National Talent Search Examination is conducted exclusively for VIII standard students. The main aim of this examination is to identify extra-ordinary talents and encourage them with scholarship. Mental Ability Test and Scholastic Aptitude Test are the two main stages of this exam. Only multiple choice questions will be asked in Mental Ability Test with four alternatives. But in the case of Scholastic Aptitude Test, there will be questions from a passage, apart from multiple choice type. A minimum of 40 marks (32 marks for SC/ST candidates) is required to qualify in each stage.

Mental Ability Test

A total of 100 questions will be asked in this stage and the candidates can score maximum one mark for each question. Main aim of this stage is to judge the overall mental ability of the candidates. Certain questions will be asked in such a way that the candidates can give answer according to their reasoning and thinking ability. There will be other questions which will test the ability of candidates to judge, evaluate or discriminate the facts given on a particular situation. There will be questions on creativity in which the candidates need to visualize in space. Spatial orientation is another topic included in this test.

Coding-decoding, block assembly and problem solving are included in the questions which test reasoning and thinking ability of the candidates. Candidates can expect some tricky questions in this section. Questions on Analogies, Classification and Series will be included in the section in which the candidates are required to give answers after judging, evaluating and discriminating the facts. In creativity section, there will be questions from Pattern perception and Hidden figures.

Scholastic Aptitude Test

In this stage, a total of 100 questions will be asked from the areas of Science, Mathematics and Social Science. There will be 40 questions from Science and Social Science each where as only 20 questions will be there in Mathematics. Type of questions may differ according to subjects asked in the test. Certain questions will be of matching type while some of them will be true or false statements. Arrange the sequence type questions may also be there. Besides multiple choice questions, there will be questions from a given passage.

Also, reasoning type questions will be included in each subject. Most of these questions will be from subjects. Therefore the candidates need to be thorough in these subjects. They are required to answer remaining type of questions with their logic and thinking ability.