Post-UMAT 2018 Debrief Thread

[toulouse]

What’s everyone doing now?

I have only 2 days at uni since I chose some online course. This isn’t helping with the wait for results aaaa

Gap year lol so I'm booking tickets for a nice vacation to leave this country (for good jk jk) and in the meantime netflix and volunteer work???????? Life is great when you're not in year 12.

 

[Smelly Boy]

Trying to get that Atar 99.95

That’s eaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasy just relax

 

[Lear]

Trying to get that Atar 99.95

Same here lol

 

[PimpOfRivia]

I’m currently studying B.Vision/M.Optometry @ UNSW atm.
Second time doing the UMAT.
Going to apply to all universities once again.

 

[Ryan48691]

3rd time sitting the UMAT, thought I would give my reflections of what the exam was like for me this year
1st UMAT score 63th (50/44/62) Percentile, 2nd UMAT 89th (51/57/70) Percentile (I think those were my splits, can't recall exactly)

I feel as if the UMAT was much more 'accessible' this year , meaning prep didn't help as much as it would have in the previous two years. I think this a common trend we can expect among ACER exams in the future as-well.

S1 - Section 1 felt alot less 'thought intensive' this year. I feel as many questions required calculations on paper rather than having all the information jumbled into a soup of numbers and thoughts in your head. This made the majority of the problem solving seem more achievable on paper. I also think that there was more emphasis on follow up questions throughout all of section 1, meaning if you got the first question in the passage correct it made answering the next question significantly easier.

Data interpretation was similar to previous exams, the data in the graphs were relatively straight forward and mostly easy to identify, however the difficulty lay within the questions themselves and being able to identify what the question was actually asking rather than the first thought obvious answer present in the option choices. I feel as if ACER is definitely introducing more and more problem solving and less logical reasoning/data interpretation.

(Side note - I also feel as if there was little focus on actual biology and chemistry. Im a second year university student studying medical sciences and last years UMAT had 1 graph and a 2 passages that were quite familiar to me, maybe it was just luck?)


S2- I think ACER is definitely moving away from past exams which focused on a large vocabulary pool and long/wordy passages and instead focusing on tonality and how characters 'feel'. In saying this, I felt distinguishing between answer choices was harder than previous years. In past exams, if you memorised vocabulary you could easily eliminate at-least 2 answers or pick the best answer just based on understanding of words, but now you really have to put yourself in the characters shoes. Reading fast is obviously an advantage, but it wasn't as required this year due to the greater emphasis on the 'feel' of individuals, rather shuffling your way through mountains of text to find what the question was asking for.


S3 - Section 3 was definitely less focused on methodical things such as mapping (especially for pick the middle) and placed emphasis on more broad patterns. I think this may have really challenged people who were extremely focused on ME sec 3, as ME places large amounts of emphasis on methodical solving.

I found the matrix and next in the sequence questions patterns were 'simple' and required you to look at the question as a whole rather than map individual elements, which would've wasted a-lot of time. I also think that it was bit harder to simply 'guess' from the answers provided using the 3-2 rule. If you look at ACER exam 4 nearly all the next in the sequence can be guessed correctly from the answers by themselves, however in this years UMAT i felt it was a tad harder to do. I still feel however that the section 3 this year was mostly accurately reflected by ACER exam 4 in its style of question.

This UMAT is seen as very hard, and seems 'unachievable' but I felt these stereotypes were toned down a-lot this year, but I am unclear on how these will reflect in the percentiles.

To people who are panicking, know that your fear is most likely irrational and stems for a lack of self-confidence rather than your actual ability. Accept that anxiety is a natural part of the competitive UMAT landscape and MOVE ON.

I hope some people reading this found it interesting/insightful and may have helped relive anxiety for some Thanks for reading.

 

[jiaxing]

3rd time sitting the UMAT, thought I would give my reflections of what the exam was like for me this year
1st UMAT score 63th (50/44/62) Percentile, 2nd UMAT 89th (51/57/70) Percentile (I think those were my splits, can't recall exactly)

I feel as if the UMAT was much more 'accessible' this year , meaning prep didn't help as much as it would have in the previous two years. I think this a common trend we can expect among ACER exams in the future as-well.

S1 - Section 1 felt alot less 'thought intensive' this year. I feel as many questions required calculations on paper rather than having all the information jumbled into a soup of numbers and thoughts in your head. This made the majority of the problem solving seem more achievable on paper. I also think that there was more emphasis on follow up questions throughout all of section 1, meaning if you got the first question in the passage correct it made answering the next question significantly easier.

Data interpretation was similar to previous exams, the data in the graphs were relatively straight forward and mostly easy to identify, however the difficulty lay within the questions themselves and being able to identify what the question was actually asking rather than the first thought obvious answer present in the option choices. I feel as if ACER is definitely introducing more and more problem solving and less logical reasoning/data interpretation.

(Side note - I also feel as if there was little focus on actual biology and chemistry. Im a second year university student studying medical sciences and last years UMAT had 1 graph and a 2 passages that were quite familiar to me, maybe it was just luck?)


S2- I think ACER is definitely moving away from past exams which focused on a large vocabulary pool and long/wordy passages and instead focusing on tonality and how characters 'feel'. In saying this, I felt distinguishing between answer choices was harder than previous years. In past exams, if you memorised vocabulary you could easily eliminate at-least 2 answers or pick the best answer just based on understanding of words, but now you really have to put yourself in the characters shoes. Reading fast is obviously an advantage, but it wasn't as required this year due to the greater emphasis on the 'feel' of individuals, rather shuffling your way through mountains of text to find what the question was asking for.


S3 - Section 3 was definitely less focused on methodical things such as mapping (especially for pick the middle) and placed emphasis on more broad patterns. I think this may have really challenged people who were extremely focused on ME sec 3, as ME places large amounts of emphasis on methodical solving.

I found the matrix and next in the sequence questions patterns were 'simple' and required you to look at the question as a whole rather than map individual elements, which would've wasted a-lot of time. I also think that it was bit harder to simply 'guess' from the answers provided using the 3-2 rule. If you look at ACER exam 4 nearly all the next in the sequence can be guessed correctly from the answers by themselves, however in this years UMAT i felt it was a tad harder to do. I still feel however that the section 3 this year was mostly accurately reflected by ACER exam 4 in its style of question.

This UMAT is seen as very hard, and seems 'unachievable' but I felt these stereotypes were toned down a-lot this year, but I am unclear on how these will reflect in the percentiles.

To people who are panicking, know that your fear is most likely irrational and stems for a lack of self-confidence rather than your actual ability. Accept that anxiety is a natural part of the competitive UMAT landscape and MOVE ON.

I hope some people reading this found it interesting/insightful and may have helped relive anxiety for some Thanks for reading.

Last sentence in second last paragraph - THANK YOU! Sometimes you just have to hear it from someone else.

 

[Lear]

There seems to be a common view that the UMAT this year was pretty accessible compared to recent years. I know that this website is a very small sample size and also may be skewed with smarter students, however, does it seem likely that there will be significantly higher benchmark in terms of percentiles this year? It is commonly quoted that 90/134 is quite close to 90th percentile. Could it be that this year a 90/134 may only mean ~80th?

 

[Smelly Boy]

There seems to be a common view that the UMAT this year was pretty accessible compared to recent years. I know that this website is a very small sample size and also may be skewed with smarter students, however, does it seem likely that there will be significantly higher benchmark in terms of percentiles this year? It is commonly quoted that 90/134 is quite close to 90th percentile. Could it be that this year a 90/134 may only mean ~80th?

Accessible doesn’t rlly mean easy.

S2 was more accessible because the vocab wasn’t as difficult. The difficulty lied in understanding the text and putting yourself in the shoes of the person. I think that’s more difficult than just getting something right by scanning and having a good vocab. This year’s unat s2 questions weren’t locked behind having a good vocab.

S1 was s1. Didn’t feel like it was different from other years.

S3 was more accessible because people who practice doing mapping and stuff with prep companies can’t use it that much and so those who haven’t prepped and who aren’t entirely familiar with the concept of mapping wont be disadvantaged

And plus it’s only like 3 people on this forum saying the test wasn’t THAT hard. If you go to page 1 of this thread you will see people saying they blindly guessed x amount of question and could only narrow down some questions to 2 options etc.

I think it’ll be the same old 90/134 for a 90th. And yeah people here are part of the elite 1% as I factually stated yesterday so keep that in mind

 

[Smelly Boy]

Also one question:

See how that life expectancy question graphed 20, 40, 60 and 80 year old males and females, there were answer options referring to 30, 50 and 70 year olds in like 2 of the questions and u could automatically cross those out since there isn’t enough info to inform u about those age groups. Did anyone else feel this way? Or did I misread something

 

[jiaxing]

Also one question:

See how that life expectancy question graphed 20, 40, 60 and 80 year old males and females, there were answer options referring to 30, 50 and 70 year olds in like 2 of the questions and u could automatically cross those out since there isn’t enough info to inform u about those age groups. Did anyone else feel this way? Or did I misread something

I read it that way too!
I realised that 2 options were not in the scope of the passage given, therefore they could be ruled out.
The other two were easy to deduce from. By easy I mean simple calculations.

 

[A1]

It is commonly quoted that 90/134 is quite close to 90th percentile. Could it be that this year a 90/134 may only mean ~80th?

As I wrote in an earlier post the marks per section are deliberately shaped then scaled to make each section median ~50 marks. Which means I suspect 90th %ile will again, statistically, be around 179-181 overall marks.

So you won't see 90q/134 = 180 marks = only 80th, but we could see 90q/134 = 170 marks = 80th. This would be the indirect effect of more students getting a question correct making it worth less relatively.

 

[Lear]

Also one question:

See how that life expectancy question graphed 20, 40, 60 and 80 year old males and females, there were answer options referring to 30, 50 and 70 year olds in like 2 of the questions and u could automatically cross those out since there isn’t enough info to inform u about those age groups. Did anyone else feel this way? Or did I misread something

Yeah I was sort of confused too. Made me go back and see if I was missing something big. Like surely they wouldn't make it that easy to cancel out answers?

 

[PimpOfRivia]

Yeah I was sort of confused too. Made me go back and see if I was missing something big. Like surely they wouldn't make it that easy to cancel out answers?

OMG hahaha I felt the same way, like wtf this is piss easy lmao

 

[tleb]

There seems to be a common view that the UMAT this year was pretty accessible compared to recent years. I know that this website is a very small sample size and also may be skewed with smarter students, however, does it seem likely that there will be significantly higher benchmark in terms of percentiles this year? It is commonly quoted that 90/134 is quite close to 90th percentile. Could it be that this year a 90/134 may only mean ~80th?

I think a large portion of people on this thread did it last year hence second time around it typically feels a bit easier. I don't think the exam itself was any easier or harder than last year. A lot of people found S2 same as last year but I personally found it a bit easier maybe it was just me.

 

[PimpOfRivia]

How did people conclude that 90/134 is roughly in the top 10%? Does it not depend on the difficulty of the exam and most importantly your rank?

 

[tleb]

How did people conclude that 90/134 is roughly in the top 10%?

I'm sure someone has done the maths but surely 90/134 would be a bit higher than 90 percentile? I don't know maybe I am too conservative.

 

[Smelly Boy]

If you want to know how people arrived at the 90/134=180 score=90th percentile then give this a read:
[Undergrad] - UMAT Scoring FAQs

 

[Lear]

100/134 is the dream

 

[A1]

How did people conclude that 90/134 is roughly in the top 10%? Does it not depend on the difficulty of the exam and most importantly your rank?

It's just a rough rule-of-thumb we use, mainly to convince the struggling preppers that they don't need to score 90% of the questions to get 90th %ile (believe me many thought like that).

The truth is no-one knows how many ??/134 you need to get 90th. We based on the past several years that ~180 overall marks = 90th, and to get 180 out of 300 you'd need 80/134 if the questions were all equal. We stay on the safe side and inflate it to 90/134

 

[PimpOfRivia]

It's just a rough rule-of-thumb we use, mainly to convince the struggling preppers that they don't need to score 90% of the questions to get 90th %ile (believe me many thought like that).

The truth is no-one knows how many ??/134 you need to get 90th. We based on the past several years that ~180 overall marks = 90th, and to get 180 out of 300 you'd need 80/134 if the questions were all equal. We stay on the safe side and inflate it to 90/134

Nice reasoning lmao. And also fyi