Medify, icanmed, medentry which one?

[Rose34]

Hey guys,

Which one of there would you recommend doing in preparation of the UCAT: medify, icanmed or medentry? Also, I'm in year 12 and doing 6 subjects, so I kinda want to do the UCAT but also scared that it would affect my other studies, so what do you guys think? does UCAT prep affect school subjects?

[james.358]

Hey Rose,

I completed UCAT this year, and wasted so so much time (and money) on commercial resources. MedEntry and iCanMed both expect you to do too much (250 hours expected by ICM!), which is extraodinarily ineffective since UCAT is ultimately an aptitude test.

To you and all the Y11s and Y12s out there, please don't fall victim to the anxiety inducing tactics of these companies. It is an aptitude test, and you can do very very well simply using the official resources and YT videos (highly recommend KharmaMedic). All the UCAT techniques can easily be self-taught through the official question bank. There are also 10 extra practice exams for free you can find on PassMedicine: https://www.passmedicine.com/ucat/

The commercial companies seriously just make tonnes of money exploiting the students and parents to make them to feel insecure about their abilities... This is perhaps even more so for the interview course which is completely ridiculous. Trust your own ability and do your own prep, you'll do great!

[Rose34]

Hey Rose,

I completed UCAT this year, and wasted so so much time (and money) on commercial resources. MedEntry and iCanMed both expect you to do too much (250 hours expected by ICM!), which is extraodinarily ineffective since UCAT is ultimately an aptitude test.

To you and all the Y11s and Y12s out there, please don't fall victim to the anxiety inducing tactics of these companies. It is an aptitude test, and you can do very very well simply using the official resources and YT videos (highly recommend KharmaMedic). All the UCAT techniques can easily be self-taught through the official question bank. There are also 10 extra practice exams for free you can find on PassMedicine: https://www.passmedicine.com/ucat/

The commercial companies seriously just make tonnes of money exploiting the students and parents to make them to feel insecure about their abilities... This is perhaps even more so for the interview course which is completely ridiculous. Trust your own ability and do your own prep, you'll do great!

Hello James,

Thank you for your advice! I honestly wanted to join one of them(especially medify) to get as much resources as possible so I can do many practice questions, and honestly, iCanMed and Medentry are really expensive that is why I was asking which one is the most beneficial as I do not intend to waste money (and time).. TBH I did not know where I can find free resources so thanks for the info! are there more websites to get pratice papers? Also, how many hours a week do you recommend practicing UCAT?

[fun_jirachi]

Just going to address some points that have been missed above:

"Also, I'm in year 12 and doing 6 subjects, so I kinda want to do the UCAT but also scared that it would affect my other studies, so what do you guys think? does UCAT prep affect school subjects?"

Yes and no. It depends on how you structure things. If you find yourself needing to allocate time to study UCAT that was previously going to be used for your school subjects or vice versa, then it probably is affecting your school subjects. I'm yet to see evidence that under proper organisation, UCAT prep affects school performance. It's probably also important to keep enough free time for yourself too, to prevent burnout.

" Also, how many hours a week do you recommend practicing UCAT?"
It depends. You can ask for as many recommendations as you like and if you got explicit answers like 5 hours or whatever I honestly think that's poor advice (or at least, you wouldn't get the same figure every time). It really depends on however much you need. The one thing I will say on this is to try not to study more than you need to because at the end of the day it is an aptitude test, and much like anything else there are diminishing returns past a certain amount of work (you're best off doing something you need / like to do instead), except I personally think the drop-off, in this case, is a lot larger. This question gets asked an abnormal amount and I don't think my answer has changed at all over the 2.5 years since I did UCAT.

Trust your own ability and do your own prep, you'll do great!

And yeah, pretty much this.