TCS National Qualifier Test (NQT): pattern and preparation

TCS hires freshers mostly through the NQT. A foundation section decides most offers; an advanced section opens the higher-paid roles.

Usual rounds

1. Foundation section: Numerical ability, verbal ability and reasoning ability, against the clock.
2. Advanced section: Harder quant and reasoning, and coding problems, for the higher roles (often called Digital and Prime).
3. Interviews: Usually a technical interview on your projects, programming basics and subjects, then managerial and HR questions.

Topics to practise

• Percentages
• Profit and loss
• Time and work
• Time, speed and distance
• Number and letter series
• Coding-decoding
• Blood relations
• Syllogisms
• Error spotting and sentence correction
• Fill in the blanks

Tips

• Speed matters: practise timed tests, about a minute a question.
• Know your final-year project well: interviewers ask about it in depth.
• For the advanced section, practise arrays, strings and simple dynamic programming in one language.

Patterns change every year and differ by role: check the official notice for your drive.

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