TKA SMA preparation works best when it starts with one decision: your two elective subjects. The three compulsory subjects, Mathematics, Indonesian and English, apply to everyone in the same way, while the two electives are yours to choose when you register. Settle on a target degree first, check its list of supporting subjects, then build practice from the official assessment framework.
- The senior high TKA tests five subjects: three compulsory ones plus two electives chosen at registration.
- Pusmendik's assessment framework lists 18 elective titles for SMA/MA, separate from the vocational (SMK) list.
- For SNBP 2026, a TKA score was a general requirement, and report-card grades in up to two supporting subjects counted.
- The officially published example pairing: Pharmacy with Chemistry and/or Biology.
- Your study plan comes after the choice is clear, built from each subject's framework elements.
Why your target degree should drive the choice of TKA electives
The Academic Ability Test (Tes Kemampuan Akademik, or TKA) for senior high school covers five subjects. Three are compulsory for every candidate: Mathematics plus two language subjects, Indonesian and English. The other two you pick yourself from the available list when you register for TKA. Anyone can prepare the compulsory part in roughly the same order. The two electives are what send each grade 12 learner's preparation in a different direction. The case for starting from a target degree sits in the state university admission rules. For SNBP 2026, a TKA score issued by the education ministry (Kemendikdasmen) appeared as a general requirement: eligible students were the top students within their school's quota who also held a TKA score. The selection components left room for report-card grades in up to two subjects that support the chosen study programme, alongside a portfolio and/or achievements, with each university setting its own weighting. The list of supporting subjects per programme rests on ministerial decree Kepmendikdasmen No. 102/M/2025. The example Pusmendik published: Pharmacy is supported by Chemistry and/or Biology. Eduart Wolok, who chaired the SNPMB 2026 committee, described the national TKA as a yardstick for validating report-card grades. The logic follows naturally. The electives you sit in TKA should point the same way as the subjects whose report-card grades you are relying on for that degree. When the two line up, an hour of practice serves two purposes at once: it strengthens the understanding your report card reflects, and it prepares you for the reasoning questions on test day. One note on timing. The SNBP rules for the following year are set by the SNPMB committee and had not all been announced as of November 2026. This guide therefore uses SNBP 2026 to show how the system works. Before you commit to your two electives, go back to snpmb.id and the annex of decree 102/M/2025 to confirm that your target programme is listed together with its supporting subjects. For learners currently in grade 11, the timing works in your favour. The 2026 senior high TKA has already taken place, and you will only be asked for your two electives when registration for the next round opens. As of November 2026 the official schedule is still pending, so the remaining time can go to what matters most: exploring degree programmes, reading the assessment framework, and tidying up report-card grades in candidate subjects. Grade 12 learners who have just finished TKA can use this guide to understand how their result is read during selection.
Key numbers for TKA SMA and its link to SNBP
Reading the TKA electives through six fields of study
Pharmacy and the life sciences
Pharmacy is the example named directly in the supporting-subjects circular: Chemistry and/or Biology. The TKA Chemistry framework covers four elements (general, analytical, physical and organic chemistry), while Biology tests biodiversity, cells and metabolism, and processes in living things. Taking both keeps all of your practice inside one family of ideas. For other health programmes, check the annex of decree 102/M/2025 first.
Engineering and the physical sciences
If engineering is the goal, Physics and Advanced Mathematics are reasonable candidates to weigh, because their content overlaps: calculus in Advanced Mathematics, then kinematics, dynamics and electricity in Physics. Whether they fit a particular programme is still decided by the official supporting-subjects list, so make sure the engineering programme you want actually names them.
Economics, business and accounting
The TKA Economics framework has four elements: basic economic concepts, micro and macroeconomics, international economics, and introductory financial accounting. That last element needs steady calculation practice. A sensible partner is Advanced Mathematics if your target programme leans on quantitative models, or Sociology and Geography if it heads toward policy and regional development.
Law, social sciences and humanities
Options in this group include History, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, and Pancasila and Civic Education. The History framework stresses reading primary and secondary sources and thinking historically. Sociology measures how well you analyse social phenomena. For the detailed content of Civic Education and Anthropology, read the Pusmendik framework page yourself before deciding.
Languages, literature and communication
The list includes Advanced Indonesian, Advanced English, and six foreign languages: French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Korean and Arabic. Picking the advanced level of a language that is also tested as a compulsory subject keeps your practice in one language. A foreign language makes sense when you have studied it at school and it appears on your report card.
Still unsure about the degree
If you are torn between two fields, write down two or three candidate programmes and look for a subject that appears on more than one supporting list. Favour subjects where your report card has been strong since grade 10, since SNBP 2026 ranked students on the average of every subject across all semesters except the last. This keeps your options open while giving you time to settle on a programme.
What each elective's framework covers, and what that means for practice
| Elective | Content in the official framework | What it means for practice |
|---|---|---|
| Advanced Mathematics | Algebra, geometry and measurement, calculus | Calculus needs tidy algebra. Compulsory Maths practice carries over, so the two tracks reinforce each other. |
| Physics | Kinematics, dynamics, fluids, waves, heat and thermodynamics, electricity | Questions test how you analyse phenomena and use scientific process skills. Practise formulas together with reading situations and graphs. |
| Chemistry | General, analytical, physical and organic chemistry | Stoichiometry and equilibrium tie many topics together. Weakness there spreads into acids, bases and pH. |
| Biology | Biodiversity, cells and metabolism, body systems in living things | Wide scope and heavy vocabulary. Reading experimental results (inquiry) deserves its own practice time. |
| Economics | Basic concepts, micro and macro, international economics, introductory financial accounting | The concept side and the accounting side run at different paces. Schedule calculation practice separately. |
| Geography | Regions and environment, physical and social processes, interactions, disaster mitigation | Many questions start from everyday phenomena. Maps, data and events across Indonesia make good practice material. |
| History | Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic periods through the New Order and reform era, using primary and secondary sources | The timeline is long. Practice in reading sources and reasoning about cause and effect earns more marks than memorising dates. |
The content column summarises Pusmendik's TKA Assessment Framework for SMA/MA/SMK/MAK (accessed 10 November 2026). The third column reflects the judgement of EduPoint's senior high teaching team and sits outside the official document.
How each elective choice shapes grade 12 TKA preparation
The most honest way to judge a pair of electives is to picture day four of the test. In the 2026 senior high TKA (26 October to 8 November 2026), each of the first three days held one compulsory subject, and both electives were sat together on day four. Physics with Advanced Mathematics means a full day of calculation, formulas and graphs. Chemistry with Biology feels different: the concepts connect, so understanding in one subject helps you read questions in the other. A cross-family pair, such as Economics with Geography, makes your mind jump from accounting tables to maps and regional data. The daily format can change from year to year, so keep an eye on the TKA portal, yet the underlying question stays useful: what kind of day can you get through at full focus? From test day, the thinking moves to how elective questions are written. Pusmendik says TKA measures subject competence in line with the curriculum, putting its weight on reasoning and on solving problems. In the electives that weight shows most in complex multiple-choice items, which ask you to judge several statements at once because more than one of them can be right. A Biology item built on experimental results, or a History item quoting a primary source, requires every statement to be checked against the data in front of you. Guessing from one familiar-sounding word rarely survives here. The remaining items are multiple choice with a single key, and the questions are the same for Kurikulum Merdeka and Kurikulum 2013 students. Then there is scope. Rahmawati, head of Pusmendik, explained at a press conference on 26 May 2026 that senior high TKA questions draw on material up to the middle of semester 5. For the electives this is reassuring: nearly all of their content has already been covered in grade 11 and early grade 12. Preparation is mostly focused revision and reasoning practice, with very little genuinely new material. Your choice also decides what gets written about you. One of the four official purposes of TKA is to show each student's academic strengths and weaknesses, alongside standardised achievement information for selection, an equivalency route for non-formal and informal learners, and stronger assessment skills among teachers. Your results report will picture those two elective fields. Subjects you genuinely want to pursue make that report a useful mirror before university begins. Finally, the report card. For SNBP 2026, a student's rank within the school came from the average of every subject across all semesters except the last, and grades in programme-supporting subjects were read again in the second component. Practice for your TKA electives therefore also looks after your everyday quiz and assignment grades, since both eventually land in front of the same admissions panel.
Weighing degree-led TKA elective choices
- Your TKA subjects and your programme-supporting subjects run on the same track, so the TKA score and report-card grades back each other up.
- What you practise now becomes groundwork for first-year foundation courses in the programme you want.
- Motivation stays steadier because every practice topic has a clear reason tied to where you are heading.
- Electives are set at TKA registration. If your target degree changes afterwards, the two subjects you chose come with you.
- The subject most relevant to the degree is sometimes not yet your strongest on the report card, and closing that gap takes extra practice.
- Two calculation-heavy electives pile the load onto the same test day.
A TKA study plan that grows out of your two electives
A study plan only makes sense once both electives are settled, because its content comes from those subjects' assessment frameworks. Pusmendik publishes the frameworks and sample questions openly, so the first material to open is that official document. Start by mapping the elements. List every element in the framework for both electives, then mark what you have covered at school, what still feels shaky, and what you have not touched. A learner who picked Chemistry, for instance, will see four broad elements and can judge straight away whether stoichiometry and equilibrium are solid. Next, measure where you stand using the official sample questions and the "Ayo Coba TKA" simulation on the Pusmendik site. From the results, trace where each mistake came from: a concept not yet understood, a question sentence read wrongly, or time running out first. Each source calls for its own fix. After that, split practice time between the compulsory subjects and your electives. Compulsory Mathematics shares foundations with Advanced Mathematics, Physics and the accounting side of Economics, so time spent on algebra and measurement also pays off for those electives. A learner who chose History and Sociology can link reading practice in Indonesian with source analysis. Practise the complex multiple-choice format on its own as well: judge every statement, jot a short reason, then compare with the worked answer. Finally, rehearse the elective test day by doing both electives back to back to practise switching focus. If mapping shows that the report-card grade in your most relevant subject still trails your others, deal with the gap early. Take a learner aiming for Pharmacy with strong Biology and middling Chemistry. Chemistry practice expands around the nodes that support many topics (stoichiometry, solutions, equilibrium), while Biology is maintained through regular inquiry questions. The same principle applies to other pairs: the weaker subject gets more time, and the stronger one is kept in shape with routine practice. This is where private SMA tutoring from EduPoint can help. Share your two electives during the consultation, and our team finds and matches a tutor for those fields, be it Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Economics, Geography, History or Sociology. Lessons run face to face at your place or online, as early as 06.00 and as late as 23.00, with sessions lasting 120, 90 or 60 minutes depending on your study stamina. In the learner app, session recordings, self-study material and progress reports are kept together for revision before the test.
Checklist before you lock in your TKA electives
- Two or three target programmes are written down, together with the universities that offer them.
- The supporting subjects for each programme have been checked in the annex of decree 102/M/2025 and on snpmb.id.
- Your grade 10 and 11 report-card grades for each candidate subject have been compared side by side.
- The assessment framework for both electives has been downloaded from Pusmendik and its elements mapped.
- Official sample questions or the "Ayo Coba TKA" simulation have been tried for each candidate subject.
- The load on elective test day has been weighed: two calculation-heavy subjects or a more balanced mix.
- Your choice has been discussed with a school counsellor or homeroom teacher who can guide it toward your study plans.
- Your NISN status has been checked with the school administrator, since only students recorded in the ministry database with a valid NISN can sit TKA.
- The senior high TKA has three compulsory subjects and two electives, and those two electives set the direction of your preparation.
- The strongest elective choice comes from your target degree, checked against the annex of decree 102/M/2025 and your report card.
- Build the study plan once the choice is clear: map the framework elements, measure yourself with official samples, then practise complex multiple choice.