Problem Solving is 35 word problems in 35 minutes: the same arithmetic as the computation section, wrapped in a practical scenario. Rates, unit costs, material quantities, time, and measurement. The arithmetic is rarely the hard part — the setup is.
That is a full minute per question. This section is one of six on the battery, which runs about 140 questions in roughly two hours — see the full GAN aptitude test breakdown for how the whole thing fits together.
Whether you can turn a described situation into a calculation. That translation step is the actual job skill: a foreman describes a run, and you work out the material.
Whether you keep track of units and of what the question actually asked for, under time pressure, without a calculator to lean on.
One line: what you are solving for, and the relationship that gets you there. Most wrong answers on this section are correctly-executed arithmetic on the wrong equation. Thirty seconds of setup saves the whole question.
Overtime problems that ask for the number of overtime hours, not total pay. Material problems that ask for the cost of one, not the total. The answer choices will happily contain the value you would have got by answering the question you assumed.
Dollars per foot times feet gives dollars. If your units do not come out as the thing being asked for, your setup is wrong and no amount of careful arithmetic will save it. This catches setup errors before you spend time computing.
If 3 lengths of pipe cover 24 feet, then 7 cover 56 — set it up as a proportion and cross-multiply rather than finding a unit rate and multiplying back up. Fewer steps means fewer chances to slip.
One email, no spam — the section-by-section plan built around this battery.
Practical arithmetic: hourly pay and overtime, unit costs and totals, material quantities, rates of work, time, and measurement conversions. Nothing beyond basic algebra.
Thirty-five questions in thirty-five minutes — exactly one minute each on average. Some are ten-second reads; budget the time you save on those for the multi-step items.
Ready to sit the whole thing? Take a free full-length practice test in the GAN format — timed sections, no calculator, instant scoring.
Reading about a section and scoring on it are different things. The app has ten full-length timed batteries plus dedicated word problems drills, so test day is your eleventh run at it, not your first.
Download on the App StoreiPhone & iPad · free to download · 7-day free trial on Pro