Hours to Spend on UCAT to be a top-scoring student

[Snow Leopard]

Hello,
I know that you should obviously trust the official UCAT website rather than companies that do tutoring for UCAT, but I wanted to ask:
The 2019 UCAT official guide from the ANZ website says that top scoring candidates spent 25-30 hours preparing for UCAT (I've attached a picture, the first box in the top left corner).

Whereas, icanmed says that their 3000+ students spend 250-300 hours on UCAT preparation.

What do you think about this cos that's a huge difference in terms of time?

[Sine]

Hello,
I know that you should obviously trust the official UCAT website rather than companies that do tutoring for UCAT, but I wanted to ask:
The 2019 UCAT official guide from the ANZ website says that top scoring candidates spent 25-30 hours preparing for UCAT (I've attached a picture, the first box in the top left corner).

Whereas, icanmed says that their 3000+ students spend 250-300 hours on UCAT preparation.

What do you think about this cos that's a huge difference in terms of time?

icanmed is a tutoring company - they want students to feel like the only way to do well is to put heaps of time into studying for the UCAT and attached to that is the idea that UCAT courses (specifically their one) will help you in doing so by providing resources and help at a cost.

I am not saying that putting in a heap of time is not good but that putting in that 250-300 hours will not guarantee anyone a good score. You will generally see a lot of students talk about how they did well and it usually comes with studying quite a bit coming up to the exam (especially if they are associated with a company providing training). Although, there is always a bunch who will pretend they did nothing in preparation. So just as there are heaps of people who do very well with putting in all those hours there are probably just as many or more students who don't do quite as well.

Ultimately, try to find out what is best for you - this may be just minimal preparation to get you acquainted with the style of the exam and logistics. For others, this might be studying a couple of hours every day for 6-12 months. Personally, I think if you have the time and the UCAT is important to you you should try to prepare for it - this will put you in a better position than if you did less or nothing but it won't guarantee you a great score. EDIT: In addition you definitely don't need a prep course to put in those 250-300 hours of study

As a side note: the results that companies portray are generally quite biased. They firstly have got all these students who are really motivated to study for the UCAT (e.g. paying the $500-1500 cost) on top of that I am guessing some students who don't do to well will just withhold results from the company so those who do well are much more likely going to report how they did. Quite a popular sentiment with prep courses for these types of tests are that they generally produce good scores from students who would've done well even without the course.

[whys]

There is an analogy you can use to help understand more about UCAT as a skill-based exam, rather than content-based. Think of it as learning to ride a bike - some people can instantly find their balance, while some need to fall and fall again to learn how to do it. Similarly, there are people who only did a few hours of prep before the exam who came out with impressive results, while for someone else, achieving a similar feat required many more hours of practice. I agree with Sine that companies who recommend such hours are only doing so for business. This doesn't mean you can't study that much - for some people, that much of practice will still not be enough, and for others it is excessive.

Regarding the title of this thread, there is no set amount of hours that will guarantee anything because it is skill-based. It's like how you can be very good at riding a bike after many years of doing so, but that doesn't mean you'll never fall over again, or be able to navigate any bike trail with ease. There is obviously a correlation between practice and results, but there is no 'guarantee' as such, unfortunately. Some people can easily complete 55 AR questions in 13 minutes, while for others they will require more time to be able to reach that level of skill.

[angrybiscuit]

I agree with what's already been said above. It varies from person to person and you really can't put a number to it.
To give you some example I know some friends who started preparing 9 weeks or a month prior to the UCAT/ UMAT and still perform very well. I also have friends who started getting tutored since Year 10 and spend thousands on tutoring and their UCAT score still fell short. Similar to VCE, quality of study matters more than quantity. Spending 300+ hours will be futile if those hours are not of quality and do nothing to help improve performance.

[futuredoc]

Last year, I only really spent 4ish hours per day self-studying over the 2 week holiday and I did fine. Just make sure that you study enough so that you get a score you're happy with on practise tests, but don't overdo it so much that you hit past your peak performance.
So I don't think it's about the actual number of hours put into studying, but more about how you use that time. For example, doing practise questions (starting from untimed to timed), brushing up on everyday math skills and spending more time on weaker areas (like VR for me!) is useful.
Good luck!!

[whys]

Thank you so much for your insights everyone!!!
So overall, I think that I should spend as much time as necessary (obviously using that time effectively) to study/prepare for UCAT in order to reach a point where I'm plateauing in my performance.

Also how long before the UCAT should I be plateauing in my performance?

This is very subjective. There are people who never did well in practice but did well in the actual exam, people who consistently scored well in practice and also did well on the exam, and people who plateaued a few days before the exam. Again, it's an aptitude test, so it varies for everyone and there's no 'correct' time to reach peak performance.

EDIT: too much practice can lead to burnout and your overall performance will decrease. It's important to recognise when you need to take breaks.