Pre-UMAT 2018 Discussion Thread

[Trinhcent]

I was thinking the same thing. Are there a certain number of questions in each section?

Section 1 consists of 48 question, S2 of 44 questions and s3 of 42 questions

 

[entirety]

Is anyone in year 12 planning on taking tomorrow off? I have nothing too important going on tomorrow and I was wondering if it's worth staying home chilling and maybe doing a couple more questions

 

[firstsnow]

For section 2, i kept on second guessing my answer option and i have slightly reduced that but it is still worse, how can i overcome it? (i seem to be able to only get around 25/44 and when i look back at the review i realised i could have got around 8 more right if i didn't change my option)

 

[DrDrLMG!]

For section 2, i kept on second guessing my answer option and i have slightly reduced that but it is still worse, how can i overcome it? (i seem to be able to only get around 25/44 and when i look back at the review i realised i could have got around 8 more right if i didn't change my option)

This was my WORST habit with S2. I ‘fixed’ it by making myself do the section in 30 minutes, which necessarily stopped me having time to over-analyse. Read the question, pick an answer, force yourself to move on. It’s the only thing that worked for me.

 

[firstsnow]

This was my WORST habit with S2. I ‘fixed’ it by making myself do the section in 30 minutes, which necessarily stopped me having time to over-analyse. Read the question, pick an answer, force yourself to move on. It’s the only thing that worked for me.

Would you suggest that i leave s2 to the end where i leave around 45min, so that i will kind of feel the time pressure and just choose the first option and continue with it?

Also, how did u improve s1? , i think one of my problems is not giving enough time for it cause i then tend to not read the passages properly and just guess. I think i should give myself strict proper times and do an exam today, to see how i go?

If anyone has done the NIE final time test, is it actually easier than the real umat?

 

[kei]

For those who did the UMAT section by section, how did you keep track of time / know if you're going at the right pace or not? For instance, if I want to allocate 30 mins for doing section 2, how do I even know if I'm going at the right pace and how many questions of section 2 I have left as I go? TIA!

While I know how many questions each section has, what I mean by this question is how do you keep track of how many questions you've done so far.. like do you write sticks at the side of your scantron sheet or something? I really want to do S1/S2 first and would really like to use this method, but not sure how to keep track of my questions and time in a less troublesome way.

 

[Rmed4949]

Is it really bad if I got 92/134 on Acer Exam 3 !!?!?!??!
freaking out a bit on the inside

 

[Chrismm]

Is anyone in year 12 planning on taking tomorrow off? I have nothing too important going on tomorrow and I was wondering if it's worth staying home chilling and maybe doing a couple more questions

I would but I don't want ruin a 5-year 100% attendance record.

 

[toulouse]

While I know how many questions each section has, what I mean by this question is how do you keep track of how many questions you've done so far.. like do you write sticks at the side of your scantron sheet or something? I really want to do S1/S2 first and would really like to use this method, but not sure how to keep track of my questions and time in a less troublesome way.

Tbh for me, I don't keep track whilst going through besides checking to see how much I've spent on an entire section. My allocation of 30 minutes for Section 2 is based off my average time on how long I usually take to complete that Section by doing several prac exams. That way I don't feel immense pressure having to complete it entirely within a certain time frame. Btw, do not write anything else on the scantron sheet, strictly answers only. If need be, keep track on your question booklet (maybe tallying? up to you). And another tip, within a section do the easier questions first.

 

[Lear]

I would but I don't want ruin a 5-year 100% attendance record.

Wow! that is very commendable. I personally am on a 100% streak for this year but plan to take tommorrow off :/

Is it really bad if I got 92/134 on Acer Exam 3 !!?!?!??!
freaking out a bit on the inside

If you get 92/134 in the actual Umat you are looking at a 90th percentile. However keep in mind Acer exams are typically easier than the actual UMAT.

 

[toulouse]

Is it really bad if I got 92/134 on Acer Exam 3 !!?!?!??!
freaking out a bit on the inside

If you're rural I wouldn't freak out but if not then I suggest making sure you go through each question and knowing why you got them wrong. Don't overwhelm yourself within these two days!

 

[A1]

Is anyone in year 12 planning on taking tomorrow off? I have nothing too important going on tomorrow and I was wondering if it's worth staying home chilling and maybe doing a couple more questions

My school gave the UMAT students half the (Tues)day off and got the non-UMAT students to do revision activities during this time + Wed, so that we wouldn't have to catch up with missed lessons.

 

[Austin]

My school gave the UMAT students half the (Tues)day off and got the non-UMAT students to do revision activities during this time + Wed, so that we wouldn't have to catch up with missed lessons.

how many kids sat the UMAT? I’m a public school kid and we literally had one other person sit the umat in grade 12. I don’t believe one kid has sat the umat at my school since 2016. Since 2015, we’ve probably had 1 or 2 OP2+ students..lol

 

[jiaxing]

How good is a score of 84/134 questions? Isn't 100/134 around 100th percentile?

Best strategies/list of all possible strategies for MISSING SEGMENT questions?

Also advice for arms/quadrant questions and grid with intermediate shapes questions?

Which exam was this for?

 

[A1]

how many kids sat the UMAT? I’m a public school kid and we literally had one other person sit the umat in grade 12. I don’t believe one kid has sat the umat at my school since 2016. Since 2015, we’ve probably had 1 or 2 OP2+ students..lol

I can only guess around 10-15 out of 150ish students at my school. Some of them didn't want others to know.

Did you hear that one school in Tas often gets 30+ students (about half the cohort) into Med a year?

 

[jiaxing]

Assuming these are for the real test and assuming the approx average of 2 marks per correct answer: 84/134 gives 168 = sub-80%ile (practically useless for non-rural), 100/134 gives 200 = 98-99%ile.
> UMAT 2017 percentile curves courtesy of Ruffle

It shows how big a difference 12-15 questions - just 1/10th of the test - make, yet people keep claiming prep is no use.
(Oh by prep I mean prep, not necessarily expensive paid prep).

I don’t understand why we multiple 84 by 2 to get the approx overall score but the 134 becomes 300 (not multiples by 2)??

 

[A1]

I don’t understand why we multiple 84 by 2 to get the approx overall score but the 134 becomes 300 (not multiples by 2)??

We figure that the questions don't end up giving equal marks i.e. some could be just 1 mark & some could be 3-4 marks. So 100 questions would typically (in our guesstimate) give 200 marks, and if you manage to score the 34 upper-end ones you'd get another 100 marks.

 

[Trinhcent]

I don’t understand why we multiple 84 by 2 to get the approx overall score but the 134 becomes 300 (not multiples by 2)??

Going off 134 raw score out of the 300 scaled score, we get that every question would be worth more than 2. However, with scaling we approximate that we get more easier questions correct compared to the more difficult questions, so we round it off to every question being worth 2.

Have a look at this thread for further info on this (about halfway down):
[Undergrad] - UMAT Scoring FAQs

 

[DrDrLMG!]

I can only guess around 10-15 out of 150ish students at my school. Some of them didn't want others to know.

Did you hear that one school in Tas often gets 30+ students (about half the cohort) into Med a year?

Not quite. Apparently my* year is a stand out year at 28 in o week that has become 23. High teens/low 20s is more typical we’ve been told.

While I agree it’s skewed, need to keep in mind context: there are not very many colleges in Hobart/Tas more generally (ie. most High Schools only go to year 10, then students group up to attend a much smaller number of colleges for year 11 and 12, including the year 12 cohort you are referring to).

*my MBBS year group, not my year 12 year group.

ETA: also, not sure what you mean by “about half the cohort”. Both the annual UTAS MBBS cohort and the year 12 group from that school have more students than that (MBBS = 120, year 12 = 150).

 

[AMedWannabe]

Which exam was this for?

NIE

Assuming these are for the real test and assuming the approx average of 2 marks per correct answer: 84/134 gives 168 = sub-80%ile (practically useless for non-rural), 100/134 gives 200 = 98-99%ile.
> UMAT 2017 percentile curves courtesy of Ruffle

It shows how big a difference 12-15 questions - just 1/10th of the test - make, yet people keep claiming prep is no use.
(Oh by prep I mean prep, not necessarily expensive paid prep).

If I am getting a useless score for non-rural now, then do I have any hope?