Casper Test Australia: What It Is and How to Prepare for the Situational Judgement Test

Quiz Casper Test Practice Questions

Understanding Casper for Australian University Admissions

Casper is an online situational judgement test designed by Acuity Insights and used by a growing number of Australian universities to assess personal and professional characteristics alongside academic results. This guide covers why universities use it, eligibility and timing, the test format, fees, and how to prepare.

What is the Casper test?

Casper (Computer-based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics) is an online situational judgement test used by a growing number of university admissions teams to look beyond academic grades. Rather than testing knowledge, Casper presents a series of everyday and professional dilemmas and asks you to respond to them in writing or on video. It is designed and administered by Acuity Insights, a Canadian company whose assessments are used by health science and education faculties across several countries, including a number of Australian universities.

If you’ve been told your application requires Casper, it’s worth understanding early what the test actually measures, how the process works end to end, and what a sensible preparation plan looks like — because unlike an academic exam, you can’t “study” Casper in the traditional sense.

Why Australian universities use it

Casper doesn’t test clinical knowledge, science content, or anything you’d revise from a textbook. Instead, it looks at what Acuity Insights calls “personal and professional characteristics” — qualities such as communication, empathy, ethics, collaboration, problem-solving, resilience, self-awareness, fairness, and motivation. The idea is that strong academic results don’t automatically predict how someone will behave in difficult interpersonal situations, which matters a great deal in fields like medicine, nursing, veterinary science, and teaching.

In Australia, Casper is used by individual universities and faculties as one part of a broader admissions matrix, alongside academic results, GAMSAT or UCAT scores (where relevant), interviews, and other selection criteria. Universities known to require Casper for particular programs include Curtin University and the University of Wollongong (for postgraduate medicine), along with other institutions that have adopted it for programs such as teaching, veterinary science, and allied health. Requirements do change between admissions cycles, and different programs at the same university can have different rules, so always confirm directly with the specific course page or admissions office you’re applying to rather than assuming your course needs it.

Eligibility and when you sit it

There’s no separate “eligibility” test to sit Casper itself — if a program you’re applying to lists it as a requirement, you register for a test date through Acuity Insights once applications for that intake open. Test windows are offered at set points in the year ahead of each admissions cycle, and you typically need to book a sitting that falls within the timeframe your target university specifies. Because Casper is sat online from your own device, there’s no travel involved, but you will need a reliable internet connection, a quiet space, a webcam, and a microphone.

It’s worth checking your intended university’s own admissions page for the exact test window and submission deadline that applies to your intake, since these dates are set by Acuity Insights and communicated through each institution rather than being fixed once and for all.

What the test actually involves

Casper is a timed, scenario-based test, generally taking a little over an hour to complete. You’re presented with a mix of short written vignettes and brief videos depicting a situation — anything from a workplace disagreement to an ethical dilemma to an awkward social moment — and then asked to respond to follow-up questions about how you would think through or handle it.

Broadly, the test is split into two styles of response:

• Typed-response scenarios, where you type your answers to questions within a set time limit per scenario.
• Video-response scenarios, where you record yourself speaking your answer directly to your webcam within a short time limit.

There are no “correct” answers in the way a multiple-choice exam has one right option. Instead, trained raters look for thoughtful, balanced reasoning that considers multiple perspectives, shows self-awareness, and reflects sound judgement rather than a rehearsed or overly rigid response.

Fees and results

Casper is a paid assessment booked directly through the Acuity Insights platform, and pricing can vary depending on how many institutions you choose to send your results to. Because fees are set by Acuity Insights and can change between cycles, it’s best to confirm the current cost on their official booking page rather than relying on a fixed figure from elsewhere.

Your results are sent to the universities you nominate as part of registration, usually within a few weeks of your test date, in time for them to be considered alongside the rest of your application.

How long results count for

Casper scores are generally tied to a specific admissions cycle rather than being valid indefinitely. If you don’t receive an offer and plan to reapply in a future year, check with your target university or with Acuity Insights about whether you’ll need to sit the test again — in many cases, applicants are expected to complete a current sitting for each new application cycle rather than relying on an older score.

What happens if you don’t perform well

A disappointing Casper result on its own doesn’t necessarily end an application, since it’s typically weighted as one input among several in the broader selection process. However, for competitive programs with high applicant numbers, a weak score can meaningfully affect your overall ranking. If you’re unsuccessful in a given cycle, most universities allow you to reapply in a future intake and sit Casper again at that point.

Tips to prepare with confidence

Because Casper rewards genuine, well-reasoned thinking rather than memorised content, useful preparation looks different from cramming for an academic test:

• Get comfortable with the format first. Knowing exactly how typed and video sections work, how much time you get per question, and how the interface behaves removes a layer of avoidable stress on test day.
• Practise thinking out loud under time pressure. The biggest adjustment for most people isn’t the content of the scenarios but responding clearly and calmly within a tight time limit, especially on camera.
• Work through realistic practice scenarios. Exposure to a range of ethical, interpersonal, and professional dilemmas similar in style to Casper helps you build a natural rhythm for structuring a balanced answer quickly, which is exactly what realistic practice scenarios — like those in a dedicated practice tool — are designed to simulate.
• Reflect on your reasoning, not just your answer. Good responses usually acknowledge more than one viewpoint, explain the “why” behind a decision, and show awareness of how actions affect other people.
• Protect your test-day environment. A stable connection, a quiet room, and a working webcam and microphone matter just as much as your preparation, since technical hiccups can add unnecessary pressure.
• Treat it as a skills warm-up, not a trick to beat. The qualities Casper looks for — empathy, fairness, resilience, communication — are the same ones that serve you well in interviews and throughout a career in health or education, so time spent preparing genuinely pays off beyond the test itself.

Going in with a clear understanding of the process, realistic expectations about timing, and some practice articulating your reasoning under pressure is the most reliable way to walk into Casper feeling prepared rather than caught off guard.