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Barron’s Mechanical Aptitude and Spatial Relations Tests

📄 Short Summary

📖 Full Summary

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Chapter 1: The Streetwise Test Taker
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Chapter 2: How to Develop Your Mechanical Aptitude and Spacial Ability
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Chapter 3: General Mechanical Understanding
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Chapter 4: Gears
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Chapter 5: Pulleys
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Chapter 6: Tools
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Chapter 7: Map Reading
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Chapter 8: Line Following
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Chapter 9: Matching Shapes
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Chapter 10: Visual Comparison
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Chapter 11: Finding Rotated Shapes
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Chapter 12: Cut-Ups
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Chapter 13: Jigsaw Puzzles
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Chapter 14: Hole Punching
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Chapter 15: Hidden Blocks
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Chapter 16: Counting Touching Blocks
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Chapter 17: Making Rectangular Boxes
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Chapter 18: Paper Folding - Shape Known
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Chapter 19: Paper Folding - Shape Unknown
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Chapter 20: Parts Assembly
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Chapter 21: The Different Types of Computer-Based Tests
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Chapter 22: Taking a Video-Based Test
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Chapter 23: Practice Test

👍 Likes

  • Short explanations are given for each topic that makes it easy to understand.
  • There are a plethora of example questions that help quiz your knowledge along the way as well as teach you many different concepts you may have forgotten or do not know. Each chapter has practice questions at the end as well.
    • The very end has a practice test for each chapter (usually 10 questions) that is meant to be taken as an actual test.
  • There are some sample pages with material that are meant to be ripped out and used. For instead, a page with a design that you can fold to see how flat shapes fold into 3-D objects.

👎 Dislikes

  • There were a couple instances where it would give you a practice question without first explaining the topic it was quizzing you on.
  • I found one instance where a practice question was written differently from the answer key (at the end of chapter 14).
  • There are a lot of spacial relations chapters and they start to get repetitive. I felt there should be more material on mechanics and less on spacial relations.

✍️ Thoughts & Reflections

Overall I felt this was a solid book that provided an introduction for a variety of topics. I used this as a study tool for the USPS 955 exam. This exam covers electrical and mechanical knowledge as well as spacial relations and visualization. I think this did an okay job at preparing me for that test. I would have really liked to see more topics covered for the mechanical part of this book, or at least a little more in depth coverage of the topics that were covered. This book definitely takes the viewpoint that the reader knows almost nothing about these topics at all. The spatial relations part of the book was a little lengthy and very repetitive. The beginning of each chapter was almost always the same. It was a push to get through all of it. Almost half of those chapters could have been omitted from the book while providing the same value. Overall this is a decent book with a lot useful information, but needs more on the mechanical part and less on the spatial relations.