3rd October 2020
Doesn’t the UCAT do a poor job of predicting medical school grades?
UCAT-bashers have long liked to claim that the UCAT isn’t valuable to universities because it doesn’t predict university grades very well. They miss two important points: first, smart university admissions officers don’t want it to predict grades, and second, it correlates very well with something more important than grades—real success in academic fields like medicin ...
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3rd October 2020
Doesn’t the UCAT just measure “test-taking skills”?
Unfortunately, some UCAT prep courses try to convince students that taking the UCAT has nothing to do with real academic skills. They prefer you to believe that it’s all about their test-taking “secrets.” This is great marketing for them, but little help for you. Although there are a few basic test-taking skills that you should know about—process of eliminat ...
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3rd October 2020
Speed Reading in UCAT
UCAT is not just a test of speed reading: it is more than that. It tests your higher order thinking skills as illustrated by Bloom’s taxonomy. However, improving your reading speed will certainly be of help in UCAT. Speed reading is a collection of reading methods which attempt to increase rates of reading without greatly compromising comprehension or ability to recall and analyse. ...
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3rd October 2020
Why is so much weight placed on just one test, the UCAT?
It may seem unfair that a two hour test is so important. Remember, though, that the UCAT is not a one-shot, all-or-nothing affair. Your standardised test scores account for about a third of your medical school entry, depending on which university you apply. The other essential components include your ATAR score and medical entrance interviews. Further, if you score poorly in the UCAT (due to l ...
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3rd October 2020
How to Guess in UCAT
When You Need to Guess in UCAT, Beware of Your Hunches You know that whenever you can make a quick guess on a question to avoid leaving it blank, you should take the shot. The key word here is quick; you can always afford to guess, but you can never afford to waste time. So, how should you guess? Let’s be clear about something: guessing does not mean selecting a choice at random. ...
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3rd October 2020
In UCAT, Do Not “Read into” Things!
Warning, Warning, Warning! Do Not “Read into” Things in UCAT One of the most dangerous traps smart students fall into while reading the UCAT passages is ‘reading into’ things. You should re-read in the context of what you’ve learned about the reading passage—you do not want to interpret what a passage says, or make any subtle assumptions. Restraining yo ...
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3rd October 2020
UCAT Preparation: Getting into the Right Frame of Mind
At the end of a season and leading up to the championship, athletes go through a “tapering phase” to make sure they perform at their peak when it counts. In a sense you’ve been a mental athlete, and you want to make sure that you perform at your peak when it counts: on the actual UCAT. For you, tapering consists of scaling back gradually the amount of preparation you&rsq ...
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2nd October 2020
If this is Your UCAT test day, Get Excited!
It’s natural to feel nervous the day before the test, maybe even a bit panicked, but let’s try to get some perspective on your situation. Try to think of your UCAT as an audition for university, but as an audition that counts. Naturally you hope that your audition goes well, but it’s not a big deal if it doesn’t go quite as well as you’d like. Some UCAT students ...
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2nd October 2020
My friend did a UCAT course but didn’t get into Medicine!
My friend did a UCAT course but didn’t get into Medicine! Performance in UCAT depends on what UCAT course you do. There are over fifty UCAT course providers and most of them are of poor quality, and he/she may have done one of those. Furthermore, since interview scores count for about a third of the selection criteria for medicine, interview training is important too. Your friend ma ...
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2nd October 2020
UCAT Tip: Educated Guessing
When sitting the UCAT students may face a difficult question that they can’t quite get their head around or they are running out of time and still have some questions they haven’t answered yet. Some people choose to leave the UCAT question blank. This is a problem because there is very little time in the UCAT exam to return to previous UCAT questions and UCAT candidates will often ...
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