The Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude (WTMA)™ is a 60-question, 30-minute mechanical aptitude test administered by Criteria Corp that measures how quickly you can learn to operate, maintain, install, and repair equipment and machinery. Employers use it to screen candidates for hands-on technical roles, and unlike older mechanical tests, the Wiesen test of mechanical aptitude is built around everyday objects, not engineering jargon. This guide covers the exact format, honest raw-and-percentile scoring, sample questions with worked explanations, how it compares to the Bennett and Ramsay tests, and a step-by-step way to prepare — plus a free practice test you can try right on this page.
What Is the Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude (WTMA)?
The Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude is a short, pictorial mechanical-reasoning test. It does not check what you already know about machines — it predicts how easily you will learn to work with them. Because the questions use pictures of familiar objects and require almost no calculation, the WTMA is meant to give every candidate a fair shot regardless of prior technical training or educational background.
Who publishes the WTMA
The WTMA is published and administered by Criteria Corp, a pre-employment testing company whose assessments are delivered online through the HireSelect platform. The test was authored by psychologist Dr. Joel Wiesen. Employers license it to screen applicants; candidates almost always sit it as one step in a hiring process, often bundled with a cognitive-ability or personality test from the same publisher.
What the WTMA actually measures
The WTMA measures mechanical aptitude — your ability to understand and reason about physical and mechanical relationships. In plain terms: can you look at a lever, a pulley, a gear, or a container of liquid and predict what will happen? The test is designed to forecast on-the-job performance in roles where you have to operate, maintain, install, or repair equipment, so a strong score signals to an employer that you will pick up the mechanical side of the job quickly.
Who has to take it — roles and industries
Employers most commonly use the WTMA to screen for hands-on technical positions, including:
- Machine operators and production workers
- Electricians and apprentices
- Construction workers and skilled tradespeople
- Field service technicians
- Mechanics and maintenance staff
Not affiliated with or endorsed by Criteria Corp. This is unofficial practice material — original simulated questions only.
WTMA Test Format: 60 Questions in 30 Minutes
The format is deliberately simple, and that simplicity is the point. You get 60 multiple-choice questions and 30 minutes to answer them. Every question is illustrated, and each one usually offers three answer options. There is no essay, no scratch paper full of formulas, and no section breaks — just a steady march through 60 short items.
Question style: everyday objects, not technical jargon
This is what sets the WTMA apart. Instead of cutaway diagrams of industrial machinery, the questions show familiar, everyday objects — pitchers of water, ladders leaning on walls, wheelbarrows, seesaws, hand tools, and coffee cups. The text is written at roughly a 6th-grade reading level, and no prior mechanical training is assumed. The idea is that a warehouse worker and a mechanical engineer both walk in on equal footing; what the test rewards is intuition about how the physical world behaves, not memorized technical vocabulary.
Three answer options and no calculations
Most WTMA questions give you three choices, and the great majority require no math at all — you reason your way to the answer rather than computing it. A handful of items involve simple proportional thinking (twice as far, half as fast), but you will not be doing long arithmetic under the clock. If a question looks like it needs a calculator, you are almost certainly overthinking it.
Trust your first read. On a test built from everyday objects, the answer that feels obviously right after two seconds is usually correct. Second-guessing burns time you do not have and pushes you toward the trick you imagined rather than the physics that is actually shown.
The 30-second-per-question reality (timing math)
Do the arithmetic and the real challenge appears. Sixty questions in thirty minutes works out to exactly 30 seconds per question if you want to reach the end. That is not much time to read a stem, study an illustration, and pick an answer — and it is why candidates who know the content still run out of clock. The WTMA is less a test of what you know and more a test of how fast you can apply it.
| Whole test | Questions | Time | Per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wiesen WTMA | 60 | 30 min | 30 s |
Answer every single question — there is no penalty for a wrong answer on the WTMA. If an item is eating your 30 seconds, pick your best guess, mark nothing to come back to, and move on. A blank scores exactly the same as a wrong answer: zero. A guess at least has a one-in-three chance.
What Subjects Does the WTMA Cover?
The WTMA draws from a broad but shallow pool of everyday physics. You do not need to master any one area in depth — you need a working intuition across all of them. The topics that appear most often are pulleys, gears, and levers, so those deserve the bulk of your prep time.
Simple machines: levers, pulleys, gears, springs
The heart of the test. Expect questions on which way a meshed gear turns, how a pulley block trades force for distance, where to place a load on a lever to balance it, and how a spring stretches under different loads. These are the highest-yield topics on the whole exam.
Force, motion, gravity and center of gravity
Which object falls faster, why a braking truck throws an unsecured crate forward, why a tall narrow cabinet tips more easily than a short wide one, and where a loaded pole balances. Center-of-gravity and inertia questions are common because they show up everywhere in real trade work.
Fluids, pressure, heat and everyday physics
Expect items on fluid pressure, why a metal handle heats up faster than a wooden one, how heat makes metal expand, and how warm air rises. This is where the classic “pitchers of water” and “which stays colder” questions live.
Basic electricity and tools
A smaller slice of the test covers simple electrical ideas (series vs. parallel bulbs, what a ground pin does), magnets, friction, material properties, and the correct use of common hand tools. You will not need circuit math — just common-sense reasoning about how these things work.
WTMA Sample Questions (With Worked Explanations)
The best way to understand the WTMA is to work through it. Below are three simulated, WTMA-style questions — they are original practice items, not actual test content, but they mirror the everyday-object style, the three-option format, and the reasoning the real test rewards. Read each one, decide your answer, then reveal the explanation.
A metal ladle and a wooden spoon of the same length are both left standing in a pot of simmering soup, with their handles sticking up out of the liquid. After a few minutes, which handle feels hotter to the touch?
A. The wooden spoon’s handle B. Both handles feel equally hot C. The metal ladle’s handle
Show the answer & how to get it
Answer: C. Metal is a good conductor of heat, so heat travels quickly up the metal ladle from the hot soup all the way to the tip of its handle. Wood is a poor conductor, so almost no heat reaches the top of the wooden spoon in the same few minutes. The metal handle feels much hotter. This is a classic “everyday objects” item — no formula needed, just the everyday knowledge that a metal spoon in hot food burns your fingers while a wooden one does not.
A 60-pound child sits 6 feet to the left of a seesaw’s center pivot. How far from the pivot must a 90-pound child sit on the right side to balance the seesaw?
A. 3 feet B. 6 feet C. 5 feet D. 4 feet
Show the answer & how to get it
Answer: D. A seesaw balances when the turning effect (weight × distance from the pivot) is equal on both sides. The left side produces 60 lb × 6 ft = 360 ft-lb, so the right side must also produce 360 ft-lb. Divide: 360 ÷ 90 lb = 4 feet. The heavier rider always sits closer to the pivot. A few WTMA items add a fourth option like this to test whether you actually did the balance calculation rather than guessing.
Two identical springs, A and B, hang side by side from the same beam. A 10-pound block hangs from spring A and a 20-pound block hangs from spring B. Which block hangs lower?
A. The block on spring A B. The block on spring B C. Both hang at the same height
Show the answer & how to get it
Answer: B. Identical springs stretch in proportion to the load they carry. The 20-pound block pulls with twice the force of the 10-pound block, so spring B stretches about twice as far, and its block ends up lower. No numbers to crunch — just the rule that more load means more stretch on the same spring.
Try it yourself: free interactive WTMA practice
Reading explanations is one thing; sitting the format under a clock is another. Take a short, ungated WTMA-style practice test right here — no email required — and get an instant explanation after every question.
How the WTMA Is Scored: Raw Score and Percentile
The WTMA gives two numbers: a raw score and a percentile. Understanding the difference is the single most useful thing you can know about your results, because employers care far more about the percentile than the raw count.
Your raw score (out of 60)
Your raw score is simply the number of questions you answered correctly, out of 60. There is no penalty for wrong answers, so every question you leave blank is a missed chance — always guess. The raw score on its own does not tell you much, though, which is why Criteria converts it into a percentile.
Your percentile ranking — what it really means
The percentile compares your raw score to a large group of prior test-takers. Criteria’s own published example makes this concrete: a raw score of 45 out of 60 corresponds to roughly the 66th percentile — meaning you scored better than about 66% of the people in the comparison group. The percentile is what puts your result in context, and it is the figure a hiring manager typically looks at first.
Score bands: high, mid and low ranges
Criteria’s score report groups results into broad bands: a percentile below 25 is treated as a low range, 25 to 80 as a mid-range, and above 80 as a high range. Landing in the high band tells an employer you are near the top of the applicant pool; a mid-range score is solidly in the pack. Because the bands are wide, moving up even one band with focused practice can meaningfully change how your application looks.
Is there a passing score? (what employers actually do)
Here is the honest answer that most sites gloss over: there is no universal WTMA passing score. Criteria does not set one. Each employer chooses its own cutoff (called a benchmark) based on the demands of the specific role and the strength of its applicant pool. A physically demanding maintenance job might set a lower bar than a competitive apprenticeship. You will often see a flat “80% pass rate” quoted around the web — treat that as an unverified third-party estimate, not an official Criteria threshold. The practical takeaway is simple: aim to score as high as you can, because the only cutoff that matters is the one your specific employer sets.
Because scoring is percentile-based, you are competing against other applicants, not against a fixed line. Every extra correct answer nudges your percentile up. That is exactly why timed, format-accurate practice pays off — a handful of questions you would have rushed past can move you into a higher band.
How Hard Is the WTMA?
Honest answer: the content is not hard, but the pace is. The concepts sit at a 6th-grade reading level and rely on common-sense physics you have seen your whole life. What trips people up is answering 60 of them in 30 minutes without rushing into careless mistakes.
Why the time limit is the real challenge
Give most people the WTMA untimed and they would score very well. The 30-second-per-question ceiling is what turns an easy test into a demanding one. Candidates who are confident on the concepts still leave questions blank simply because the clock runs out. Building speed — not learning harder material — is the main job of your preparation.
Common mistakes that cost points
- Overthinking easy items. Looking for a trick that is not there wastes your 30 seconds and talks you out of the right answer.
- Rushing the illustration. Glancing at a picture and missing which gear is bigger or which end is the pivot flips an easy point into a wrong one.
- Leaving blanks. With no wrong-answer penalty, an unanswered question is a wasted opportunity — always guess.
- Losing pacing. Spending 90 seconds on one tough item quietly steals the time from three later ones you would have gotten right.
Do you need mechanical experience?
No — and that is by design. The WTMA is deliberately built so that people without formal mechanical training can do well, because it is trying to measure raw aptitude, not existing expertise. Prior hands-on experience can give you a small head start on intuition, but a motivated candidate with no trade background can absolutely score in the high band with focused practice on the format and the core simple-machine topics.
WTMA vs Bennett (BMCT) vs Ramsay: How They Differ
If you have been told you must take “a mechanical aptitude test,” it is worth confirming which one, because the three most common tests differ in length, style, and difficulty. Here is how the WTMA stacks up against its two closest siblings.
| Test | Questions / Time | Style | Options |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wiesen WTMA | 60 / 30 min | Everyday objects, lower adverse impact | 3 |
| Bennett BMCT-II | 55 / 25 min | Technical scenes and machinery | 3 |
| Ramsay MAT-5 | 36 / 20 min | 4 set content categories | 4 |
WTMA vs Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test
The Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (BMCT-II) is the WTMA’s closest relative — the two correlate strongly (research puts it around .70 to .80), so they measure much the same underlying ability. The key difference is presentation: the Bennett leans on more technical, workshop-style scenes (gears in machinery, structural loads), while the WTMA deliberately uses everyday objects and is designed to reduce adverse impact across different groups of test-takers. The Bennett is also slightly tighter at 55 questions in 25 minutes.
WTMA vs Ramsay Mechanical Aptitude Test
The Ramsay Mechanical Aptitude Test (MAT-5) is shorter — 36 questions in 20 minutes with four answer options — and it is organized around four defined content categories: household objects, production & maintenance, science & physics, and hand & power tools. Compared with the WTMA, the Ramsay is a touch more explicit about the trade context of its items. All three tests reward the same core skill, so prep transfers well between them.
Which one will you take?
Check your invitation email — it usually names the test and the publisher (Criteria Corp for the WTMA, Pearson for the Bennett, Ramsay Corporation for the MAT). If it does not, prepping on WTMA-style everyday-object questions is a safe bet, since that skill carries over to all three. Our complete mechanical aptitude guide covers every major test side by side.
How to Prepare for the WTMA (Step-by-Step)
Preparation for the WTMA is not about memorizing facts — there is no fact sheet to cram. It is about building format familiarity and speed so that on test day the 30-second clock feels comfortable instead of frantic. Here is a simple four-step plan.
2 full Wiesen-style timed simulations (60 Q / 30 min) + every other major mechanical test
- 2 full WTMA-style simulations — 60 questions, 30 minutes, everyday-object style, exactly like the real format
- 1,200+ practice questions — every answer explained step by step
- All timed simulations: Bennett-style, Ramsay-style, Wiesen-style, EIAT, IBEW, CAST, ASVAB
- 10 topic drills (gears, pulleys, levers, springs, circuits…) with instant explanations
$67 one-time · 365-day access · instant online access
Independent prep — not affiliated with or endorsed by Criteria Corp. Original simulated questions only.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many questions are on the Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude?
The WTMA has 60 multiple-choice questions and a 30-minute time limit. Each question is illustrated with everyday objects and usually offers three answer options. That works out to about 30 seconds per question, so pacing is the main challenge.
What is a good score on the WTMA and is there a passing score?
Criteria Corp sets no universal passing score — each employer picks its own cutoff. Scores are reported as a percentile, and landing above the 80th percentile (the “high” band) puts you near the top of the applicant pool. Aim as high as you can.
How is the Wiesen test scored — raw score or percentile?
Both. Your raw score is the number correct out of 60, then Criteria converts it to a percentile that compares you to prior test-takers. Their published example: a raw 45 equals about the 66th percentile. There is no penalty for wrong answers, so answer every question.
How long is the WTMA and how much time do I get per question?
You get 30 minutes for all 60 questions, which is exactly 30 seconds per question if you want to finish. Most candidates find the content manageable but the clock tight, so the biggest gains come from practicing at that pace, not from learning harder material.
How is the WTMA different from the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test?
Both measure the same core mechanical aptitude and correlate strongly (about .70 to .80). The WTMA uses everyday objects and is designed to lower adverse impact; the Bennett (55 questions, 25 minutes) leans on more technical machinery scenes. Practice transfers well between them.
Do I need mechanical experience to pass the Wiesen test?
No. The WTMA is built so people without formal mechanical training can do well — it measures aptitude, not existing expertise, and assumes no prior technical knowledge. Focused practice on the format and the core simple-machine topics matters far more than hands-on background.
Ready to walk in prepared?
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Wiesen Test of Mechanical Aptitude™ (WTMA™) is administered by Criteria Corp, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse this site. All practice material is original and simulated. See our full disclaimer.