Updated September 2026
The tests between you and a banking analyst seat
Investment banks run some of the most selective graduate intakes anywhere, and the online assessment removes the overwhelming majority of applicants before a human reads a CV. The battery is consistent across the industry: a hard-cutoff numerical reasoning test, a logical test, a situational judgement stage, and a personality questionnaire whose output follows you into the superday. Every part of it is trainable — and candidates for whom the seat matters treat the two weeks before the deadline as an exam period. Persona Prep is an independent practice platform, not affiliated with any bank or test publisher; we train the format families, never original items.
The four stages, and what each one rewards
Numerical reasoning (the decisive one)
Tables, charts and financial data with one question per exhibit — percentage change, ratios, growth, currency. Banks weight it hardest and set the most aggressive cutoffs of any industry, because the day job is exactly this under pressure.
How to prepare: The arithmetic is easy; the marks die on reading the wrong row, answering the change when the level was asked, or losing the units. Timed runs until the reflexes hold — banks screen around the top quartile of graduate norm groups.
Logical / inductive reasoning
Abstract sequences and pattern grids, usually shorter than the numerical section. Used as a second cognitive signal that is immune to degree subject.
How to prepare: The rule families repeat (rotation, alternation, superposition, counting). Meeting each family once under time is most of the score.
Situational judgement
Client pressure, confidentiality, workload collisions, a colleague's mistake in a live deck — rank or rate the responses. Keys reward escalation, client protection and ownership without heroics.
How to prepare: Answer as a junior who protects the client and the desk, keeps their MD informed, and never sits on a known error. Consistency across scenarios is read.
Personality questionnaire
Forced-choice or Likert inventories (OPQ-style formats are common in finance) mapped against a profile: resilience, drive, precision, composure under pressure.
How to prepare: Know your real profile first and keep it coherent — the scoring cross-checks each trait across many rephrasings, and superday interviews probe whatever the profile flagged.
Why practice moves the numerical score so much
Bank numerical tests allow roughly a minute per exhibit, and unprepared candidates spend half of it decoding the table instead of answering the question. Familiarity with the exhibit types — which row carries the units, where the footnote hides, how the distractors are built from plausible misreadings — converts directly into time, and time into raw score. Our timed numerical practice runs the same exhibit families with a full worked solution on every generated item and a 1–9 stanine rank recalibrated against everyone who practises here.
The full report, live
Your profile, judged against the role's target zones
All 15 dimensions · role-specific targets · question-level risks
Unlock my full reportTrain the whole banking battery in one place: timed numerical and logical runs with worked solutions, and a full personality run with a consistency indicator. Free to start, no card.
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