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Standardized tests

قدرات وتحصيلي

Qudurat and Tahsili — the Saudi national tests

Two tests from ETEC that, together with your school GPA, decide which university college will take you. For a student staying in the Kingdom, these matter more than any other exam on this list.

When
Qudurat from Grade 11; Tahsili near the end of Grade 12
Where it counts
Saudi Arabia — required by every public university and by most private ones

How it works

Qudurat — the General Aptitude Test, GAT — is a reasoning test in two halves: verbal (reading comprehension, analogies, sentence completion, contextual error) and quantitative (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, statistics and comparisons). It examines no syllabus. It is testing how you think under time pressure, which is precisely why preparation works on it: the question types are finite and they repeat.

Tahsili — the Scholastic Achievement Admission Test — is the opposite. It examines what you were actually taught in the last three years of secondary school: for science-track students, biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics, weighted across the paper. There is a humanities version for students on the non-science tracks. It is sat once, near the end of Grade 12, with limited opportunities to repeat.

Universities then combine your secondary GPA, your Qudurat score and — for scientific and health colleges — your Tahsili score into a weighted composite, and admit in rank order until the seats run out. The weights are published by each university each year. Nothing else in the file is read: there is no personal statement, no interview for most programmes, and no discretion.

How it is graded

Both are reported on a 100-point scale. Qudurat can be sat several times within its validity period and the best score is normally the one used; the number of permitted sittings and the validity window are set by ETEC and are worth confirming before you plan around them. Tahsili has far fewer sittings, which is what makes it the higher-stakes of the two.

When to sit it

Qudurat runs in several periods across the year and is open from Grade 11 — the point of that is to let you sit it early, see the score, and improve it. Tahsili is sat in the final months of Grade 12, after the syllabus has been covered. Registration for both is through the ETEC portal and closes weeks in advance; sittings do fill.

What it is good for

  • Admission to every Saudi public university, and to most private ones.
  • The health and engineering colleges specifically, where the composite score is the entire admission decision.
  • Scholarship and preparatory-year placement, which frequently use the same scores.

When it happens

Months rather than dates — the exact dates are republished every year, and the official calendar is linked below.

  1. Several periods across the yearQudurat (General Aptitude Test), open from Grade 11. Computer-based and paper sittings both run.Registration opens per period on the ETEC portal and closes weeks ahead. Sittings and centres fill.
  2. Final months of the school yearTahsili (Scholastic Achievement Test), sat near the end of Grade 12 once the syllabus is covered.Far fewer sittings than Qudurat, and it lands in the same weeks as your final school exams. Plan around that collision.
  3. Spring and summer of Grade 12University applications through the unified admission portals and each university's own portal.

Qudurat — القدرات العامة

Sat by everyone, on every track, regardless of what you want to study.

  • Verbal section (القسم اللفظي)

    OpensLaw and Sharia · Media · Business · Humanities · Every college — this half is universal

    Weighted more heavily for humanities-track applicants. Reading widely in Arabic is the preparation nobody markets, and it works.

    On this siteCorporate LawyerJournalistPolicy Analyst

  • Quantitative section (القسم الكمي)

    OpensEngineering · Computer science · Medicine · Business · Every scientific college

    Weighted more heavily for science-track applicants. The mathematics is not advanced; the speed required is.

    On this siteSoftware EngineerCivil EngineerGeneral PractitionerEconomist

Tahsili — التحصيلي

The syllabus test. Which version you sit follows from your track.

Choosing well

The parts a student can act on this month.

  • Sit Qudurat early — in Grade 11 — even if you are not ready. The score is diagnostic, the best attempt counts, and the difference between knowing your baseline in Grade 11 and discovering it in Grade 12 is a year of useful preparation.
  • Prepare with past papers and question banks rather than by re-reading textbooks. Qudurat is a pattern test; the returns come from recognising question types and from speed.
  • Tahsili rewards exactly what school rewards, so revise for it across both years rather than in the last month. It is the one national test where consistent classwork is the preparation.
  • Find the admission weighting for the specific college you want, in writing, and calculate your composite yourself. Students routinely optimise the wrong number — a 40%-weighted Tahsili deserves more of your attention than a 30%-weighted GPA you have already largely determined.
  • Register the moment a period opens. Sittings and centres fill, and there is no appeal for having missed one.

What costs people a year

  • Tahsili offers far fewer attempts than Qudurat, and it lands in the same months as your final school exams. That collision is predictable and is the reason to have Qudurat finished before it.
  • Qudurat scores expire. A score sat very early is only useful if it is still valid when you apply — check the validity period against your application year.
  • There is no personal statement, no reference and no interview in this system for most programmes. Nothing about you that is not in the composite score is considered, which is worth knowing before you spend a year on activities that would matter for a US application.
  • International-school students in the Kingdom often assume these tests are not for them, then discover that a Saudi public university or a scholarship route requires them. If a Saudi public university is on your list at all, plan for both tests.

In Saudi Arabia

These two tests are the Saudi admission system. Their weight is the reason a student here has to decide relatively early whether they are applying domestically, abroad, or both — because the preparation for Qudurat and Tahsili and the preparation for the SAT and an English test are genuinely different work, and doing all of it well in Grade 12 alone is not realistic. Deciding in Grade 10 or 11 which of those two paths is primary is the single most useful piece of planning available to a student in the Kingdom.

The parts that go out of date

Everything on this page was read from the awarding body on the date below. These are the statements most likely to have moved since.

  • The number of permitted sittings, the validity period and the registration calendar are set by ETEC and change. Confirm on the ETEC portal for your own year.
  • Admission weightings differ by university and by college and are republished annually.
  • Whether the humanities Tahsili is required for a given non-science college varies and changes.

What sits alongside it

Almost nobody sits only one of these.

What to prepare with

Official material first, and free unless marked otherwise. Every link here was fetched and confirmed to resolve on the date shown.

  • General Aptitude Test (قدرات) — official pageofficial syllabusfree

    What the test contains, how it is scored, how many sittings you get and how long a score stays valid. Register here.

    Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) · link checked 2026-09-06

  • Scholastic Achievement Admission Test (تحصيلي) — official pageofficial syllabusfree

    The science and humanities versions, the subject weightings and the registration windows.

    Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) · link checked 2026-09-06

  • ETEC — all tests and servicesofficial datesfree

    The registration portal and the current calendar for every national test, including STEP.

    Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) · link checked 2026-09-06

  • OpenStax free textbooksfree textbookfree

    Free university textbooks in the four Tahsili science subjects. In English, so useful alongside rather than instead of your school books — and unusually good at explaining the parts a syllabus states without justifying.

    OpenStax, Rice University · link checked 2026-09-06

  • Khan Academyfree coursefree

    The quantitative half of Qudurat rewards speed on ordinary mathematics. Free practice, and the arithmetic and algebra courses are the relevant ones.

    Khan Academy · link checked 2026-09-06

Nothing here is sold or sponsored, and there is no affiliate link on this site. Where an awarding body publishes its own past papers, those are listed instead of a revision guide — the UCAT and LNAT consortia both state outright that paid coaching is unnecessary and unendorsed, and the same is broadly true of every exam on this page.

Where this came from

Last checked 2026-09-05. Entry requirements are set by individual universities, change every year, and are the one thing on this page you should always confirm on the course page for the year you apply.