Are you prepared for the Classic Learning Test (CLT)? Try these sample CLT test questions to see if you need to strengthen your study efforts. You’ll find the answers at the end of the blog. Answer the classic learning test sample questions and then level up your CLT test score with CLT test prep.
CLT Exam Basics
- Format: 120 multiple-choice questions over three required sections.
- Total Time: 2 hours (120 minutes) of testing time.
- Optional Essay: An additional, unscored, 30-minute optional essay is available.
- Scoring: The total CLT test scores range from 0 to 120.
🧭 CLT Exam Sections and Sample Questions
Understanding the structure of the CLT test is crucial for knowing what to expect from CLT sample questions. The test is broken down into three distinct sections, each challenging different aspects of your critical thinking and academic foundation.
1. Verbal Reasoning (40 minutes, 40 questions)
This section assesses textual comprehension and analytical skills. The passages are drawn from classic literature, philosophy/religion, science, and historical/founding documents. Classic Learning Test Sample Question passages will test your ability to:
- Synthesize Information: Grasping the main idea and structure of the passage.
- Analyze Details: Understanding key facts, concepts, and relationships within the text.
- Interpret Rhetoric: Recognizing the author’s tone, purpose, and literary devices.
Sample question:
Directions: Carefully read each passage and answer the related questions. The last two questions for each passage involve analogies. Draw on your understanding of the passage and the relationships it presents to determine your answers. All answers should be based solely on the evidence provided in the passage; no external knowledge is needed.
Literature
This passage is from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in 1925.
| [1] My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
[2] I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two. [3] The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove. [4] It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. [5] “How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly. [6] I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood. [7] And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. |
This passage has been excerpted and adapted from the original, including minor punctuation changes, spelling changes, and other modifications that have not substantially changed content or intent.
Question: In Paragraph 3, Sentence 2, weather-beaten most closely means:
- old and deteriorated by exposure.
- recently repaired after a storm.
- designed to withstand extreme weather.
- expensive and luxurious.
2. Grammar/Writing (35 minutes, 40 questions)
This section evaluates the student’s ability to edit, improve, and refine written text, focusing on mechanics, usage, and rhetorical effectiveness. When reviewing CLT sample questions for this section, you’ll focus on passages where you must:
- Correct Grammar and Punctuation: Identifying and fixing errors in agreement, structure, and usage.
- Improve Style and Flow: Enhancing the clarity, conciseness, and overall rhetorical strength of sentences and paragraphs.
- Choose the Best Diction: Selecting the most precise and appropriate word choice in context.
Sample CLT question:
Directions: Carefully read the passages and answer the questions that correspond with each. You will be asked to either correct an error or suggest an improvement to a selected portion of the text. Choose “NO CHANGE” if the text does not require an improvement or correction.
NOTE: Most questions refer to a portion of the passage indicated by a number in brackets and an underlined portion of the text. For such questions, the answer choices represent alternative possibilities for the underlined portion. Test takers should select the best option.
Text:
Modern/Influential Thinkers
This passage is adapted from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway; it was first published in 1926.
| [31] At one point in time, Robert Cohn was once the middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of [32] inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, [33] because, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. [34] This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.
[35] I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had become of him. Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest. [36] At the military school where he prepped for Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team no one had made him race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until he went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. [37] He took it out in boxing. He came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice [38] with her. He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate [39] having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under [40] domestic unhappiness with a rich wife. |
This passage has been adapted from the original with minor adjustments to punctuation, spelling, and phrasing that do not alter its overall content or meaning.
Question: Which of the following choices represents the clearest and most concise way to convey all the information in the sentence?
He took it out in boxing.
- NO CHANGE
- He released his frustration by boxing.
- Boxing became his outlet for it.
- He channeled his emotions into boxing.
3. Quantitative Reasoning (45 minutes, 40 questions)
The Quantitative Reasoning section tests skills in logic and mathematics, with a unique emphasis on mathematical reasoning and problem-solving, rather than simply calculation. The Classical Learning Test sample questions here cover:
- Algebra: Arithmetic, operations, and algebraic expressions/equations.
- Geometry: Coordinate geometry, properties of shapes, and trigonometry.
- Mathematical Reasoning: Logic-based puzzles and real-world word problems.
Please note that scratch paper is allowed on the CLT, but calculators are not.
Question:
Which function has x-intercepts at 4 and –6?
- f(x) = (x − 6)(x – 4)
- f(x) = (x + 6)(x + 4)
- f(x) = (x − 6)(x + 4)
- f(x) = (x + 6)(x – 4)
4. Optional Essay (30 minutes)
Here is a prompt to practice your writing skills. Since this question is highly individual and variable, there will not be an answer in the answer key, but you can always work with a tutor from our three and six-month subscription options to get feedback on your writing.
Prompt 3: Are there any situations in which censorship of works is appropriate? If so, explain in what context and why. If not, explain why not. Use examples to support your claims.
📝 Essential Steps for CLT Test Prep
Reviewing CLT exam sample questions is just the start of a solid CLT test prep strategy. To truly excel on the classic learning test, follow these critical steps:
- **Take a Full-Length CLT Practice Test: Simulating the two-hour time limit is crucial for building stamina and time management skills.
- Focus on Foundational Texts: Since the CLT draws on classic and historical authors, familiarize yourself with their styles and the complexity of their works.
- Master Logic: The Quantitative Reasoning section’s focus on logic means practicing non-traditional math problems is a must.
- Check CLT Test Dates: Ensure your preparation aligns with the official testing calendar.
- Understand CLT Test Scores: Know the typical score ranges for the colleges you’re targeting to set a goal for your performance.
By diligently studying the format and content, primarily through working through various CLT test sample questions, you’ll be well-positioned to achieve competitive CLT test scores, succeed on the CLT exam, and get into your dream college.
Answer Key:
Verbal Reasoning: The correct answer is A. Weather-beaten conveys the idea of being worn down and aged by time and elements.
Grammar/Writing: The correct answer is B. This option provides the most clarity by explicitly stating the emotion, frustration, and how it was expressed through boxing. It eliminates any ambiguity, making the sentence clear and precise.
Quantitative Reasoning: The correct answer is D. When a function intercepts the x-axis, f(x) equals zero. For f(x) to equal zero, the factors of the equation need to equal zero. If x + 6 = 0, then x = –6. If x – 4 = 0, then x = 4.
