Campus Placement Evaluation Test: Topics, Questions, and Preparation

Most campus placement evaluation tests ask every candidate the same three things: how fast you can calculate, how clearly you can reason, and how well you read under time pressure. The content is predictable. What catches students off-guard is the pace.

This guide covers what each section actually measures, walks through representative solved questions from all three sections, and gives you a preparation plan that fits around a full semester load.

What the Campus Placement Evaluation Test Actually Covers

Campus placement evaluation tests are structured around three sections. Quantitative Aptitude tests mathematical problem-solving. Logical Reasoning tests pattern recognition and deductive thinking. Verbal Ability tests language comprehension and grammar accuracy.

Time is the real differentiator. The questions are not difficult by undergraduate standards. The challenge is that you’re expected to answer 15 to 25 questions per section in roughly 20 to 30 minutes. Candidates who have practised enough to recognize question patterns immediately will outperform candidates who understand the concepts but rebuild their approach from scratch each time.

Testing vendors and company platforms deliver these tests differently. Some companies build their own assessments; others use third-party vendors like SHL India, which runs the AMCAT platform used by hundreds of campus recruiters across India. Regardless of the delivery platform, the three-section structure and core topics below remain consistent across TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and most mass-hiring IT companies.

Section	Core Topic Areas
Quantitative Aptitude	Profit and loss, time and work, speed-distance-time, ratios and proportions, percentages, averages, simple and compound interest, permutation and combination, probability
Logical Reasoning	Number series, letter series, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, analogies, syllogisms, clocks and calendars, puzzles
Verbal Ability	Reading comprehension, grammar and sentence correction, vocabulary (synonyms and antonyms), idioms and phrases, para-jumbles, sentence completion

Most campus placement evaluation tests are time-limited at the section level, not just overall. Finishing one section slowly does not give you extra time in the next. Manage your time per section: if a question is taking more than 90 seconds, flag it and move on.

Quantitative Aptitude: Topics and Sample Questions

The Quantitative Aptitude section tests whether you can set up and solve word problems quickly. Questions fall into four broad clusters: arithmetic (profit and loss, percentages, averages), ratio problems (time and work, time-speed-distance, mixtures), number theory (HCF, LCM, factors), and combinatorics (permutation, combination, probability).

The most frequently tested single topic is time and work. For deeper practice on that specific topic, including the LCM shortcut that can cut solution time in half, see FACE Prep’s detailed guide to time and work questions.

Four representative questions with full solutions:

• Q1: A shopkeeper sells an article at a profit of 20%. The cost price is ₹500. What is the selling price?

• Answer: ₹600. SP = CP × (1 + profit%) = 500 × 1.20 = ₹600.

• Q2: A can complete a piece of work in 10 days. B can complete the same work in 15 days. How many days does it take for A and B working together?

• Answer: 6 days. A’s rate = 1/10 per day; B’s rate = 1/15 per day. Combined rate = 1/10 + 1/15 = 3/30 + 2/30 = 5/30 = 1/6. Together they finish the work in 6 days.

• Q3: A and B start a business by investing ₹20,000 and ₹30,000 respectively. The total profit at year-end is ₹15,000. What is A’s share of the profit?

• Answer: ₹6,000. Profit is split in the ratio of investment: A : B = 20,000 : 30,000 = 2 : 3. A’s share = (2/5) × 15,000 = ₹6,000.

• Q4: Find the simple interest on a principal of ₹5,000 at 6% per annum for 3 years.

• Answer: ₹900. SI = (Principal × Rate × Time) / 100 = (5,000 × 6 × 3) / 100 = ₹900.

The profit-and-loss formula (Q1) and the partnership ratio split (Q3) are the two highest-frequency patterns. Both take under 15 seconds once the formula is automatic. Spend the first week of your preparation drilling these until you don’t need to reconstruct the formula mid-test.

Logical Reasoning: Pattern Recognition Under Time Pressure

The Logical Reasoning section rewards students who have seen a question type before. Unlike the Quant section, there are no formulas to memorise. The preparation is about internalizing the solution approach for each type so the recognition is immediate.

Four question types appear in almost every campus placement logical reasoning section:

1. Number and letter series: Identify the pattern in consecutive differences or transformations, then apply it to find the next term.
2. Coding-decoding: Apply a consistent letter-shift rule to decode or encode a word. The rule is always consistent within the question — find it once and apply it.
3. Direction sense: Track cumulative movement across multiple turns using a mental north-south-east-west grid.
4. Syllogisms: Determine whether a conclusion follows necessarily from two given statements. The conclusion either follows or it doesn’t — there is no partial credit for “probably true.”

Four representative questions with full solutions:

• Q1: What is the next number in the series: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, ?

• Answer: 42. The differences between consecutive terms are 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. The pattern is consecutive even numbers. The next difference is 12, so the next term is 30 + 12 = 42.

• Q2: A person walks 5 km north, then turns right and walks 3 km, then turns right again and walks 5 km. In which direction is the person from the starting point?

• Answer: East. After 5 km north and then 5 km south, the person is back at the original north-south position. The 3 km eastward walk leaves the person 3 km east of the start.

• Q3: Statements: All pens are books. All books are papers. Conclusion: All pens are papers. True or false?

• Answer: True. All pens are books (given) and all books are papers (given). By transitive syllogism, all pens are papers follows necessarily.

• Q4: A clock shows 3:15. What is the angle between the hour hand and the minute hand?

• Answer: 7.5 degrees. At 3:00, the hour hand is at 90 degrees. In 15 minutes, the hour hand advances 15 × 0.5 = 7.5 degrees, reaching 97.5 degrees. The minute hand at 3:15 is at 15 × 6 = 90 degrees. Angle = 97.5 − 90 = 7.5 degrees.

The clock-angle question type appears in TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Cognizant tests. It trips up candidates who estimate the angle visually instead of calculating the hour hand’s precise position. The formula is straightforward; the error is always in forgetting that the hour hand moves during the minute interval.

Verbal Ability: The Section Most Students Underestimate

Verbal Ability is where prepared and underprepared candidates separate most sharply. Grammar and reading comprehension require a different kind of preparation than Quant and Reasoning, and students who ignore this section during their prep period pay for it in the final score.

Three areas appear consistently in campus placement verbal sections:

1. Grammar and sentence correction: Subject-verb agreement, tense consistency, preposition usage, and parallel structure. These are rule-based and can be mastered with a focused two-week review.
2. Vocabulary: Synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitutions, and idioms. High-frequency idioms repeat across company tests — build a list of 50 to 100 and test yourself on them weekly.
3. Reading comprehension: One or two passages, each followed by 3 to 5 inference or main-idea questions. Speed matters here; practise reading dense passages for the central argument rather than every detail.

Four representative questions with full solutions:

• Q1: Choose the grammatically correct sentence.

  • a) The teacher and the student was late.
  • b) The teacher and the student were late.
  • c) The teacher and the student is late.
  • d) The teacher and the student has been late.

• Answer: b) The teacher and the student were late. “The teacher and the student” is a compound subject and takes a plural verb.

• Q2: Select the correct improvement for: “He didn’t knew the answer.”

  • a) He doesn’t know the answer.
  • b) He didn’t knows the answer.
  • c) He didn’t know the answer.
  • d) He don’t know the answer.

• Answer: c) He didn’t know the answer. After the auxiliary verb “did” (negative past), the main verb stays in base form: “know”, not “knew”.

• Q3: What does the idiom “break the ice” mean?

  • a) To break something with ice
  • b) To end a relationship
  • c) To start a conversation in a social setting
  • d) To make a situation more difficult

• Answer: c) To start a conversation in a social setting. “Break the ice” means doing something to ease tension or awkwardness at the start of a new social situation.

• Q4: Select the correct improvement for: “I am looking forward to meet you.”

  • a) I am looking forward to meet you.
  • b) I am looking forward meeting you.
  • c) I am looking forward to meet with you.
  • d) I am looking forward to meeting you.

• Answer: d) I am looking forward to meeting you. “Looking forward to” is a prepositional phrase and takes a gerund: “meeting”, not the bare infinitive “meet”.

Preparation for Verbal is more about habit than sprint revision. Reading English editorial content for 15 minutes daily builds comprehension speed over weeks. Dedicate one session per week to grammar rule review. The rules tested on campus placement tests are a fixed, repeating set.

A 30-Day Preparation Plan

Two hours per day for 30 days is the preparation benchmark for students starting from a school-level mathematics foundation. The schedule below distributes effort across sections in the order of difficulty ramp-up: Quant first (formula-heavy, benefits from early drilling), Reasoning second (pattern recognition, needs exposure breadth), Verbal third (habit-dependent, needs sustained daily practice across all 30 days).

Week	Days	Focus
Week 1	Days 1–3	Quant: profit and loss, percentages, averages, ratios and proportions
Week 1	Days 4–5	Quant: time and work, time-speed-distance
Week 1	Days 6–7	Reasoning: number series, letter series, analogies
Week 2	Days 8–10	Quant: simple and compound interest, permutation and combination, probability
Week 2	Days 11–12	Reasoning: coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense
Week 2	Days 13–14	Verbal: grammar rules, sentence correction, common idioms
Week 3	Days 15–17	Mixed timed Quant sets (20 questions, 25-minute limit)
Week 3	Days 18–19	Reasoning: syllogisms, seating arrangements, clock-calendar problems
Week 3	Days 20–21	Verbal: vocabulary building and timed reading comprehension
Week 4	Days 22–25	Full mock tests daily — all three sections, timed, full error review
Week 4	Days 26–28	Weak-section focus: rework every question type missed in mock tests
Week 4	Days 29–30	Light revision only, no new topics

Note the Verbal column across weeks: grammar and vocabulary show up in Week 2, but daily English reading should run across all 30 days as a background habit. It’s the one area where cramming in Week 4 doesn’t work.

For book recommendations covering all three sections with actual previous-year placement questions, see FACE Prep’s placement preparation book guide.

The problem-framing skill at the core of the Quant and Logical Reasoning sections (identifying what is actually being asked before you start calculating) is the same skill that determines how effectively you use AI tools. Students who have built even one project with an LLM walk into technical interviews with a concrete answer when recruiters ask about their AI experience. TinkerLLM starts at ₹299 and runs from a browser tab, making it the lowest-friction way to develop that capability before your placement season starts.