Hi... I am on the verge of leaving my secondary school and joining a local college for the course C&G 2330 electrical installation. I reach the requirements for the course but there is a little daunting fact that there is an aptitude test during the interview for this course. The bad thing is less than 50% pass the test and no information can be found about the test. All I know that maths and science will be included
I really don't want to be one of the 50% or so that fail the test. Please can anyone predict what will be on this aptitude test if anyone has took it as I do not know which parts of maths and science I should revise for. This would greatly benefit mine and other people's outcome
Hi Dan, My eldest son is training to become a heating technician/plumber, he had to take a similar test and tells me that it was very very easy, I believe that one of the questions was, what is
christ i didnt kno the pluming test was that easy! thing is my adviser looks at the invite and she reads out loud "APITUTE TEST!" then looks at me giving me the impression that im gonna die... but that isnt gonna stop me
Reminds me of when I was at college studying electronics/elec eng and we had to do economics. As with most uni courses it seemed that for the subjects taught by other departments we were given their most useless and/or inexperienced[1] lecturers. This one was a prize example. All I can remember of the subject was his 'lambda' factor: you used this by multiplying both sides of an equation by it, then letting it tend to zero, whereupon you could 'prove' that 1 == 2 ! (I think this must be a principle of much government economics.)
[1] this worked to our advantage where the rookie lecturer was actually quite good but his own department hadn't realised it yet. Our maths lecturer was like that. I remember him illustrating random deviations of motion by climbing up on the long bench on the stage in the lecture theatre and pretending to be a drunk staggering along a road. One of the students obviously found this too much and simply walked out.
One of our "digital computing" lecturers was trying to explain the basics of CPU operation including registers. This was in 1966 !
The lecture was shared with some thickies from the heavy elec eng. course, they were happier with "Potier Triangles" and steam tables.
After a while one of a group of them piped up that he couldn't understand how you got the data into a CPU register.
After about 10 mins of "failure to comprehend" the lecturer in exasperation drew a 1 foot diameter "key" (as in the keyboard on the Flexiwriter), and said "You press it". At which point I burst out laughing and got chucked out. :-(
What was missing of course was any explanation of the functions fulfilled by what we now call the Operating System, keyboard monitor, or BIOS etc. Not surprising really since it was 1966 and they hadn't been invented or at least formalised by then..
The point that was getting at the thicky heavy elec eng student, but which he couldn't express, that at initial power up the registers were at best empty or filled with random data. The (Generic) CPU alone as described couldn't do anything until so some sort of a start up loader arrangement was running, was perfectly valid.
The judgement I come to at this time re-reading my own post is that the lecturer didn't know enough of his subject, even to appreciate what the difficulty was that the Heavy E.E. student had.
I'd already come to the conclusion the place was a dump. ;-)
the aptitude test is to see whether you'd be suitable for that line of field.
Its probably straight forward mathamatics and basic science,if you done these at school and have qualifications for these then you shouldn't have a problem.
If you are still uneasy then approach the college tutor who's taking you for this aptitude test and he'll advise, as with any college enrolement they have to steer you with some knowledge of whats going to be involved.
All the very best luck. Don't get het up by an aptitude test. You do best to relax, answer as many questions as you can; don't waste time puzzling over questions that don't make immediate sense as you can go back once you've answered the ones you can do in a flash.
Now (this is meant kindly) aptitude tests arre a mixed bunch some have been carefully drawn up from examination of what aptitudes people already successful in the chosen field show. Others are based on little more than guesswork as to what aptitudes might be relevant.
If the college knows what it is up to, you'll get the first type. Respect the result, if the result shows you are likely to make a good electrician and are ready to start the course, PUSH ON.
The other result is NOT a disaster as it means you're lucky to have time to pause and rethink what you really want to do. You surely wouldn't want to spend a year or two trying to learn the job & then find you're really up the Khyber, would you?
If the upshot is that you still really do want to become an electrician maybe you need to go over with your school as to why the aptitude test flagged you out. Is it the practical side? Technical intuition? Do you need more study just to cope with the science or maths on the course? Readiness with which you can understand technical instructions? Maybe the test has shown you up as having skills in quite different spheres. Are you better with people than with machines? Maybe you should try a more general aptitude test which might point you in a different direction. Maybe you need to spend another school session to get up to the college entry standard.
Think carefully why you've been thinking of becoming an electrician. Many people go into a particular job simply because it looked glam when they read about in magazines or saw it on TV. That is a mistake. You need to look at the innards of the work. Have you worked with an electrician? Have you seen at close hand what the job entails? New installation work can be quite clean. Maintenance work often leaves you dirty. Feeding, pulling and threading cables, even small ones, is surprsingly hard physical work. OTOH a fair amount of precise understanding is required of moderately advanced electrical theory. Electricians need to be methodical and accurate. There's a lot of dull routine in testing. Electricans that make mistakes tend to disappear in a flash.
Be enthusiastic in what you do. If you can't be enthuisiastic DO SOMETHING ELSE.
All the very best for the years ahead - whatever you do.
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