Before
- Know who is sitting it. The CPM is for children and older adults. If an employer sent you a Raven's, it is almost certainly Raven's Adaptive or the APM, not this form: read the lesson on the Raven's you will actually meet.
- Do the three set checks once each. They are the length of the real sets and they tell you which set slows you down.
- For a child: one calm session at a time, the board form if it is offered, and no coaching on the day. The test measures how a pattern is seen, not how a rule is recited.
During
- There is no clock. Use that. A wrong answer on an early item costs more than a slow one, because every item counts once.
- Look at the whole design before the pieces. In Set A, follow the texture to the gap; in Ab and B, say what the other figures share before you look at the options.
- Six options: the wrong ones usually break exactly one thing, a line that does not continue, a shape from the wrong row, the right shape turned the wrong way. Check the one thing.
The score
One raw score, converted to a percentile against a norm group; the educational kit also gives a standard score with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, in steps of five. There is no pass mark. Practice raises the raw score, which is why a score after practice does not mean what a first score means; the site’s results say “practice result” for that reason.
Sources: Pearson Clinical UK (population, timing, scoring); Yang et al. 2023 (board form, timing and validity, practice effects). Read 2026-09-21. This is independent practice material. It is not a Pearson product and uses none of Raven's items. Figures come from Pearson's own pages and the primary literature; where only third parties state a figure, the text says so.