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Goodness, personally I consider that as pretty thorough prep! Some people go into these tests blind and nail them, and while I don’t necessarily endorse that myself, I think there’s probably a glass ceiling to be hit prep wise where doing x additional hours probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Don’t burn yourself out too early - you’ve likely got a big year in front of you!
dont stress too much about the UCAT. Personally what I found with my peformance last year was that is very dependent on the day and how you maintain yourself. I remember panicking when i couldn't finish QR in time while stressing simultaneously about the next section. The best thing to do is to keep as calm as possible ( which can be helped by practice and preparation ) and move onto the next questions which i found helped me a lot last year. As for my preparation last year I found that I ramped up my prep quite a bit in the school winter holidays with around 5 hours of prep a day and I did fine as im sure you will too! goodluckThanks for the reassurance, as I’ve been told several times I’m starting my prep late. I also wanted to get some of the prep done before school gets too intense, because as soon as a test is announced I’ll probably forget about UCAT study for a few days/a week.
The glass ceiling thing definitely makes sense, though I question whether it could be reached in as little as four weeks. I know I’m still improving quite steadily (mind you, I started out clueless). Maybe some people can just learn faster
Have to strongly disagree with this. There are many reasons people can burn out, and while self-care goes a long way, when you take a driven candidate (who may well have many other life commitments in addition to their schooling and UCAT) who wants to / has been recommended to / has an expectation that they have to spend several hours + each day preparing for a high stakes exam for months on end, it’s hard to stop the candle burning at both ends. I know your comment was made with reference to UCAT preparation, but more broadly, it’s usually not going to be helpful to suggest someone burnt out is in their position purely because they’re not looking after themselves. There’s usually an array of factors going on and not all of them can be controlled easily.
Different exam I know (but one I’d argue is possibly more preparable for than UCAT) but when I sat GAMSAT I didn’t ever do more than 6 weeks in the lead up to the exam, and when I tell others that, it’s an attempt to reassure them that crazy amounts of preparation aren’t 100% necessary to do well, and to minimise stress - something that I imagine many past UCAT sitters with similar advice are doing. To suggest it’s an attempt to justify poor work ethic or sabotage other test sitters seems a little.... more far fetched than simply to help others, and personally I’d find it a little insulting if someone suggested those were my motives if I was giving said advice/reassurance.
Sorry if I’ve missed this being answered, and I’d love anyone else who’s done well could answer this as well, but how did you allocate how many questions you would do for the 4 main cognitive sub tests? I struggled with this massively last year.
In my practice I would spend more time on the sections I was bad/less confident with at that point in time. I found myself struggling with QR quite a bit so I spent a significant amount of time working on it and I gradually improved/felt more confident and then shifted my focus onto a different subtest. For me it worked best to really try to improve one section at a time but I really think its a matter of doing as you see fit.
You're correct that SJT is out of 900. However it doesn't contribute to the overall UCAT mark and is treated as a separate mark. Thus overall mark will only be out of 3600
Got it, thanks. So an individual's percentile is based off the other 4 sections? Do Uni's care too much about SJT?
As far as I’m aware, the only uni to do this was Western Sydney, and purely for interview invitations. A1 created a formula which (I’m fairly certain) accurately emulated how WSU ranked their applicants for interview:
In regards to SJT, there have been no notifications so far from any University that they will employ it for future admissions. However, I personally believe it is still good practice for interviews (especially MMI).
Like on Pearson? Don't think so.
The relevant dates are on the UCAT website.
Time flies..
Second this. I'd recommend booking a time during the weekend before your term 3/semester 2 starts. This means you've maximised practice time (because once school/uni starts you're not realistically going to do a lot of practice) but you're not spending an extra week being anxious when you should be focussing on study.Holy crap it's been a year already
By the way guys, as appealing as the 31st July sounds to do your test (a lot of my friends did that to maximise the amount of time they had to prep), book a testing date at least one week before that. You never know when you'll get sick/have other commitments, and that extra week allows you to reschedule your test to a later date if you need to.
