The UCAT, External Resources, Brief Thoughts and Opinions, From a HSFY Perspective
UCAT:
The UCAT is an aptitude test that is designed to test for skills that are important for any health professional but are not tested in the core HSFY curriculum. It replaces the UMAT and comprises of 5 subtests, all carried out on a computer and generally multiple choice.
At the University of Otago, it is used as an additional tool to help select those who gain entry into professional programs. It was used as a threshold for medicine and dentistry with the latter being a higher threshold (a minimum score needed to be achieved in certain sections for your application to be considered). In Australia, it is a tool that is very important in whether or not you gain entry into medical school because it is not a threshold and contributes significantly to your application. I am not sure how the test is used at the University of Auckland or other institutions.
At Otago at least there seemed to be less of an emphasis on the UCAT than in previous years due to the new formatting where you only have to obtain a threshold rather having it comprise of 33% of your rank score like back in the UMAT days. I did not like the change because this meant that now your entrance into medicine and dentistry was purely 100% based off of your grades, which in turn results in a higher grade percentage needed to get into your desired course. However, nothing could be done about it and I approached the UCAT with the utmost importance when the time came around.
I had no idea what the UCAT was or how challenging it was probably two months before the test when people started talking about it. From here I booked my exam through PearsonVUE and carried out grinding my semester 1 exams. I purchased extra resources from MedEntry, a third party supplier of resources to help students prepare for the UCAT. I had no idea about the UCAT and it was my mother who heard through word and mouth about previously successful applicants who had bought the same resources.
I found the online resources extremely helpful and all I needed to prepare for the exam. The most important skill that you need in the UCAT is speed and speed can only be improved via practice. This is what the MedEntry online resources offered me, they gave me 10+ full UCAT examinations, as well as lots of drills that I could do when I wasn’t as confident in a particular subtest. There were no real negatives when using this interface to prepare for the exam and it was all I needed.
The exam itself is extremely stressful and time management is the biggest skill you will need to work on. Therefore practising on an actual computer, using the keyboard and number pad shortcuts are all things that I would recommend working on whilst practising. The UCAT comprises of 5 sections, verbal reasoning, decision making, quantitative reasoning, abstract reasoning and situational judgement.
In verbal they provide you with a series of texts where you have to take out information and answer a series of multiple-choice questions based off of the text. This one I found very time constraining and being able to speed read and be able to pick out information from long texts helps. The practice I would recommend just reading more and doing lots of practice subtests.
Decision Making is a tricky one because it comprises of a whole lot of things, logic games are very tricky as they may take a long time, but then again you are short on time, so you have to be able to think fast. There are then true-false statements, where you are given a scenario or a diagram and have to say whether statements are indeed true or false. And then there are the Venn diagram questions which require to be able to make quick calculations in your head.
Quantitative is all maths, you have to be able to do percentage calculations, fractions, simple addition and subtraction all in your head or be speedy on the number pad. In this section you can’t worry too much on the specific numbers, rather rounding them to the nearest 1000 or 500 is better as it will give you the best estimate for your answer.
Abstract is one you can’t study for, it comprises of questions that include patterns, ie what the next pattern in the sequence is and does this pattern belong to set A or set B. It’s a real niggly one but once you have the pattern down then your good as gold.
Situational judgement is the final and least time-pressured subtest as it is simple logic, you have to decide what the appropriateness of a response to do to a certain situation would be, for example, if someone is breaking patient-client privilege etc.
Overall the UCAT is going to be the hardest most stressful you ever will have to do in your life, thus adequate preparation is required and as aforementioned I would recommend external resources such as MedEntry. However due to the changes in how the UCAT is used at the University of Otago then it puts less emphasis on UCAT and more emphasis on your grades throughout the year. To upcoming HSFY students, I would recommend not studying for the UCAT until your semester break and then going hard, as your first semester exams are much more important when being considered entry into medicine or dentistry than in previous years.
If you have any questions feel free to email me at HSFYblog@gmail.com or drop a comment below, cheers!
The UCAT is an aptitude test that is designed to test for skills that are important for any health professional but are not tested in the core HSFY curriculum. It replaces the UMAT and comprises of 5 subtests, all carried out on a computer and generally multiple choice.
At the University of Otago, it is used as an additional tool to help select those who gain entry into professional programs. It was used as a threshold for medicine and dentistry with the latter being a higher threshold (a minimum score needed to be achieved in certain sections for your application to be considered). In Australia, it is a tool that is very important in whether or not you gain entry into medical school because it is not a threshold and contributes significantly to your application. I am not sure how the test is used at the University of Auckland or other institutions.
At Otago at least there seemed to be less of an emphasis on the UCAT than in previous years due to the new formatting where you only have to obtain a threshold rather having it comprise of 33% of your rank score like back in the UMAT days. I did not like the change because this meant that now your entrance into medicine and dentistry was purely 100% based off of your grades, which in turn results in a higher grade percentage needed to get into your desired course. However, nothing could be done about it and I approached the UCAT with the utmost importance when the time came around.
I had no idea what the UCAT was or how challenging it was probably two months before the test when people started talking about it. From here I booked my exam through PearsonVUE and carried out grinding my semester 1 exams. I purchased extra resources from MedEntry, a third party supplier of resources to help students prepare for the UCAT. I had no idea about the UCAT and it was my mother who heard through word and mouth about previously successful applicants who had bought the same resources.
I found the online resources extremely helpful and all I needed to prepare for the exam. The most important skill that you need in the UCAT is speed and speed can only be improved via practice. This is what the MedEntry online resources offered me, they gave me 10+ full UCAT examinations, as well as lots of drills that I could do when I wasn’t as confident in a particular subtest. There were no real negatives when using this interface to prepare for the exam and it was all I needed.
The exam itself is extremely stressful and time management is the biggest skill you will need to work on. Therefore practising on an actual computer, using the keyboard and number pad shortcuts are all things that I would recommend working on whilst practising. The UCAT comprises of 5 sections, verbal reasoning, decision making, quantitative reasoning, abstract reasoning and situational judgement.
In verbal they provide you with a series of texts where you have to take out information and answer a series of multiple-choice questions based off of the text. This one I found very time constraining and being able to speed read and be able to pick out information from long texts helps. The practice I would recommend just reading more and doing lots of practice subtests.
Decision Making is a tricky one because it comprises of a whole lot of things, logic games are very tricky as they may take a long time, but then again you are short on time, so you have to be able to think fast. There are then true-false statements, where you are given a scenario or a diagram and have to say whether statements are indeed true or false. And then there are the Venn diagram questions which require to be able to make quick calculations in your head.
Quantitative is all maths, you have to be able to do percentage calculations, fractions, simple addition and subtraction all in your head or be speedy on the number pad. In this section you can’t worry too much on the specific numbers, rather rounding them to the nearest 1000 or 500 is better as it will give you the best estimate for your answer.
Abstract is one you can’t study for, it comprises of questions that include patterns, ie what the next pattern in the sequence is and does this pattern belong to set A or set B. It’s a real niggly one but once you have the pattern down then your good as gold.
Situational judgement is the final and least time-pressured subtest as it is simple logic, you have to decide what the appropriateness of a response to do to a certain situation would be, for example, if someone is breaking patient-client privilege etc.
Overall the UCAT is going to be the hardest most stressful you ever will have to do in your life, thus adequate preparation is required and as aforementioned I would recommend external resources such as MedEntry. However due to the changes in how the UCAT is used at the University of Otago then it puts less emphasis on UCAT and more emphasis on your grades throughout the year. To upcoming HSFY students, I would recommend not studying for the UCAT until your semester break and then going hard, as your first semester exams are much more important when being considered entry into medicine or dentistry than in previous years.
If you have any questions feel free to email me at HSFYblog@gmail.com or drop a comment below, cheers!
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