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Date completed: 09/08/21 Venue: Pearson Canberra
General thoughts on your results: I practiced A LOT. I was averaging 2800 and typically would always finish in my practice. Nerves got the better of me and I didn't finish most sections (so guessed a fair bit). Got 2610. Not unhappy (I am rural). Hoping it is enough for CSU
General comments on your experience:
Overall, the actual staff at pearson were super relaxed and friendly which really helped! All of the sections were similar except DM (content deleted). Otherwise because I was nervous I found it hard to keep track of time
Hello, this is my first post everrrrrr woooo - was a bit shy initially but mustered enough confidence to put something up on here, so enjoy lol
Date: 31/7 (Parramatta) VR - 870 DM - 810 QR - 880 AR - 870
Total - 3430
Thoughts/advice: (a lot has already been said on this forum so I won't bore you by saying the same old)
In general, I think compared to most of the stuff I've seen, my preparation was drastically different. Honestly I think perhaps why some people might not be improving is because they follow some approach that a few ppl who got 3000+ took and expect it'll work for them with the same rate of success. A lot of people might not consider this, but it's my view that understanding yourself and how your brain works is the first step to tackling anything as demanding as the UCAT.
Personally, I found it hard to sit down and grind practice Qs all day. I also think doing this alone is an ineffective method of 'mastering the UCAT' because you're training your brain just to 'get good' at some style of question written by one or two people but this is not representative of the Qs on the actual day!! (I suspect this may be the reason why some unfortunately score lower than their mock averages) - besides, eventually you're gonna hit a brick wall in speed/accuracy and can't improve beyond a certain score, without first tackling your underlying thought process.
If you understand what each sub-section of the test is targeting (you can find this on the official UCAT website), you can tailor your preparation around that in all your daily activities 24/7 (some applications of this I've listed below). 3 out of 4 of the sections end with 'reasoning' for a reason - it's a skill/mindset which I don't believe can be improved quickly by just doing lots of practice.
VR - I know a lot of people find this difficult but for me it came quite naturally thanks to different habits that I've developed over the years which helped with speed reading & comprehension - I've always been a bit of a wikipedia nerd, I also watch interesting debates on politics & religion on YT in my spare time, I also think reading a few chapters of the Bible every night had a huge impact on comprehension/interpretation - the more you read the better.
DM - for me, syllogisms & interpretation Qs were always a bit of a 50/50 for some 'grey' statements (YES/NO options), most of the time I just went with my gut and moved on. I've always loved logical puzzles - doing KenKen and Binary Brainsnack in newspapers from a young age helped boost that part of my brain.
QR - bit annoyed I didn't get 900, for some reason that was a goal of mine cause I love maths but apparently this was the easiest section to score big on.
AR - I kid you not, doing random IQ tests online formed a decent chunk of my preparation for this, surprisingly I found those patterns are quite close to the real ones, in contrast to a lot of the 3rd-party patterns that are ridiculously difficult compared to the real thing.
Finally, it might be a good idea to max out on all your mocks in the week leading up and do one on the actual day to get your brain fired up beforehand. In the same way how you might practice writing essays with a battery on your pen, you might want to actually consider doing 2-3 mocks each day leading up to the exam to build up that mental endurance/focus, so doing just 1 test will seem shorter & easier.
Date completed: 14/8/21 Venue: Cliftons Sydney General thoughts on your results: Really pleased, higher than any of my practice scores - got 3110 when I thought I would only maybe breach that 3000 mark. Slightly worried and confused about where this might be competitive for though - especially with all the insanely high marks posted here (i feel like this year the percentiles might be really high :/) but I'm really not complaining, I thought I wasn't going to get an even remotely competitive score
General comments on your experience: I tried to do the bulk of my prep in the months before (school holidays before trials) which I think helped me understand the general pacing and logic of the test. However I really slacked my prep once school and trials started - don't do this lol. I do think being really relaxed on the day of helped me a lot, I wasn't relying on this score do be excellent so I was pretty chill about the whole thing.
Anyways, I've got some research to do about courses and thinking about where I might stand a chance of an interview. If anyone has any advice I'd love to hear it!
Hi blugirl18, funnily enough, I'm actually in the exact same situation as you!! I am currently living in regional NSW and had my test booked for Sydney on the 9th of August! After lots of calls and emails back and forth with Pearson, I am sitting the exam online. My best advice is to email [email protected]. Explain you are unable to travel to a lockdown area and if possible to sit the OnVUE exam.
I will be honest with you it's the UCAT UK version, you don't get working out paper (only an online whiteboard that you draw with your mouse) so it will be very different from sitting the regular exam, but it's much better than having to isolate because you have to go into Sydney/ACT!
Hi Yzzie, thanks for sharing your experience. In the "UCAT OnVUE exam information // Pearson VUE" it says, UCAT exam does not have a built-in digital whiteboard. You are allowed to use a physical erasable whiteboard (and permitted accessories) for note taking. So this is not the case?
Date completed: 14/8/21 Venue: Cliftons Sydney General thoughts on your results: Really pleased, higher than any of my practice scores - got 3110 when I thought I would only maybe breach that 3000 mark. Slightly worried and confused about where this might be competitive for though - especially with all the insanely high marks posted here (i feel like this year the percentiles might be really high :/) but I'm really not complaining, I thought I wasn't going to get an even remotely competitive score
General comments on your experience: I tried to do the bulk of my prep in the months before (school holidays before trials) which I think helped me understand the general pacing and logic of the test. However I really slacked my prep once school and trials started - don't do this lol. I do think being really relaxed on the day of helped me a lot, I wasn't relying on this score do be excellent so I was pretty chill about the whole thing.
Anyways, I've got some research to do about courses and thinking about where I might stand a chance of an interview. If anyone has any advice I'd love to hear it!
Date completed: 11/08/21
Venue: Pearson Centre Thebarton
Hi all,
I sat my UCAT on Wednesday. I honestly walked out thinking I had flunked it and was so stressed. I'm also doing a GAP year this year so I had a lot on the line. I've sat the UCAT twice already and it was a huge improvement from last year (score in brackets). But overall, I am very grateful and happy with what I achieved.
VR: Quite happy with this score as its always been my weakest and most inconsistent section (was scoring from 500-800s in mocks). To be honest, I expected it to be a lot harder based of what most people were saying but I found it to be quite similar to most of the mocks I've done? Although, there were a lot of long comprehension questions towards the end so I ran out of time.
DM: Was hoping for higher in this section as I was averaging quite highly in mocks, but I found it to actually be quite hard? But it might have come down to my lack of focus, and I might've just psyched myself out a bit with the unfamiliar questions that weren't necessarily hard, just confused me. Other than that, the questions were very similar to the official mocks. I spent a lot of time overthinking on the strongest argument questions which let me down too. Venn diagrams and probability were of the same difficulty as most mocks. I had to guess a few questions so I genuinely thought I had flunked this section.
QR: Initially, I was really upset about DM and couldn't really get over it. This affected me for the first half of QR. On top of that, the tables were quite big which surprised me as well. But, I snapped out of it half way through and sped through all the questions with around 6 minutes to spare. The maths wasn't anything that you couldn't do. I think it's important you understand what the question is asking you to find and interpret the tables/graphs carefully. There was one question at the end that I had no idea on how to solve so I just guessed. But overall, this has always been my strongest section as I genuinely really enjoy Maths. The calculator was quite annoying because you've got to click on it every time you do a calculation, and click out of it when you want to Alt+N to the next question, so I just ended up doing most of the calculations in my head.
AR: Very surprised with my score. My approach this year was a lot more different from last year; you need to flag and skip if you can't see it! Trust, when you come back to it later, the chances of you seeing the pattern are a lot higher. Got most of the patterns except for one set which I just guessed, so wasn't that confident walking out. I also only found one rule for most of the sets which confused me. But I didn't stay to find the second rule; this is what I did last year and wasted time. I would just flag and move on and came back to it later, where I still couldn't find the second rule. So maybe there are just one rule sets?
SJT: Didn't really practice this at all in my mocks, but I found this to be particularly hard in the real thing?
Location: The testing centre arrangement had computers arranged around the walls, and a centre row in the middle of the room, one of which I was seated. This was quite distracting really, especially for the first half of the exam (during VR and DM), as I could see everyone entering and exiting the room, and was hard to focus. But very thankful I could use my own earplugs as it blocked out most of then noise. The mouse was quite heavy and slow, so I just removed the mouse pad and used the surface of the table. A whiteboard booklet and two pens were already prepared for me on my desk when I walked in. I had to use so many pages during DM and QR that I kind of got lost in my own calculations. As soon as I was seated, she started it straight away so you have around 3 minutes before the first VR question (just like the official mocks I think).
Goodluck to the rest of you who have still yet to take the test, try your best! I am very grateful to this thread and hope my post was able to give back in some way. I'll be posting my mock scores on the other thread soon!
p.s sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes if there are any!
Date completed: 11/08/21
Venue: Pearson Centre Thebarton
Hi all,
I sat my UCAT on Wednesday. I honestly walked out thinking I had flunked it and was so stressed. I'm also doing a GAP year this year so I had a lot on the line. I've sat the UCAT twice already and it was a huge improvement from last year (score in brackets). But overall, I am very grateful and happy with what I achieved.
VR: Quite happy with this score as its always been my weakest and most inconsistent section (was scoring from 500-800s in mocks). To be honest, I expected it to be a lot harder based of what most people were saying but I found it to be quite similar to most of the mocks I've done? Although, there were a lot of long comprehension questions towards the end so I ran out of time.
DM: Was hoping for higher in this section as I was averaging quite highly in mocks, but I found it to actually be quite hard? But it might have come down to my lack of focus, and I might've just psyched myself out a bit with the unfamiliar questions that weren't necessarily hard, just confused me. Other than that, the questions were very similar to the official mocks. I spent a lot of time overthinking on the strongest argument questions which let me down too. Venn diagrams and probability were of the same difficulty as most mocks. I had to guess a few questions so I genuinely thought I had flunked this section.
QR: Initially, I was really upset about DM and couldn't really get over it. This affected me for the first half of QR. On top of that, the tables were quite big which surprised me as well. But, I snapped out of it half way through and sped through all the questions with around 6 minutes to spare. The maths wasn't anything that you couldn't do. I think it's important you understand what the question is asking you to find and interpret the tables/graphs carefully. There was one question at the end that I had no idea on how to solve so I just guessed. But overall, this has always been my strongest section as I genuinely really enjoy Maths. The calculator was quite annoying because you've got to click on it every time you do a calculation, and click out of it when you want to Alt+N to the next question, so I just ended up doing most of the calculations in my head.
AR: Very surprised with my score. My approach this year was a lot more different from last year; you need to flag and skip if you can't see it! Trust, when you come back to it later, the chances of you seeing the pattern are a lot higher. Got most of the patterns except for one set which I just guessed, so wasn't that confident walking out. I also only found one rule for most of the sets which confused me. But I didn't stay to find the second rule; this is what I did last year and wasted time. I would just flag and move on and came back to it later, where I still couldn't find the second rule. So maybe there are just one rule sets?
SJT: Didn't really practice this at all in my mocks, but I found this to be particularly hard in the real thing?
Location: The testing centre arrangement had computers arranged around the walls, and a centre row in the middle of the room, one of which I was seated. This was quite distracting really, especially for the first half of the exam (during VR and DM), as I could see everyone entering and exiting the room, and was hard to focus. But very thankful I could use my own earplugs as it blocked out most of then noise. The mouse was quite heavy and slow, so I just removed the mouse pad and used the surface of the table. A whiteboard booklet and two pens were already prepared for me on my desk when I walked in. I had to use so many pages during DM and QR that I kind of got lost in my own calculations. As soon as I was seated, she started it straight away so you have around 3 minutes before the first VR question (just like the official mocks I think).
Goodluck to the rest of you who have still yet to take the test, try your best! I am very grateful to this thread and hope my post was able to give back in some way. I'll be posting my mock scores on the other thread soon!
p.s sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes if there are any!
Last year there were 155 MSO posted scores, 90th %ile would be the 16th from top = ~3250.
So, we'll be EXTREMELY lucky to get MSO 90%ile 3100 this year, as that means real 90%ile will drop 150pts = 2780
We tried this in year one of UCAT and it was a disaster as people have to use the prelim stats to calculate their own percentile and there were mistakes being made left right and centre so we had to shut it down. Last year, some amazing MSOers had the time to create a calculator people could use to plug their results into. If we have someone able to do this again this year, then yes, we’d open the thread at the point we had a functioning calculator.
hey!
some of the mocks I have been doing are including 9-15 "yes/no conclusion" questions in the one DM section of a mock. Is this like the real ucat? i expected about 5-7ish as Ive done the ucat last year. but wondering if they're switched that up this year.
Would appreciate any feedback! thanks
Sat mine the other day
Date: 14/8/21
Centre: Cliftons sydney
VR: 740
DM: 840
QR: 730
AR: 690
TOTAL: 3000
SJT: 639
Not as high as I would have hoped but I thought I was screwed after, I was in a weird brain fog that day and am surprised my QR and AR were alright (subjective lol, but i'm generally not the strongest in these two)
Hoping for an interview or two but honestly just relieved it's over for now
Sat mine the other day
Date: 14/8/21
Centre: Cliftons sydney
VR: 740
DM: 840
QR: 730
AR: 690
TOTAL: 3000
SJT: 639
Not as high as I would have hoped but I thought I was screwed after, I was in a weird brain fog that day and am surprised my QR and AR were alright (subjective lol, but i'm generally not the strongest in these two)
Hoping for an interview or two but honestly just relieved it's over for now
Canberra was the only available centre at the time...I am halfway between Syd and Canberra and so thought it was the most convenient option. All the other testing centres (orange etc) were already booked out or unavailable.
I have had a crazy day... I have rung ACT health, NSW Health, UCAT, Pearson, all who say that I will have to isolate and miss two weeks of school OR not know if I will be granted an exemption until 24hrs before in the case of ACT entry. So I have rebooked for August 31st in Syd (latest date available atm) and hope for changes in restrictions!!!
Hi blugirl18, I'm wondering what is the outcome for your test sitting appointment. The UCAT Covid-19 page has been updated and a link provided for regional tets-takers but I am circumspect about the reasonable excuse for 'leaving home for educational purposes'.
It is a NSW Regional restriction page Regional and rural restrictions
I reckon it is for regional students studying in regional areas. Am I wrong?
Hey guys,
Gap year taker here. I didn't do as well as I wanted so pretty sad. I got 2750 last year so this year was a bit of an improvement but probably not enough to secure an interview (based on how people are performing this year). Results of each subsection from last year are in brackets
Bombed VR. Did worse this year than last year. I swear there were around 4 passages that were like 400 words. I also wasn't used to doing VR on a big screen so having to read left to right was much more demanding on my eyes (it was red and teary by the end of the section)
DM was alright but syllogisms were worded quite weird compared to practice. Rest was pretty similar to official mocks
QR was alright but there were sooo many tables. I finished just in time.
I thought I did pretty good in AR but ended up with 770 even though there was only one set of patterns I wasn't really sure with
By the time I got to SJT, I was tired so I didn't really try
Good luck to the remaining people sitting the test!
Hey guys,
Gap year taker here. I didn't do as well as I wanted so pretty sad. I got 2750 last year so this year was a bit of an improvement but probably not enough to secure an interview (based on how people are performing this year). Results of each subsection from last year are in brackets
Bombed VR. Did worse this year than last year. I swear there were around 4 passages that were like 400 words. I also wasn't used to doing VR on a big screen so having to read left to right was much more demanding on my eyes (it was red and teary by the end of the section)
DM was alright but syllogisms were worded quite weird compared to practice. Rest was pretty similar to official mocks
QR was alright but there were sooo many tables. I finished just in time.
I thought I did pretty good in AR but ended up with 770 even though there was only one set of patterns I wasn't really sure with
By the time I got to SJT, I was tired so I didn't really try
Good luck to the remaining people sitting the test!
Hey!
you should be proud of yourself!
remember that theres a "reporting bias", meaning that the scores you see a lot of, are those that are happy with their scores. Therefore there are a heap of people that maybe just havnt shared, or arnt happy with their scores to share them.
2960 is an incredible score and you should be really proud of yourself not only for the improvement, but for the score in general!
Was okay with my score until I went onto MSO and saw how well everyone has done. Really hope this is enough for a JMP interview! I had sat the UCAT last year and had the exact same feeling after visiting MSO that I was cutting it close to the cutoff from what everyone else was posting. Hope I am wrong this year... Goodluck to everyone else who is yet to sit!
but apparently this was the easiest section to score big on.
(i feel like this year the percentiles might be really high :/) but I'm really not complaining, I thought I wasn't going to get an even remotely competitive score
)
