aachen's Battery Science and Technology degree. They are not part of the APS India route.
Because the dMAT requirement is scoped to engineering, commerce, finance, economics, business and management graduates, a reasonable assumption is that the module matches your field. It does not. The official position is that applicants aiming to study in Germany from Summer Semester 2027 onward take the dMAT with the General Academic Module — one module, everyone.
This is good news if your degree was heavily specialised. Nothing in the test asks you to recall thermodynamics or accounting standards.
The module presents short academic scenarios — a passage, a small data set, a described study or argument — and asks questions tied to that material. What it measures is whether you can take unfamiliar academic content and reason about it correctly under time pressure: reading precisely, drawing only conclusions the material supports, and noticing when a plausible-sounding statement goes further than the evidence does.
It is closer in spirit to GRE or GMAT reading-and-reasoning sets than to a university exam. The content is a vehicle. The skill is the target.
The Core Module rewards drilling because the formats are narrow and fixed. The General Academic Module rewards something slower: getting comfortable reading dense academic prose in English at speed, and getting disciplined about the difference between what a passage says and what it implies.
Both modules contribute to the standardised result that appears on your APS documentation. Remember the wider framing: the dMAT is not pass or fail. A low score does not cause APS India to reject your file, and each German university decides for itself how much weight to give the result.
Check the current format before test day. The dMAT is in its first Indian cycle and the official materials are the only authoritative source for question counts and timing. Confirm the current structure at the official dMAT site when you register, and treat any third-party figure — including ours — as secondary.
Our five mock tests cover the Core Module in full: 280 unique questions across Figure Sequences, Mathematical Equations and Latin Squares, each with a worked solution. They do not yet include General Academic Module practice. We would rather say that plainly than pad the product with passages we have not properly built.
If the Core Module is where you are losing time — and for most candidates it is, because the formats are unfamiliar — that is what our mocks are for.
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The General Academic Module. It is the same module for every Indian applicant going through APS, regardless of whether the bachelor's degree is in engineering, commerce, finance, economics, business or management.
No. Subject-specific modules such as Chemistry or Computer Science exist, but they are used by particular German universities for particular programmes and are not part of the APS India route.
No. It presents short academic scenarios and tests whether you can reason accurately about unfamiliar material under time pressure.
No. It forms part of the dMAT alongside the Core Module.
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