The Test Solutions “Academic Aptitude” and “Academic Aptitude - Form for technical studies” provide test batteries that can be used to examine a person's psychological prerequisites for academic success. The test battery for assessing academic aptitude is available in a standard form and in an extended form for technical fields of study and is based on a broad empirical basis for predicting academic success. The corresponding predictors include cognitive abilities as well as personality traits and professional interests, with the selection of specific dimensions based on robust empirical findings from large-scale meta-analyses and longitudinal studies on the prediction of school and academic performance. In general, cognitive abilities consistently prove to be the strongest single predictors of academic performance. A comprehensive meta-analysis by Roth et al. (2015), which evaluated 240 samples from 33 countries with a total sample size of N = 105,158, documents a corrected population correlation of ρ = .54 between performance on various standardized cognitive achievement tests and school grades. In a longitudinal study of over 70,000 English children, Deary et al. (2007) demonstrate a correlation of r = .81 between general intelligence (psychometric g) at age 11 and various academic achievements at age 16. Peng et al. (2019) confirm in their meta-analysis that general intelligence explains an average of r² = .54 of the variance in academic performance. In these studies, logical-deductive thinking correlates particularly strongly with exam and final grades, numerical abilities reliably predict academic success in STEM subjects, and verbal abilities influence grades in humanities and social science subjects (Roth et al., 2015; Peng et al., 2019). According to Gallen et al. (2023), the ability to concentrate is a significant predictor of academic and subject-specific performance, while long-term memory performance is linked to the ability to store and apply complex concepts in a sustainable manner (Zainuddin et al., 2024). For technical fields of study, spatial reasoning was also included, as this ability explains additional variance in engineering grades alongside verbal and numerical intelligence (Berkowitz & Stern, 2018). A number of research findings show that spatial reasoning is a key predictor of success in STEM careers and education (National Research Council [NRC], 2015; Lubinski, 2010; Uttal & Cohen, 2012), and even provides incremental predictive validity for professional and academic success beyond the assessment of quantitative and verbal abilities (Berkowitz & Stern, 2018; Shea et al., 2001; Webb et al., 2007).
For personality domains, Mammadov's (2022) meta-analysis of 67 samples (N = 55,260) confirms moderate incremental validity of the Big Five dimensions for college performance: Controlling for cognitive abilities, conscientiousness emerges as the strongest predictor of academic performance (ρ = .27), followed by openness to experience (ρ = .16) and agreeableness (ρ = .09), while emotional stability and extraversion show negligible effects (ρ between .01 and .02). Rani Bhattacharjee & Ramkumar (2025) also show in a single sample of 384 students that conscientiousness is the strongest personality predictor of grade point average (β = .42, p < .001), followed by openness (β = .28, p < .01) and emotional stability (β = .19, p < .05). Overall, conscientiousness emerges as a key driver of academic performance, openness is essential for intellectual curiosity and research success, and emotional stability, extraversion, and agreeableness each make specific but smaller contributions (Mammadov, 2022; Wang et al., 2023). Empirical evidence also shows that the predictive power of personality traits is significantly lower overall than that of cognitive abilities: while intelligence explains an average of 22.9% (R² = .229) of the variance in academic performance (GPA), personality traits only account for 2.4% (R² = .024) (Zisman & Ganzach, 2022).
Based on these results, the Test Solution “Academic Aptitude” covers the following dimensions:
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Cognitive abilities: Logical reasoning (INT), numerical ability (INT), verbal ability (INT), visual-spatial ability (INT; only for technical fields of study), long-term memory (INT), ability to concentrate (TACO), mechanical-technical comprehension (MECH; only for technical fields of study)
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Personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability (FCB5)
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Interests: Practical-technical interests, intellectual-research interests, artistic-linguistic interests, social interests, entrepreneurial interests, and organizational-administrative interests (PRIO)
The dimensions for the Test Solution “Academic Aptitude” were selected on the basis of extensive research into predictors of school and academic success, which shows that the combination of cognitive abilities and Big Five personality traits has substantial predictive power. A standard form and a form for technical fields of study, with the additional dimensions of visual-spatial ability and mechanical-technical comprehension, are available for aptitude testing of students. The standard form takes about 82 minutes to complete, while the form for technical fields of study takes about 102 minutes.
References can be found here: Literature