my stage 2 email to someone:
Hey Nick,
thanks- really surprised and pleased to hear back so fast.
a few things off thet op of my head- the day is very very intense- not particularly stressful but you have to be highly mentally alert all day long- i found pro plus to be veryvery useful when i started to flag in the early afternoon.
The HR woman didn't know what she was takling about and told us that the first few tests were partcice seessions only- basically beleive what the computer says- if it says you have a few practices and then assessment then beelive the computer- you are assessed from very early in the day.
the wiki descritpionn of the FEAST tests is about as good as you are going to get really- they don't make a lot of sense when you read them, but perfect sense after you have left! Me describing them to you will probably only stress you out when in fact they are perfectly easy to inderstand, everything is explained and you get to practice!
you will spend around 7 hours solid in front of a pc being tested. yo have to do both the FEAST tests and the original NATs test. the feast test are as decribed- the nats tests are a little different- they love sorting tests- where they give you a coloured shape (one of 4 shapes and 4 colours), and 4 options at the bottom to match the shape 2- so you might be matching red squares to either the colour red or the shape square- they then give you instructions- such as match red sqaures to circles. They then give you a second shape to keep an eye on- when the first shape matches the second (as in the game snap- you have to press the match button). They come roughly once every second or so.
a NATS test not shown anywhere is a computer screen with inbound aircraft heading towards each other numbered 1-9 on random intercepts- you have to remove the minimum numbered aircraft to prevent any collisions- you have about 1 second to identify the correct plane. at the same time you have to answer mental arithmetic questions at the bottom- it sounds hard, and it is, but keep your head, if you mess up, forget it and move on.
Cubes! uhhhh didn't think i had one right, but can't have done too badly. they were ridiculously hard for me- although one chap found them easy (but found a test that i found easy hard!). The fact they only use arrows pointing random directions make its much harder.
Do NOT expect to do well- i'm not a stupid chap by any means (and i thought everyone there was pretty bright), but i really really struggled as did everyone else- no one found it easy. so don't be disheartened and do the best you can.
one piece of advice i woudl says is this- just sit back and enjoy them and treat them like computer games. You are only competiting with yourself (as in they will take everyone good enough) and i truly beleive there is nothing you can do to help yourself before the tests.
on at least 3 tests i saw guuys finishing early on the computer tests even though they had 20 mins left of time- yo do NOT have to finish when you get to the last question on some of them- you can often go back through the questions and check them- i strongly recommend you do this- don't just get to the end and stop- use all the time available to flick through all your questions, if possible make a mental note about which ones you are unhappy about. You will know if you can go back because there will be a back button at the bottom of the screen- i was nervous that going back would erase the answers to question i had already completed but it didn't.
3 tests involve learning a set of logical rules before you start- iirc you can go back and check the rules at anuy point during the test, but it is time consuming. Spend as long as possible learning these rules- they will make your life much much easier if you have them straight in your head- some of them are quite similar so make sure you have them factually correct.
The last test of the day are strip tests with lots of flight information that you have to process- you spend about an hour learning what you have to do. Use all the time you need, go back to bits you can't remember, learn the following aircraft codes (they aren't essential but will make your life easier), AFR, AFL, AZA, CRX, DLH, SAS, SWR, FIN, LTU there were a few others that i can't remember right now but they aer given to you.
Also:
GE - Geneva
LY - Lyons
DI - Dijon
MU - Munich
MI - Milan
BA - Basel
ZH- Zurich
can't think of anything else right now- its tough, but enjoyable if you let it- relax and it gets a lot lot easier. Don't worry if others finish before you- and if someone says its easy then either they're lying or they've failed (or they're a genius but i reckon there were some damn clever people in my bit and no one said it was easy!)
HTH
Jim