Question bank
ICFES Saber 11 practice questions, with explanations
Over 3,000 questions across the five areas of the Colombian ICFES Saber 11 exam, calibrated with IRT and explained in full. Try the one below right now, no registration needed.
Keep practicing below, with the full explanation for every option.
A company has 4,200 male and 6,300 female employees. A survey will sample 300 people. Which sample is representative?
150 men and 150 women, chosen at random.
120 men and 180 women, chosen at random.
Eight real questions, no registration
Pick an answer and see right away whether you got it, with a full explanation of why. These are real questions from the bank, not invented for this page. Critical Reading and English are coming soon: those items almost always depend on a passage or an image, and before publishing them on a public page we need to clear the rights on that material.
A company has 4,200 male and 6,300 female employees. A job-satisfaction survey will sample 300 people. Which of the following is a representative sample?
150 men and 150 women, chosen at random.
The first 300 employees who clock in on a given day.
120 men and 180 women, chosen at random.
The 300 most senior employees.
The same five areas of the ICFES Saber 11, with real topics
Critical Reading
Inference, authorial intent, cross-text relationships, and argument evaluation.
Math
Algebra, geometry, statistics, and quantitative reasoning.
Natural Sciences
Biology, chemistry, and physics, integrated the way the real exam does.
Social Studies
History, geography, philosophy, and civic competencies.
English
Reading comprehension, vocabulary, and the exam's seven parts.
Every question is multiple choice with four options, just like the real ICFES Saber 11. When a question needs a passage or a figure to answer, that material is shared across several questions, the way the official exam does it — these aren't stand-alone, out-of-context items. Difficulty isn't decided by whoever wrote the question; it comes from how real students actually performed on it.
Three numbers decide how hard a question is, not an opinion
Sabero calibrates every question with IRT (Item Response Theory), the same family of statistical models the ICFES uses. Three parameters, explained in plain terms:
- Discrimination
- How well this question separates students who know the topic from those who don't. A question everyone gets right, or everyone gets wrong equally, measures nothing, even if it looks hard.
- Difficulty
- How hard the question actually is, measured by how real students performed on it, not by what whoever wrote it thinks.
- Guessing
- With four options, guessing gets you a 1-in-4 chance of being right. The model discounts that probability when it calculates your real score.
If f(x) = 2x + 3 and f(a) = 11, what is the value of a?
How many days are there in a week?
A multi-step calculation question, with an uncommon formula and four options that look very similar.
The ICFES doesn't test facts, it tests ways of thinking
Every question in the bank is classified by what it asks your brain to do, not just its topic. Knowing that a question asks you to "analyze" instead of "recall" changes how you should study it.
- Remember
- What is the formula for the area of a circle?
- Understand
- What does it mean for two events to be mutually exclusive?
- Apply
- Use the compound interest formula to calculate a final amount.
- Analyze
- Why does the author introduce that quote in the second paragraph?
- Evaluate
- Which of the two arguments presented is stronger, and why?
- Create
- Propose a hypothesis that explains the pattern shown in the graph.
We don't just say it was B — we tell you why you picked C
Try all four options. Each one, including the correct one, has its own reason — the same format as the real product's "AI explanation" button.
A teacher asks for a number that meets two conditions at once: divisible by 2 and by 5, and leaving a remainder of 2 when divided by 4. Andrés claims 40 works. What's true about his answer?
It's wrong, because 40 is also divisible by 10.
It's correct, because 40 is divisible by both 5 and 2.
It's wrong, because dividing 40 by 4 gives a remainder other than 2.
It's correct, because multiplying 2, 5, and 4 gives 40.
- Missing a question doesn't mean memorizing the right letter
- When you miss a question, you can practice AI-generated variations of the same topic and difficulty, until you solve it by understanding the concept, not by remembering which option you picked the first time.
- The bank detects repeated questions, even in disguise
- Every question and reading passage is compared both by exact content and by meaning, using the same semantic comparison that powers "more questions like this." If two questions say the same thing in different words, the system catches it.
- Every question goes through a review process, with its own history
- Content, images, and answer options each have their own review status, and every change is versioned. This isn't content generated and published without review — there's a trail of who reviewed what, and when.
- You can report it, and an AI re-checks the answer
- If you think the marked-correct option is wrong, a button triggers an automatic re-check. If the AI finds a real discrepancy, the question gets flagged for a human editor to review before it appears in an exam again.
The English section has seven fixed parts
No one else breaks it down like this. It's the real structure of the ICFES Saber 11 English section, not a generic "grammar and vocabulary" list.
- 1. Matching
- Match a short notice to the situation it describes.
- 2. Signs
- Understand a short sign or announcement and what action it asks for.
- 3. Dialogue completion
- Choose the line that logically continues a conversation.
- 4. Basic cloze
- Fill in a short text with the missing word, one per blank.
- 5. Literal reading
- Find an answer that's written directly in the text.
- 6. Inferential reading
- Answer something the text implies, but doesn't say outright.
- 7. Advanced lexico-grammatical cloze
- Complete a longer text, testing grammar and vocabulary together.
Inside the platform you can filter questions by subject, topic, difficulty, Bloom level, or ask for only the ones you've missed before.
Frequently asked questions
No. You can answer the eight questions on this page without registering. To save your history, take a full mock exam, or use the tutor, you do need a free account.
They're ICFES Saber 11-style questions: they follow the same format, difficulty, and structure as the real exam, checked against the same scoring model used across the platform.
With IRT (Item Response Theory), the same family of statistical models the ICFES uses. It isn't eyeballed by a person — it's calculated from how real students answer it.
You see the full explanation for the correct answer and for why every other option is wrong. Inside the platform, you can also practice a variation of that same question.
Not yet on this public page. Most of them depend on a passage or an image, and before publishing those openly we need to clear the rights on that material. All five areas are available inside the platform.
Over 3,000, with hundreds of new questions added each month, across the five areas of the ICFES Saber 11.
Yes. Inside the platform you can filter by subject, topic, difficulty, and Bloom level, or ask for only the questions you've missed before.
No. This page is for practicing stand-alone questions in minutes. A full, timed mock exam covering all five areas measures something different: how you perform under the same time pressure as the real exam.
- ICFES mock examWhat the official Saber 11 exam looks like and why practising against the clock helps.
- AI Tutor and CoachA tutor that guides you question by question without giving the answer, and a coach that tells you what to review.
- ICFES flashcards20 free flashcards that come back right before you'd forget them, no account needed.
- How to study for the ICFES in 1 monthA week-by-week plan to organize your review before the exam.
Keep practicing for free
No card needed. All five full areas are waiting for you inside the platform.