STEM Thinking Skills Assessment Practice Test PDF to Print and Time

Most families who search for a STEM thinking skills practice PDF have one date on the calendar: the admissions test for the Academies of Loudoun, the Loudoun County Public Schools program that runs the Academy of Science, the Academy of Engineering and Technology, and the Monroe Advanced Technical Academy. Eighth graders who apply sit the STEM Thinking Skills Test along with a short written task, and seventh graders can start practicing a year early. Before you print anything, get clear on what the practice needs to copy.

The four sections in plain terms

The test is split into four kinds of reasoning, and none of them is a school unit you can revise from a textbook.

• Out-of-the-Box Algebra. Word problems and balance puzzles where you set up the relationship yourself. Knowing formulas helps less than spotting which two facts, compared, cancel out the unknown.
• Scientific Thinking. Reading an experiment or a small data table and deciding what the evidence supports, what it cannot support, and what a careful scientist would do next.
• Tech Logic. Following rules the way a computer does: step by step, in order, with no guessing about what the rule writer meant. Think robot commands, flowcharts, and if-then conditions.
• Spatial Relational Thinking. Turning, folding, and flipping shapes in your head, and tracking where a part ends up.

Question count, time limit and format of the STEM thinking skills test

According to Loudoun County Public Schools, the STEM thinking skills test has 33 multiple-choice questions and a 50-minute limit, taken on a computer. That comes to roughly 90 seconds a question, which is tight for a 13-year-old reading a diagram for the first time. Many items come with a picture, table, or diagram, so reading speed matters as much as math speed. The Writing Assessment Task is taken in the same sitting.

The writing task that sits beside the reasoning questions

Families often spend every prep hour on the reasoning questions and forget the writing. The county weighs the Writing Assessment Task along with the rest of the application. Any short timed piece goes better with a clear point, a few specific reasons or examples, and an ending that ties back to the point. A student who has only ever written long school essays can struggle to finish a tight one, so practice a handful of short timed responses too. Pick a simple prompt, set a timer for 20 minutes, and write a plan of three lines before the first sentence. Reading the result aloud the next day is the fastest way to hear what is unclear.

Insight Assessment writes it, Loudoun County gives it

The test is written by Insight Assessment, a company that builds critical thinking tests for schools and colleges, and it is run for the county by Loudoun County Public Schools. That matters when you shop for practice material. Neither Insight Assessment nor the county sells an official practice book, so every practice PDF you find online, including this one, is written by someone else from the published outline. Our older guide, the free STEM Thinking Skills Assessment practice test, has a different set of sample items if you want more than the sixteen below.

How to sit this STEM thinking skills practice set

These sixteen questions are original, written for this page, and set at roughly the level of the real test. Print the page or save it as a PDF from your browser's print menu, then cover each walkthrough with a sheet of paper. Give yourself 24 minutes for all sixteen, which is the real test's pace of about 90 seconds a question. Circle your answers first and check them only when the timer is done.

Out-of-the-Box Algebra practice question and walkthrough

Question 1. On a balance scale, 3 circles weigh the same as 2 squares. One square weighs the same as 1 circle plus 4 triangles. How many triangles weigh the same as 1 circle? (A) 4 (B) 6 (C) 8 (D) 12

Walkthrough. Swap each square for what it equals. Two squares become 2 circles plus 8 triangles. So 3 circles equal 2 circles plus 8 triangles. Take 2 circles off both sides and 1 circle is left balancing 8 triangles. The answer is C. The move being tested is substitution: replace a thing with its equal until only one unknown is left.

Question 2. A notebook and 3 erasers cost $4.10. The same notebook and 7 erasers cost $5.30. What does one eraser cost? (A) $0.25 (B) $0.30 (C) $0.40 (D) $1.20

Walkthrough. The notebook is in both orders, so the only difference is 4 extra erasers, and those cost $1.20. One eraser is $0.30, answer B. Students who write out two equations get there too, but slower. Comparing the two situations side by side is the out-of-the-box algebra shortcut this section rewards, and it saves close to a minute.

Question 3. Two stars and a moon are worth 17 points. One star and a moon are worth 11 points. How many points is the moon worth? (A) 5 (B) 6 (C) 4 (D) 11

Walkthrough. The first group has one more star than the second, and it is worth 6 more points. So a star is 6, and the moon is 11 minus 6, which is 5: answer A. B is the star, not the moon. Reading which value the question asks for is half the work here.

Question 4. A tile pattern grows by the same number of tiles each row. Row 1 has 5 tiles and row 4 has 14. How many tiles are in row 10? (A) 29 (B) 35 (C) 50 (D) 32

Walkthrough. From row 1 to row 4 is three steps, and the count grew by 9, so each row adds 3. Row 10 is nine steps past row 1: 5 plus 27 is 32, answer D. B comes from counting ten steps instead of nine. Count the gaps between rows, not the rows themselves.

Scientific Thinking practice question and walkthrough

Question 5. A class drops a rubber ball from three heights and measures the bounce. From 1 meter it bounces 0.6 meters, from 2 meters it bounces 1.2 meters, and from 3 meters it bounces 1.8 meters. About how high should it bounce from 2.5 meters? (A) 1.3 m (B) 1.5 m (C) 1.7 m (D) 2.5 m

Walkthrough. Each bounce is 60 percent of the drop. Sixty percent of 2.5 is 1.5, answer B. The skill is finding the pattern in a data table and using it between the measured points, which scientists call interpolation. Watch for D, the trap answer for anyone who reads the question too fast.

Question 6. Maya builds two paper airplanes and throws each one once. Design X flies 6 meters and design Y flies 4 meters. What should she do before she says design X flies farther? (A) Paint both planes the same color (B) Throw each design several times and compare the averages (C) Throw design Y from higher up (D) Build a third design

Walkthrough. One throw can be luck: a gust, a bad release. Repeating trials and comparing averages is how you separate a true difference from chance, answer B. Choice C changes two things at once, which makes the test unfair. The Next Generation Science Standards list planning and carrying out investigations as a core science practice, and this section leans on it hard.

Question 7. A student grows bean plants for two weeks under different hours of light a day and records the growth:

• 4 hours of light: 2 cm
• 8 hours of light: 5 cm
• 12 hours of light: 8 cm
• 16 hours of light: 8 cm

Which statement fits the data best? (A) More light always means more growth (B) Light makes no difference (C) Growth rises with light up to about 12 hours, then levels off (D) 16 hours of light gives the most growth

Walkthrough. Growth climbs from 4 to 12 hours, then 16 hours gives the same 8 cm as 12. So the rise stops somewhere past 12 hours: answer C. A ignores the last row. D is tempting because 16 is the biggest number, but it ties with 12. Read every row of a table before you pick a trend.

Question 8. A survey finds that students who eat breakfast tend to get higher test scores. Which conclusion does the survey support? (A) Eating breakfast causes higher scores (B) Skipping breakfast lowers every student's score (C) The survey proves nothing at all (D) Breakfast and higher scores go together, but something else could explain both

Walkthrough. A survey shows two things happening together. It cannot show that one causes the other. Families with steady morning routines might also have more study time, for example. That makes D the answer. A claims too much, and C throws away a real finding.

Tech Logic practice question and walkthrough

Question 9. A robot starts on a grid at square (0, 0), facing north. F moves it forward one square, R turns it 90 degrees right, and L turns it 90 degrees left. It runs the program F F R F F R F. Where does it stop? (A) (2, 1) (B) (2, 2) (C) (1, 2) (D) (2, 3)

Walkthrough. Track it one command at a time. Two steps north puts it at (0, 2). R turns it east, and two steps take it to (2, 2). R turns it south, and one step lands on (2, 1), answer A. B is where students land when they forget the last turn. Draw a tiny grid in the margin; on a timed test, a sketch beats doing it in your head.

Question 10. A house alarm sounds if the front door is open and it is after 10 p.m., or if any window is open at any time. Which situation does not set it off? (A) Door open at 11 p.m., windows shut (B) Door shut, a window open at noon (C) Door open at 9 p.m., windows shut (D) Door open at 9 p.m., a window open

Walkthrough. Check each case against both rules. A meets the door rule. B and D meet the window rule. C fails the door rule because it is before 10 p.m., and no window is open, so the alarm stays quiet: answer C. Tech logic questions reward reading "and" and "or" exactly as written.

Question 11. A program starts with x = 2. It repeats one step 4 times: double x, then subtract 1. What is x at the end? (A) 9 (B) 17 (C) 15 (D) 33

Walkthrough. Write each pass down. 2 becomes 3, then 5, then 9, then 17: answer B. A is where you stop after three passes. Keeping a small running list is faster than holding the numbers in your head.

Question 12. In a secret code, CAT is written DBU. Using the same rule, how is DOG written? (A) CNF (B) EPG (C) DPH (D) EPH

Walkthrough. Each letter moves one step forward in the alphabet: C to D, A to B, T to U. Do the same to DOG and you get EPH, answer D. A moves the letters backward. B forgets to shift the last letter. Find the rule from one example, then apply it to every letter.

Spatial Relational Thinking practice question and walkthrough

Question 13. A square sheet of paper is folded in half from top to bottom, then in half again from left to right. One hole is punched through the middle of the folded square. How many holes are there when you unfold it? (A) 1 (B) 2 (C) 4 (D) 8

Walkthrough. Two folds stack four layers of paper, and the punch goes through all of them, so the answer is C. The holes sit one in the middle of each quarter of the sheet. Try it with scrap paper once and this whole family of spatial relational thinking practice questions gets easier.

Question 14. An arrow drawn on a card points up. You turn the card a quarter turn clockwise, then flip it over from left to right like a page in a book. Which way does the arrow point now? (A) Up (B) Down (C) Left (D) Right

Walkthrough. The quarter turn clockwise makes the arrow point right. Flipping the card left to right mirrors it, so right becomes left: answer C. Doing the moves in order, one at a time, is the whole trick. Students who try to picture both moves at once often pick D.

Question 15. A wooden cube is painted on all six faces, then cut into 27 equal small cubes. How many small cubes have paint on exactly two faces? (A) 6 (B) 8 (C) 24 (D) 12

Walkthrough. Paint on two faces means a cube that sits on an edge of the big cube but not at a corner. A cube has 12 edges, and each edge has one such middle cube, so the answer is D. B counts the corners, which have paint on three faces.

Question 16. You look at a plain clock with no numbers in a mirror. The hands seem to show 3:00. What time is it really? (A) 9:00 (B) 3:00 (C) 6:00 (D) 12:00

Walkthrough. A mirror swaps left and right. The minute hand points straight up, so it stays on 12. The hour hand looks like it points right, to 3, so it really points left, to 9: answer A.

Answer key: 1 C, 2 B, 3 A, 4 D, 5 B, 6 B, 7 C, 8 D, 9 A, 10 C, 11 B, 12 D, 13 C, 14 C, 15 D, 16 A.

Score your printed set by section, not only as a total. Two misses in the same section tell you far more than two misses spread across the page. On the real test, the county reports one scaled score, and it is only one piece of the application.

What the 260 to 300 score range means for your application

Loudoun County Public Schools reports STEM thinking skills results on a scale from 260 to 300. The number you get back is not how many of the 33 you got right. That raw count is converted onto the band so results can be compared across test forms. The county does not publish a cutoff score, and you should be wary of any prep site that names one. Reviewers weigh the score next to the Writing Assessment Task and the rest of the application, and results arrive by mail in the spring.

For practice, a simple rule works: if a student gets twelve or more of the sixteen questions above right in 24 minutes, pace is fine and the next step is harder material. Four or five means one section is dragging the rest down. Three or fewer usually means the student is reading too slowly, not reasoning badly, so timed practice will help more than new content.

Keeping an error log after each timed run

By test day, the most useful page a student owns is a one-page list of their own mistakes. After every timed run, write one line per miss: the question number, the section, what went wrong in a few words, and the fix. Keep the wording plain, such as "read or as and" or "forgot the last turn." After two or three runs, the same five or six causes show up again and again, and those become the checklist the student reads the night before. Parents can help by asking the student to explain one missed question out loud each day. If they can teach it back, it has stuck. If they cannot, it goes back on the list for another try later in the week.

Our guide to what a logical reasoning score tells you goes deeper on reading a score like this without overreacting to it.

The obvious group is eighth graders in Loudoun County who plan to apply to one of the academies, plus seventh graders who want an early start. For them, a full timed practice run is the single most useful thing they can do, mostly because the format is new. Few middle schoolers have seen a robot-command puzzle or a paper-folding question on a test before, and the first time should not be test day.

Parents get a lot out of sitting one practice question beside their child, too. You learn fast whether the problem is the reasoning, the reading, or nerves, and the fix for each is not the same. Students outside Loudoun who like puzzles can use the set as plain brain training, since the four skills show up in math contests, science fairs, and coding clubs.

Who does not need it? A student who is not applying and does not enjoy puzzles gains little from a timed drill. And a student who already scores well under time should spend the last weeks resting and reading, not grinding more sets. If your student is also starting to wonder what fields suit them in general, our career quiz for teens guide is a lighter place to begin than any test.

Thinking skills assessment books and papers: which test they cover

Search for a thinking skills assessment book and most of what comes back is about the Thinking Skills Assessment, or TSA, a UK admissions test that Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing ran for courses at Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL. Its first section had 50 multiple-choice questions on problem solving and critical thinking in 90 minutes. According to its Wikipedia entry, all three universities have since dropped it, with Oxford's last sitting in October 2025. Old TSA books and past papers still sell, and some of the critical thinking questions are fine reasoning practice for a strong eighth grader. But they are pitched at 17-year-olds, lean on long written arguments, and do not include the tech logic or spatial items the Loudoun test uses. Buy one only as extra material, never as the main plan. Our separate guide to the UK thinking skills assessment covers that test in full.

Four weeks is enough for most students if the time goes to the right sections. Plan on about 30 to 40 minutes a day, five days a week. Longer sessions tend to turn into tired guessing.

Week by week: what to practice and when

• Week 1: diagnose. Sit the sixteen questions above in 24 minutes. Mark each miss by section and by cause: did not understand, ran out of time, or careless slip. The section with the most misses gets the most time from here on.
• Week 2: drill the weak sections. Two short sessions on the weakest section, one on the next weakest, and one mixed session. For algebra, Khan Academy's free algebra unit covers word problems and systems of equations at no cost. For spatial questions, paper, scissors, and a pencil beat any app.
• Week 3: first full timed run. Find or build a 33-question set covering all four sections and sit it in 50 minutes in one go. Afterward, give the review more time than the test took. If you cannot find a full set, build one: combine the sixteen questions here with the samples in our earlier guide, then have the student write a few new ones in the same four styles. Writing a question, trap answers included, is one of the fastest ways to understand how the test sets its traps.
• Week 4: second timed run, then rest. Do a second full set early in the week and review it. Stop new practice two days before the test. Sleep does more for reasoning speed at that point than one more worksheet.

Pacing: about 90 seconds a question

Fifty minutes for 33 questions is 90 seconds each, give or take a second. Use checkpoints rather than watching every question: be around question 11 by minute 17, and around question 22 by minute 33. If a question is still unclear after a minute, pick your best guess, flag it, and keep going. The easy question at number 30 is worth as much as the hard one at number 12, and you only reach it if you keep moving. Ask the school whether wrong answers cost points; if they do not, never leave one blank.

The night before and the morning of the test

Pack light and plan to do nothing new. The evening before, put away the practice sets and do something ordinary, like a walk or a show. On the morning of the test, eat a proper breakfast, arrive early enough to find the room without rushing, and bring scrap paper and a pencil if the rules allow them, since the tech logic and spatial questions go faster with a quick sketch. If one early question goes badly, let it go. Each question is worth the same, and a calm student who finishes the set usually beats a rattled one who stalls at question five.

Where to find a free STEM thinking skills practice PDF worth your time

Start with the set on this page and the sample items in our earlier practice test guide, both free with no sign-up. After that, check your middle school counselor and the Academies of Loudoun information sessions, which sometimes share sample items. Files on document upload sites vary a lot; run the four checks above before you trust one.

One last thing for parents. A high score means your child cracks unfamiliar puzzles quickly. Liking the daily grind of an engineer or a lab chemist is a separate matter, and no 50-minute test measures it. That question comes back when majors and first jobs arrive. When it does, a Pigment career test hands back a 36-page report on how a person works and the sort of work that holds up for them, with named roles that fit, STEM and otherwise. It is written for adults and older students, so it suits those later choices better than eighth grade.

See Where STEM Sits Among the Roles That Fit You

For older students and parents: a career test built on forced-choice questions that names the roles, in STEM and beyond, that fit how you work. $79.99.

Try the Pigment career test