How to Pass the ARCHED and TIL-A Exams in English

How to Create Your Personal Preparation Strategy

The first thing you need to know about Italian university entrance exams is that they punish blind guessing.

• Correct answer: +1.5 points
• Blank answer: 0 points
• Wrong answer: -0.25 points

This means test day is an exercise in pure strategy. The best way to manage that risk is to know exactly where your strengths lie.

🎯 Step 1: The Baseline Check > Start by taking our Free ARCHED Diagnostic Test. It takes 5-10 minutes and will instantly show you which subjects are your strongest, and which ones are currently dragging your score down.

! Beyond just highlighting your strengths and weaknesses, this test generates a step-by-step roadmap. It breaks down massive subjects like 'Logic' into manageable micro-topics, showing you exactly what to study and in what order.

However, to truly fix your baseline, a short quiz isn't enough.

🎯 Step 2: The Reality Check > Before you study a single piece of theory, sit down and take a full, timed, 100-minute mock exam (you can grab one from our "Free Past Exams" section below). Using the timer and without cheating!

Why? Because you need to confirm if your weakness in math is actually a lack of logic, or if your brain simply stopped working at the 80-minute mark because you were tired. Once you finish, adjust your roadmap based on these raw, realistic results.

🎯 Step 3: The Sprint System > Divide your remaining time into Sprints (usually 2 to 3 weeks long), entirely based on the weaknesses highlighted in your roadmap.

• First Sprints: Dedicate this entirely to your absolute worst subject (the one dragging your score into the negatives). Isolate it. Breathe it. Fix it.
• Mid Sprints: Move to your second weakest subject, while doing light daily reviews of early Sprints, so you don't forget it.
• Final Sprints: Reserve the final weeks exclusively for taking full ARCHED mock exams and reviewing your strongest subjects just to keep them sharp.

Our perspective: If you would like expertise in creating your personal roadmap and guided assistance on every step, we have prepared everything for you in our courses. Our team monitors students’ progress and updates their roadmap regularly. This way, you can focus entirely on mastering the material. We’ve found that students make the fastest progress when they know a mentor is always there to ensure they are moving in the right direction.

General Advice for the Long Run

1. "Eat the Frog" (Start with your weakest link).

Do not start by studying the subjects you already like. It feels productive, but it’s a trap. If your high school didn't teach technical drawing, start exploring orthogonal projections today. If you are terrified of math, open the algebra book first. Tackle the most painful subjects while you still have the luxury of time and patience. By the time the pre-exam panic sets in, your biggest weaknesses will already be neutralised.

2. Expand your vocabulary

If you are studying for the English track but using Italian materials (or vice-versa), terminology will be your silent killer. You cannot memorise 200 mathematical and architectural terms in a weekend. Start a running glossary on your phone or in a notebook, and learn just five new technical terms a day. By the time the TIL-A exam comes around, you will be fluent in the language of the test.

3. Test before you are ready

Most students make the mistake of waiting until they finish all the theory before taking a practice test. Do not do this. You will never feel "ready" enough. We suggest taking a full, timed mock exam halfway through your preparation journey, even if you know you are going to fail it. The main idea here is not to get the highest score, but to test yourself under real exam pressure and get used to it.

4. Be curious!

The hardest part of this exam is that it contains questions that no single textbook can prepare you for. No one can memorize 100% of human history, and it is physically impossible to cram for the General Knowledge section. That section is essentially a test of whether you pay attention to the world around you.

In some cases, the most effective way to prepare for some parts of the test is through immersion. Start making curiosity a daily habit, for example, subscribe to platforms like ArchDaily or Dezeen, and when you see a project you like, try to read and study the floor plans and sections. Analysing how a famous building is put together is the best way to train your brain for the Drawing section without it feeling like "work".

At the same time, make an effort to read architectural articles and theory in English. This prepares you for the dense vocabulary of the Text Comprehension section and keeps you informed about global trends like sustainability and urbanism. The beauty of this approach is that instead of cramming for an exam, you are also building the foundation for your future career. By staying curious, you’re becoming a more well-rounded person and a more capable future architect!

Subject-by-Subject Preparation Strategy

Since the exam is composed of five distinct subjects, each comes with its own specific rules and traps. So let’s talk about each of them in more detail.

Drawing and Representation

The theoretical basis for this section is usually a coin toss, depending on where you went to high school. If you attended an Italian Liceo Scientifico or a specialised technical school, you probably know exactly what orthogonal projections are and how shadows work. But if you come from a standard international curriculum, your high school experience with "drawing" was likely just sketching a bowl of fruit in fine arts class. That won't help you here. The ARCHED exam doesn’t test your artistic expression; it cares if you understand the strict, mathematical rules of descriptive geometry.

So, how do you learn to "read" architectural blueprints and rotate 3D shapes in your head? You have to learn the visual language of architects.

The absolute gold standard for English speakers is Francis D.K. Ching’s book Architectural Graphics. It is visually brilliant, easy to digest, and will teach you exactly how a 3D object translates into 2D plans, sections, and elevations.

If you want to understand the specific flavour of the Italian exam, looking up standard Italian high school textbooks for Disegno Tecnico (Technical Drawing) can be a massive help. Even if you only use a translator app to decode the diagrams and bolded terminology, seeing how Italian schools teach axonometry and perspective will give you the exact theoretical framework the test creators expect you to know.

📁 Free Materials for this section:

• Video Lesson by Pontea School: How to Read Architectural Drawings?
• Architectural Graphics by Francis D.K. Ching (PDF)
• Disegno Tecnico - PoliMi Resource (PDF)
• Disegno Tecnico - Italian Theory Resource 2 (PDF)

General Knowledge and History (Conoscenze acquisite negli studi)

In recent years, history, art history, and general knowledge questions are no longer treated as entirely separate sections. Instead, they are bundled together. In plain English, this means you’ll be thrown a mixed bag of high-school-level questions covering general history, art, and key facts that the test creators believe every modern student should know.

First and foremost, focus heavily on the history of Italy and Europe. This is where the bulk of the questions will come from. Here’s a hard truth about the PoliMi exam: they do not change the questions for international students. They will ask you a lot about specific Italian historical events and Italian art, only briefly touching upon other countries and cultures (and when they do, it's usually focused on the 20th and 21st centuries).

We highly recommend prioritising practice over theory. Take the mock tests. By analysing the correct answers, you’ll naturally start to see the matrix—you'll get a clear feel for which historical periods and question types pop up most often. When taking notes, write down the names and dates of major historical periods, key events, and the main figures involved. For architecture specifically, map out which architects define a certain era, and who influenced whom.

Context will save you when your memory fails. If you freeze and forget the exact year Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, but you confidently know he is a hallmark of the High Renaissance, you instantly know the approximate timeframe: the late 15th to early 16th century.

📁 Free Materials for this section:

• The Story of Art (PDF)
• Khan Academy: Art History Course (Web)
• Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture (Slides)
• The history of Western Architecture - Playlist
• Europe: A History, Norman Davies
• Italy: A Short History, Harry Hearder

Logic

The ARCHED logic section has very little to do with everyday common sense. Instead, it’s a highly mechanical obstacle course designed to test if your brain can structure abstract data. You are going to face two main enemies here: verbal logic (complex syllogisms and deductions) and mathematical/geometrical reasoning (bizarre sequences of numbers, letters, and shapes).

The theoretical basis for this section is usually completely missing from a standard high school timetable. Unless you took formal philosophy or informatics, you’ve probably never been taught how to map out a syllogism or crack an alphanumeric matrix. This is exactly why applicants panic—nobody taught you the rules of this specific game.

To study the core concepts, look outside the standard high school curriculum. Books focused on broader analytical exams, like the Cambridge International Thinking Skills coursebook, are fantastic for verbal logic. For mathematical sequences, borrowing a GRE or GMAT prep book will give you a massive advantage, as the question styles are very similar.

How to hack it: Never rely purely on intuition. Use your scratch paper to visualise the problem. If you see a sequence of letters, immediately write out the alphabet and number it 1-26 so you can see the numerical pattern. If you face a confusing verbal deduction, draw a quick Venn diagram. Turn abstract logic into a visual math problem, and you will stop falling for the examiners' traps. If you would prefer to learn these techniques from the ground up, you can also join our course, where we explain exactly how to navigate this section and solve these types of tasks from scratch.

📁 Free Materials for this section:

• Video Lesson by Pontea School: Logical Reasoning - Hardest ARCHED Questions Explained
• 501 Reasoning Problems (PDF)

Text Comprehension

In high school, you are taught to interpret, to read between the lines, and to write essays about the deeper meaning of a text. If you try to do that on the ARCHED exam, you will walk straight into a trap.

The test creators do not want literary critics; they want to see if you will be capable of reading many academic articles and writing research papers based on them (and we have a lot of this in PoliMi). The texts you will face are dense, dry, academic excerpts. Your only job is to extract precise data. This brings us to the golden rule of this section: never bring outside knowledge into the exam room. Even if you are reading an article about the Roman Colosseum and you happen to know a brilliant historical fact about it, if that fact is not explicitly printed on the page in front of you, it is the wrong answer.

Standard language exams like the IELTS or TOEFL are okay for basic practice, but they are often too straightforward. To train your brain for the real deal, check out SAT Reading Comprehension or GRE Verbal Reasoning prep books. Those exams use a very similar style of trap-laden academic texts.

You can also train for free, but with one absolute rule: you must practice reading in the language of the exam. If you are preparing for the English track, reading complex articles in your native language won't help you wire your brain for English syntax traps. Start reading dense, academic articles in English (like essays on JSTOR or architectural blogs). Force yourself to summarise the exact thesis without adding a single drop of your own opinion.

📁 Free Materials for this section:

• 501 GMAT Questions - Reading Sections (PDF)
• SAT Reading Comprehension Guide (PDF)

Math and Physics

Oh, it is the favourite subject of every student, isn’t it? To be fair, even if you might hate it, this is the most predictable section of the test. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to pass. The exam creators are looking for a solid grasp of high-school fundamentals and, more importantly, the ability to apply them quickly without a calculator.

The real challenge here isn't the difficulty of the math but rather the speed and the terminology. Since you aren't allowed to use a calculator, you need to sharpen your mental math. If you haven't divided fractions or calculated a square root by hand since middle school, this is the time to brush up on those "lost" skills. In Physics, the focus is almost always on the basics: Mechanics (forces and motion), Thermodynamics (heat and energy), and sometimes basic Electricity.

A common pitfall for international students is the language of the problems. Even if you are a math genius, if you don't recognise the specific English term, you will lose time just trying to understand what the question is asking. We recommend starting a dedicated glossary for these terms early on so that by test day, you are reading the equations as fluently as your native language.

How to study effectively: Don’t dive into complex university-level textbooks. Focus on resources that explain concepts simply and visually. Khan Academy is the absolute gold standard for this; their Algebra 1, Geometry, and High School Physics courses cover a lot of what you'll see on the ARCHED or TIL-A. If you find yourself stuck on a specific physics concept like "torque," etc., a 10-minute video explanation is usually much more effective than reading fifty pages of theory.

Our perspective: We see many students waste time on topics that never actually appear on the test. In our courses, we’ve already filtered out the unnecessary topics, so you can prepare faster. We focus strictly on the test problems that historically appear on the Italian entrance exams, and our teachers are there to show you the mental shortcuts that help you solve problems in seconds rather than minutes.

📁 Free Materials for this section:

• Khan Academy: Algebra 1 & 2 (Focus on functions and equations).
• Khan Academy: High School Physics (Perfect for Mechanics and Thermodynamics).

Practice, practice, practice! Free Past Exams

In the world of architecture test prep, actual past papers are absolute gold. Why? Because nothing gives you a clearer understanding of the test creators' visions than seeing the real thing.

There aren't many of these floating around the internet. The ones available through the link below are from the era when the Italian national exam was still taken in person on paper. Before you open them, you need to know a hilarious (and crucial) quirk: almost all of these PDFs are in Italian, and the Ministry of Education published them in a format where the correct answer is almost always placed under letter "A".

If you just read through them, you are wasting them. Here is how to actually use this vault:

• Don't burn them too early. Save a few of these exams strictly for your final weeks of practice.
• Do the prep work. Translate the questions from Italian to English before you sit down to solve them.
• Blindfold yourself. Have a friend or study partner shuffle the answer options so "A" isn't always the winner.
• Simulate the stress. Set a strict timer, take the test, and then meticulously analyse every single mistake.

The main goal here is to artificially recreate the pressure of the real exam room.

📁 Download Past Papers:

• Official ARCHED Past Papers Archive (Roma Tre Repository)
• Additional Online Simulations (Studenti.it)

Final Thoughts

We genuinely hope this guide takes some of the weight off your shoulders. We’ve put a lot of heart into collecting these resources because we remember exactly how it feels to be staring at a blank search results page, wondering where to even begin.

The world of Italian architecture admissions (and these exams) is always evolving, so we will be updating this list regularly to ensure it remains a reliable tool for future students. If you’ve discovered a great study resource we missed, or if you have any suggestions on how we can make this guide more helpful, please contact us. We’re always here to listen, and we’d love to hear from you.

Good luck with your preparation. We know how much work this takes, but we also know how worth it is when you finally see your name on that admission list. If you are still feeling a bit unsure about the best way to handle your prep, feel free to check out our different course plans. We would love to have you join our school so we can help you navigate this journey with confidence and get exactly where you want to be.

You’ve got this!