General academic module
Free dMAT subject module mock test — General Academic Module.
The dMAT subject module (General Academic Module) gives you a text and single-choice questions on it — four options each, one correct. Practise it here in the same layout as the official dMAT: the passage on one side, the questions on the other, then check your answers. Start with the four official sample exercises, then work through the new exam-style sets across engineering, mathematics, business, economics, computing and the social sciences.
In the real exam you have 90 minutes for the whole subject module, and you are not tested on your own field — the point is how quickly you take in an unfamiliar academic text. These exercises are untimed so you can study the reasoning; the sample questions do not necessarily match the exam's difficulty.
01About these exercises
Official exercises plus new exam-style sets.
Set 1 follows the g.a.s.t. preparatory materials: its questions, options and correct answers are the official ones. The later sets are unofficial exam-style practice written in the same format, and new sets are added regularly. In Set 1 the reading passages are condensed explainers that carry every fact a question needs rather than the verbatim exam texts, and the figures are recreated from the values in the official solutions. Topics in the real exam range far more widely — engineering, computational and natural sciences, business, economics and the humanities among them.
Based on the official g.a.s.t. preparatory materials for the dMAT, published at d-mat.de.
02Format and timing
What the general academic module actually asks.
The module runs for 90 minutes. You read an academic text and answer single-choice questions on it, each with four options and exactly one correct answer. Unlike the three core subtests, it is not split into 25-minute blocks — the time is yours to spend across the whole module.
Every fact a question needs is in the passage. The text will usually sit outside your own field, and that is the design: what is being measured is how fast you take in an unfamiliar academic argument, not what you already know about its subject.
03The four exercises
What each one drills, and how to read it.
Four passages across four fields. The notes below describe what each exercise is testing and how to approach it — they are our own commentary, not the passages themselves.
- 01
Vector Calculations
MathematicsComponents, magnitudes, the scalar, vector and triple products.
What it tests
Holding several defined operations apart when they share notation. The passage defines the scalar, vector and triple products in quick succession, and the questions turn on which one a given expression is asking for.
How to approach it
Do not try to memorise the formulas as you read. Note where each definition sits in the text, then come back to it when a question names that product. Most of the work is locating the right definition, not computing with it — and the figures carry values the prose does not repeat, so read them as part of the text rather than as decoration.
8 single-choice questions
- 02
Hydrostatics
Natural sciencesPressure with depth, buoyancy, and floating and submerged bodies.
What it tests
Following a chain of physical dependencies. Pressure depends on depth, buoyancy depends on displaced volume, and whether a body floats depends on the relationship between two densities.
How to approach it
Get the direction of each relationship straight before you look at the questions: what increases when what else increases. Several questions ask what happens to one quantity when another changes, which you can answer from the direction alone without doing any arithmetic. That is usually the fastest route.
6 single-choice questions
- 03
Optimal Order Quantity
Business administrationThe economic order quantity model and how its inputs move the result.
What it tests
Reading a model rather than a narrative. One formula sits at the centre of the passage, and the questions probe what each input does to the output.
How to approach it
Identify the inputs and what each one represents before anything else — that is the whole passage in four or five lines. Then treat every question as asking which way the result moves when one input rises. This is the exercise where the general academic module most resembles a comprehension test with numbers attached rather than a maths problem.
7 single-choice questions
- 04
Research Strategies in Social Sciences
Social sciencesQuantitative vs qualitative strategies and their research processes.
What it tests
Keeping two parallel schemes distinct. The passage runs quantitative and qualitative strategies side by side, and the questions rely on you not blurring their stages together.
How to approach it
Build the contrast as you read: for each stage, what does each strategy do differently. A humanities or social-science passage is where candidates from technical backgrounds usually lose the most time, and it is worth practising precisely because it will feel further from your own field than the others.
6 single-choice questions
04dMAT preparation
Three habits that save time in this module.
Read the questions before the passage
The passage is longer than what any single question needs. Skimming the questions first turns a full careful read into a targeted one, and tells you which paragraphs carry the load before you spend time on them.
Expect a field that is not yours
The module deliberately draws on engineering, natural sciences, business, economics and the humanities. You are not being tested on subject knowledge — every fact a question needs is in the text — so unfamiliarity is the normal condition, not a sign you picked the wrong exercise.
Treat figures and tables as text
Values often appear only in a figure or a table and never in the prose. Candidates who read past them end up hunting for numbers that were on screen the whole time.
Keep going
Next on dmatgrid
- Latin squaresA timed core-module drill: a 5×5 grid where you name one marked cell.
- Mathematical equationsA timed core-module drill: integers 1–20, one solution per system.
- Figure sequencesA timed core-module drill: continue a series as the figures move and turn.
- Exam patternHow the modules fit together and how long each one runs.