Post UCAT Discussion Thread 2021

[Nonstandard983]

Anyone have any idea why Pearson has gradually limited the amount of information available to candidates since the 2019 summary test statistics? The 2021 summary doesn't even disclose the number of candidates who sat the test this year.

They're trying to purposely mislead you

In all seriousness they did have the number of candidates in the preliminary statistics so I'm not sure why it is missing on this years summary?

I read somewhere that around 14000 registered to sit but I can't remember where I saw that/the accuracy of the source.

 

[hotshot]

Hey I'm a long time lurker making my first post

Verbal Reasoning	740 - Found test much easier than practice.
Decision Making	730 - Test mildly easier than practice
Quantitative Reasoning	730 - Around the same as practice
Abstract Reasoning	690 - Has always been my worst section... I noticed not difference LOL. Guessed like a solid 3 sets at least.
Total Score	2890

Situational Judgement

628 - It was somewhat different from my practice material but I didn't put much practice time into it

Date completed: 17/07/21
Venue: Pearson Parramatta
General thoughts on your results: I did way better than I expected- I got really sick in the week before the exam and sat it in pain with the only reschedule dates on weekdays during my trials tor right before :/ (Not contagious though no need to worry)
I was doing way better in practice (raw scores around 80% VR, 80% DM, 90%+ QR. AR was still ass though)

General comments on your experience: I personally found the parra center really stuffy towards the end of the two hours... might just be a result of not feeling well though. Otherwise it was nice and quiet + pen worked.
Someone who was doing the test at the same time as me had their computer crash on them though :/

Key take away: Guys don't get yourself sick before an important exam. D:

Hi, I am planning to take UCAT exam next year 2022 in the same centre. Were the monitors OK including the resolution? Did you have to scroll up and down a lot for the verbal and quantitative? Did you do your exam in morning or afternoon? I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.

 

[2xq]

Hi, I am planning to take UCAT exam next year 2022 in the same centre.

I'm not kakarikaji but I can answer these questions for you based on my own experience.

Were the monitors OK including the resolution?

Yes though YMMV

Did you have to scroll up and down a lot for the verbal and quantitative?

No

Did you do your exam in morning or afternoon?

Arvo

 

[ucat3300+]

Hi, I am planning to take UCAT exam next year 2022 in the same centre. Were the monitors OK including the resolution? Did you have to scroll up and down a lot for the verbal and quantitative? Did you do your exam in morning or afternoon? I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.

Hey! I did mine at Parramatta this year, can give you some insights. One thing to note is that at the Parramatta testing centre, there are many rooms in which you can do your test. I'm not sure if all of the rooms at Parramatta have the same setup as the room I was in, so keep this in mind.

But to give you my experience, firstly, I highly recommend doing your test at the Pearson Parramatta centre. This is because the computers are new and fast, and the testing environment is very quiet. The rooms I mentioned look like a recording studio (with a huge glass on one side of the wall so that people from outside can look inside) and are sound proofed very well - coupled with the earplugs they provide, you can do your test in absolute silence. This contrasts with some horror stories I heard about there being construction noise / woodwind band practicing noise during your test.

To answer your questions, the monitors are very big (and wide), I would say they are 24 inch or 27 inch monitors. Expect the text (for verbal reasoning) to be quite stretched horizontally, however, the good thing about this is that you don't have to scroll down at all saving time and avoiding those annoying error messages "you did not see all of the text on this page" that prevent you from moving on to the next question. Needless to say you don't need to scroll down for Quantitative Reasoning with these big monitors.

I did my test at 10am because this is when my brain is most alert, but of course this varies for everyone, so this is up to you. But hope this helps!

 

[cs123]

hey everyone! it was my first time sitting the ucat this year. i'm a non-rural/non-indigenous applicant so i have the standard (super competitive) domestic entry. i'm currently in year 12 so just for some context, i began my prep start of last year where tbh i didn't take it that seriously so i did 2 hours every weekend (some weekends i missed). my prep got more serious this year in march where i began doing approx hour of ucat four times a week (and ofc with year 12 this fluctuated a lot). i barely did ucat prep in june since term 2 got super hectic so i had to prioritise my ATAR here. however, i had a three week term break where ALL I DID WAS UCAT so i did approx 5 hours everyday for the three weeks leading up to my ucat (some days this did burn me out so i'd advise coming up with a plan where u take breaks and/or set goals for a specific amt of qs to do to balance it out). so yeah i can totally understand how hard it is to balance year 12 and ucat so hats off to everyone who got amazing scores despite that.


Date completed: 17th July, 2021

Venue: Adelaide City Centre

Results:
VR: 500 (avg: 550 in mocks)
DM: 630 (avg: 600 in mocks)
QR: 740 (avg: 750 in mocks)
AR: 860 (avg: 750 in mocks)
TOTAL: 2730 (highest mock score: 2600)
SJT: 663

General advice for each section:
VR: clearly this was my absolute weakest section but i ended up doing MUCH worse than expected. so yes, i completely froze. i tried super hard to go in with a positive mindset and calm my nerves but it took me a while to get used to the fact that i was actually giving "the real thing". my mind was just clouded with thoughts that didn't help me retain any of the VR passages. so for the first 8 mins of VR i basically didn't retain anything. pls guys try not to do what i did, idk how but just don't !! so my "strategy" for VR was to skip to the T/F/CT qs first which helped in mocks (otherwise i was getting 400s lol). so maybe that's something u might wanna try. but yeah, passages were short but i can say that the keyword approach did NOT work for most of the passages !!! so don't rely on that too much and practise reading to RETAIN the information.

DM: i had heard that narrative syllogisms KILLED most people so i decided to leave them till the end but ran out of time (spent too long doing logic puzzles ugh) so i guessed 'no' for all narrative syllogisms ( i'm pretty sure that's where i lost most of my marks but as u can see from my mock avgs, DM was my second weakest section so didn't have many expectations there.

QR: like everyone, i did find it slightly easier than mocks but i scored about the same as my mock avg, my main advice here would be to SKIP those long tables where they ask u to calculate avgs (me and a couple friends had that) because they literally waste so much time. ur gonna be super tempted to do it cause its easy but pls flag, guess, do shorter qs and come back to it. also i had Pythagoras and some of my friends did have tax qs pop up which might seem rare but they did show up (so might wanna practise that just in case ur not that familiar with it)

AR: MAIN ADVICE i would give to people sitting it in the future and for my surprisingly good AR score is, even if you cant be bothered doing ucat prep everyday, try and do AR questions. with every other section, i belive u can get away with cramming (though its not ideal), but AR, u need to build the skills OVER TIME. the exposure to all the different patterns really enhanced ur skills and ur ability to recognise what u should look for when specific patterns show up. i did the whole section and still had 2 mins remaining to recheck my answers and go over some i flagged.

SJT: i clearly was so done with the exam at this point that i had given up on SJT lol but i wish i had given it more attention to do a bit better (especially with my low total score, SJT could've helped boost me up a little bit)

General comments on your experience:
i was defs disappointed with my score since i spent more than year prepping for it (even if i didn't take it seriously at the beginning). then again, with my highest mock score (out of the 19 mocks i did), i didn't expect to do that well either but still gave it my best shot so i'm glad i did better than my mocks but sadly, not well enough. since i am based in Adelaide, if i had gotten this score in 2020, i'd get an interview (SA applicants cutoff was 2650) for UofAdl but not sure what the cutoff will be this year (really really hoping its the same or a bit lower even but is unlikely). i'm still open to jcu and griffith etc so will fully focus on ATAR now and see how it goes. i hope the advice helps someone and if u have any qs, i'd be more than happy to answer them )

Appreciate your v detailed account and hope your uni offers work out!

Just wondering for your AR section in the real exam - did you end up managing to identify every pattern and lose some marks from errors etc? And do you think the AR plays a bit on luck ie getting patterns that you have seen before?

 

[ruralbuilderbob]

Appreciate your v detailed account and hope your uni offers work out!

Just wondering for your AR section in the real exam - did you end up managing to identify every pattern and lose some marks from errors etc? And do you think the AR plays a bit on luck ie getting patterns that you have seen before?

It does depend on luck and the difficult section that you get on exam day. sometimes the whole set is very easy whereas for others even though they have practised for months it can be near impossible to find the patterns.

 

[medgirl444]

Appreciate your v detailed account and hope your uni offers work out!

Just wondering for your AR section in the real exam - did you end up managing to identify every pattern and lose some marks from errors etc? And do you think the AR plays a bit on luck ie getting patterns that you have seen before?

hey tbh this was ages ago so i dont remember it as well now but i'm pretty sure i ended up identifying at least 1 pattern in every AR set i got. the main reason i lost marks is bc there are often more than 1 rule (2 or 3 depending on the type) which is why my strategy for AR was just to get through every set even if i find the BASIC rule and leave time at the end to come back and identify more rules and alter my answer.

to answer your second question, yes i do agree that the more exposure you have to AR patterns by doing consistent practice the better you are likely to do in the AR section bc sometimes you do see patterns you've seen multiple times before!

if you have more questions, lemme know. i unfortunately didnt get any med offers but my ATAR was quite good so i will be taking a gap year to resit the ucat this year! good luck to you.

 

[cs123]

Yeah I agree that identifying the partial pattern and scoring 2 or 3 marks out of 5 for each set is much more strategic than spending time trying to find full pattern under the time pressure. I am hoping that lots of practice and exposure to a range of patterns will be a good bank to draw from on test day.

I am SA based too - Can I ask which unis you applied to and in what order you preferenced? Thanks

 

[medgirl444]

Yeah I agree that identifying the partial pattern and scoring 2 or 3 marks out of 5 for each set is much more strategic than spending time trying to find full pattern under the time pressure. I am hoping that lots of practice and exposure to a range of patterns will be a good bank to draw from on test day.

I am SA based too - Can I ask which unis you applied to and in what order you preferenced? Thanks

sure! i applied to every med uni even interstate such as monash even though i knew my ucat was quite low for an interstate applicant to get an interview haha. my SA preferences before adl interview offers came out were:
1. med at adl uni
2. med at adl uni (bonded)
3. med at flinders
then i just put some random health degrees to fill up my preferences
4. health and med sci (advanced) at adl uni
5. health and med sci at adl uni
6. medical sciences at flinders

however, u find out whether ur ucat was high enough to make the cut and get an invitation to attend an adl uni interview in october/november. from my understanding, i was quite close as the cutoff was 2750 (2740 for people with a good SJ score). so unfortunately i missed out on an interview. then i reordered my preferences before the offer round by putting flinders as my first preference and completely remove adl med.

do keep in mind that flinders has limited spots so you'd need a basically perfect atar and high ucat to get in even though there's no interview. so i basically don't have chances to get into flinders anymore which is why i will be taking a gap year and resitting the ucat.

 

[2xq]

sure! i applied to every med uni even interstate such as monash even though i knew my ucat was quite low for an interstate applicant to get an interview haha. my SA preferences before adl interview offers came out were:
1. med at adl uni
2. med at adl uni (bonded)
3. med at flinders
then i just put some random health degrees to fill up my preferences
4. health and med sci (advanced) at adl uni
5. health and med sci at adl uni
6. medical sciences at flinders

however, u find out whether ur ucat was high enough to make the cut and get an invitation to attend an adl uni interview in october/november. from my understanding, i was quite close as the cutoff was 2750 (2740 for people with a good SJ score). so unfortunately i missed out on an interview. then i reordered my preferences before the offer round by putting flinders as my first preference and completely remove adl med.

do keep in mind that flinders has limited spots so you'd need a basically perfect atar and high ucat to get in even though there's no interview. so i basically don't have chances to get into flinders anymore which is why i will be taking a gap year and resitting the ucat.

hello, i can see that you're planning to do a gap year. was wondering if you have checked out this thread yet?

Common pitfalls to avoid for year 12 school leavers and other medicine applicants

Alternate title: "Ways to screw yourself over as a medical school applicant that you didn't know about" Hi everyone, As I suspect my activity on the site is likely to decrease a whole lot starting next year, I thought I would put together a whole lot of what I believe are a lot of important...

medstudentsonline.com.au

 

[Lawso]

I've got a "what are my chances". Desperate need any opinions actually, because I don't wanna get my hopes up, and also need to urgently book the appropriate accomodation.

UCAT: 3230 = 98%ile
ATAR: 99.90 (without any bonuses)
I'm a local student, was really hoping to get JMP Newcastle followed up by UNSW kensington. After first rounds i was lucky enough to get UNSW, although at the Port Macquarie campus. (UNSW was me 2nd pref, got nothing from JMP ). I've got the following questions.

1. What do you think my chances would be to scrape through a Monash offer still (using their SEAS calculator, after putting down my address and school, it says my atar becomes 99.95) ?

2. Chances of getting a top up offer at Adelaide ?

 

[DrDrLMG!]

I've got a "what are my chances". Desperate need any opinions actually, because I don't wanna get my hopes up, and also need to urgently book the appropriate accomodation.

UCAT: 3230 = 98%ile
ATAR: 99.90 (without any bonuses)
I'm a local student, was really hoping to get JMP Newcastle followed up by UNSW kensington. After first rounds i was lucky enough to get UNSW, although at the Port Macquarie campus. (UNSW was me 2nd pref, got nothing from JMP ). I've got the following questions.

1. What do you think my chances would be to scrape through a Monash offer still (using their SEAS calculator, after putting down my address and school, it says my atar becomes 99.95) ?

2. Chances of getting a top up offer at Adelaide ?

What are my chances of interview are generally much more straightforward than what are my chances of offer questions. Particularly when there’s an interview component to the selection criteria. Your academic and UCAT results are obviously competitive, but neither will guarantee you an offer on their own. You’ll just have to wait and see, really.