Where it sits
One paper, three sections, one booklet
The test runs 11:30 to 1:30 as a single booklet, with a bell every thirty minutes. A child may move between sections freely: the times below are what NVS suggests, not a lock.
Section 1 Mental Ability + Environmental Studies 20 + 20 Q 25 + 25 marks 60 min
Section 2 Arithmetic 20 Q 25 marks 30 min
Section 3 Language 20 Q 25 marks 30 min
─────────────────────────────────────
80 Q 100 marks 2 hrs
Mental Ability is the first twenty questions, not the whole of Section 1. The other twenty in that section are Environmental Studies: fifteen multiple-choice questions and one passage followed by five more, drawn from the natural world, the human body, science in daily life and social surroundings. We train the first twenty. We do not sell you EVS, which is a Class 5 school subject already.
That smaller share still decides more than its size suggests. Section 1 carries the single largest block of marks, its 14-mark minimum must be cleared on its own, and when two children finish level it is Mental Ability and EVS that is compared first.
The five parts
What the twenty questions look like
NVS divides them into five parts of four. Every question is a figure. Nothing has to be read, and nothing has to be recalled, which is exactly why a child from a village school starts level with a child from a city one.
Q 01-04 Pattern Completion including alphabetical and number patterns
Q 05-08 Figure Series Completion
Q 09-12 Geometrical Figure Completion triangle, square, circle
Q 13-16 Mirror and Water Imaging
Q 17-20 Embedded Figure
Three habits for these twenty questions:
- Track one element, not the whole figure. In a series, follow a single dot, arrow or shaded corner from frame to frame and ask what happened to that one thing. Then discard every option where that one thing is wrong. Looking at the whole picture at once is how a child ends up guessing between two that both “look right”.
- Name the move before looking at the options. Say it out loud: “turns a quarter to the right”, “flips top to bottom”, “one more line each time”. A rule you can say is a rule you can check. A rule you only feel is a rule you can be talked out of by a clever wrong answer.
- Work backwards from the answer figures. Four options. Remove the ones that fail on sight first; once two are gone, a hard question is a choice between two, and a child who has practised knows which single detail separates them.
None of this is talent. It is the same handful of moves, met often enough that a ten-year-old stops having to think about them.
Concepts this exam tests
From the official syllabus, NVS Prospectus 2027, Mental Ability Test, Part IV: “Mirror and Water Imaging”.
Google Play
Indus Appstore