History Main / IncomprehensibleEntranceExam

* ''{{Manga/Naruto}}'': The Chunin Exam starts with a written test that asks a series of bizarre, overly complicated questions that no one short of a genius could possibly figure out. Naturally, being a test for Ninjas, the applicants are expected to spy on other students to get the right answers (there are a few plants in the class to get the ball rolling). Unique to Naruto's class is the secret Final Question, where failing will bar them from retaking the exam. The test proctor lets people quit and leave before giving it. Afterwards he reveals it was a SecretTestOfCharacter meant to test their courage, and anyone who stayed would pass.

* The Discworld novel ''Literature/InterestingTimes'' has an exaggerated version of the Imperial Examination system for nearly everyone in the Agatean Empire, not just bureaucrats -- making it very much a version of the dysfunctional kind. Rincewind observes that one examinee's test for the post of night soil operative[[note]]a fancy title for "shit shoveler"[[/note]] has zero questions on whether he knows how to use a shovel, and Lord Hong himself briefly considers that their cannons might not explode so often if they started rating metalworkers on their handiwork instead of their poetry.
** Ironically, one of the applicants for the night-soil job anticipates the useless nature of the questions, and shows up with a suitable poem about the mists rising over water written on his arm so he can cheat.
* In ''Literature/TheMagicians,'' potential students at [[WizardingSchool Brakebills College]] are given a borderline-Daliesque entrance exam to prove if they have what it takes to wield magic. Among other things, examinees can be transported to Brakebills without warning and without even knowing that magic exists; they can be challenged to guess what's on the other side of a playing card, to draw a rabbit that moves as they try to finish drawing it, to describe how they would stop the exam paper from escaping, and even to invent a new language, detail its history, and translate a passage from ''The Tempest'' into the language and back. Following the written portion, they are given a number of seemingly nonsensical tasks, including map-drawing, conjuring tricks, blitz chess and knot-unraveling, before entrants are finally provoked into unveiling their magical powers. Though this seems eccentric, it's actually very good at identifying students with the intelligence, obsession and aptitudes necessary for spellcasting. However, Brakebills accepts only the best, and anyone who fails the exam for ''any'' reason will have their memories of the college erased... and out of a huge class of potential students, only ''two'' are accepted.

* ''Series/{{Victorious}}'': At Hollywood Arts, in order to audition for plays, students must perform "The Bird Scene". Tori performs this scene, asking her teacher if she's passed each time, to which he tells her no. Eventually she gets frustrated and says that she feels she did a good job. Her teacher then tells her she passed. He tells her that the purpose of the test is to see if the student trusts their artistic instincts and all one has to do to pass is to be confident in their performance.

** After several seasons being a Commander due to her position as ship's counselor, Troi decides to take the bridge officer's test to qualify for an actual command rank. Much like Starfleet Academy's infamous [[UnwinnableTrainingSimulation ''Kobayashi Maru'']] exam, this was also a psychological test; in this case, they were testing [[spoiler:Troi's willingness to send a colleague to their death to save the rest of the ship]].

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* Some clans in ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' prefer to test their potential members before Embracing them, and given the need to uphold the {{Masquerade}}, few candidates ever realize that they're being tested at all until they become vampires - and even if they ''do'' become aware of being part of a test, it's not uncommon for them to be tricked into believing that they failed. Two such clans, the [[CastingAShadow Lasombra]] and the [[TheCorrupter Followers of Set]], often go out of their way to deliberately ruin a potential member's life in any way they can - sabotaging their careers, undermining their relationships, crushing their hopes, even leading them into addiction - but for different reasons: the Lasombra are determined to Embrace only the strongest, and the tests are designed [[TheSocialDarwinist to weed out any who cannot withstand hardship]]; by contrast, the Setites want to [[BreakTheHaughty completely break]] their "students" and show them the true nature of the universe.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' kicks off adult life for inhabitants of Vault 101 by presenting them with the G.O.A.T. test, an exam that ''should'' decide the entrant's place in the society of the Vault. In practice, the questions are quite bizarre, often end up with examinees in jobs that seem quite contrary to the specialties they've selected, and the final "question" is a flat-out statement of devotion to the Vault's Overseer. Still, it establishes your skills for the game, so it's not completely worthless.
** The sequel, ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' features a settlement by the name of Covenant, that has a test identical to the GOAT called the SAFE Test for entry. The purpose is to filter out Synths created by the [[BigBad Institute.]] [[spoiler:A side quest reveals that Covenant isn’t as it seems, with the whole place being designed to identify and capture synths for interrogation in a near by compound. The one who is responsible admits that the SAFE test isn’t perfect as the only way to know for sure that a person is or isn’t a synth is the presence of an implant in their brain, meaning that many innocent wastelanders may have met their unfortunate end here.]]

** Averted in the late 2010's, where many tech companies switched to coding assessments commonly known as "Leetcode"[[note]]a popular technical interview testing site[[/note]] in developer communities. Those assessments not only test the applicant's thought process (if done live) but also their coding competency, particularly data structures and algorithms.
* Trainee astronauts are often given rapid-fire series of incomprehensible or useless tasks to carry out, often with an intentionally-tight time limit, and with complicated restrictions about the manner in which the tasks are to be fulfilled (e.g. "Place a red ball between every four green or two yellow ones, using only your left hand for green and only your right for yellow"). The purpose of such drills is to demonstrate how meticulously and consistently the trainees can carry out detailed instructions under high-stakes, time-sensitive circumstances.