Does the PwC online assessment include verbal reasoning? No

No. If you are applying to a PwC UK early careers programme, the timed cognitive test in your online assessment covers numerical, inductive and deductive reasoning. Verbal reasoning is not one of the sections. That matters because several large prep sites sell PwC verbal reasoning practice, and candidates buy it, revise it, and walk into a test that never asks them to read a passage. This page sets out exactly what PwC says, why those sites disagree, and where verbal reasoning genuinely does appear at PwC.

What PwC actually says

PwC's early careers assessment and selection page describes the first stage as a behavioural assessment followed by a cognitive test, both hosted on the SHL platform. On the cognitive test it is specific:

A cognitive assessment is an ability test including numerical, inductive and deductive reasoning. The behavioural test is not timed, but the cognitive assessment will be.— PwC UK, early careers assessment and selection process

Three reasoning types are named. Verbal is not among them. This is PwC describing its own process on its own careers site, which is the strongest evidence available on the question, and it is aimed squarely at early careers applicants.

A second PwC source agrees. PwC UK publishes a careers e-learn on online applications and assessments, linked from its Early Careers Employability Hub. Across its six modules the ability-test sections are labelled Numerical, Abstract and Behavioural. Verbal reasoning does not appear anywhere in it.

Why so many prep sites say otherwise

Search for PwC verbal reasoning and you will find several established prep companies offering it. They are not lying deliberately; they are listing a generic SHL battery and attaching an employer name to it. There is a simple way to see this from the outside.

Every one of those sites also lists a situational judgement test for PwC. PwC's own e-learn says, in writing, that it does not use situational judgement tests for its school and college leaver, undergraduate or graduate programmes. So those pages contain at least one claim the employer directly contradicts. A source that is demonstrably wrong about one component of the assessment is not a reliable guide to the others.

Where verbal reasoning does exist at PwC

The claim is not invented from nothing. PwC's experienced careers pages, covering people applying with existing work experience rather than through an early careers programme, say that candidates may be asked to complete a verbal reasoning exercise where a role calls for written comprehension. That is a different track with a different process, and it is the most likely origin of the confusion.

If you are applying to a graduate programme, an undergraduate placement, a school or college leaver route, or an apprenticeship, the experienced careers process is not yours.

What an SHL verbal test actually looks like

It is worth knowing what you are not being asked to do, partly so you can recognise it if a different employer sets one. SHL's own verbal ability practice assessment presents a short business or news passage, then a statement about it, and asks you to choose between three options:

• True, if the statement must be true based only on the information in the passage.
• False, if the statement is definitely false given the passage.
• Cannot say, if you cannot tell either way without further information.

SHL's practice version runs 30 questions in 19 minutes and is forward-only, with no going back to change an answer. The skill it measures is disciplined reading: sticking to what the passage states and resisting what you happen to know about the topic. It is a genuine skill, and a real SHL product. It is simply not part of the PwC UK early careers cognitive test.

Notice how different that is from the tasks PwC's own e-learn shows for the abstract section, where you pick the next diagram in a sequence, or for the numerical section, where you read a data table. Preparing for passage comprehension does nothing for either.

What to practise instead

The revision time people spend on verbal reasoning is the most wasted hour in PwC preparation, because it is time not spent on the three sections that are actually set. In rough order of how much a few hours of focused practice tends to move things:

1. Numerical reasoning. Percentage change, ratios and reading totals off a chart under time pressure. This is where most people lose marks to arithmetic slips rather than to not knowing the method.
2. Inductive reasoning, which PwC's own e-learn calls abstract reasoning. Finding the rule in a sequence of shapes by isolating one attribute at a time.
3. Deductive reasoning. Being given the rules and working out what they force, which is the genuinely different one of the three.

All three are what this site's practice tests are built from, timed the same way the real thing is, so the clock stops being the thing that surprises you.

What is still not known

Being straight about the limits matters more than sounding certain. PwC does not publish the number of questions in its cognitive test, the time limit, or the pass mark, and nothing on this site claims to know them. Candidates in the 2025 to 2026 graduate cycle reported on The Student Room that their cognitive test used SHL's interactive question style rather than classic multiple choice, and several described a short sitting. Formats can change between cycles. What has been consistent across every PwC source is the three reasoning types, which is the part worth building your preparation around.