Requirments for Medicine and what unis offer it/which are good etc???

[Greggler]

Shinny; what Medentry course did you do?
Theres some ranging for like $300-1500.
I wouldnt mind shelling out 300 odd dollars, but 1500 seems a bit steep...?

[Red_x_Lily]

Arggh, how do you improve in UMAT?? What have you been doing ?

I agree with Shinny; medentry does help. I did the $495 thing with the workshop, although I found that it kinda repeated everything that was already on their online notes. But it was good to see it visually and have it explained. But if you do Medentry, ensure you do EVERYTHING on their website, and practice practice practice especially with section 3. Do not try to cram the info - it took me 6 months to do everything well spread out, increased it towards the exam so I repeated stuff I did earlier on because I'd forgotten the questions by then. Don't just do a ton of questions, REALLY understand what the method is and you'll notice half the questions look for the same thing anyway.

Also, borrow heaps of IQ/mensa books from your local library (mine had a good selection), google non verbal and verbal reasoning questions and you find heaps of relevant material for Section 1 and 3. Also, some Law exam selection test in the US called LSAT was also very relevant, although higher than the standard needed for UMAT. Section 2 is a little harder to improve on, but best bit of advice is to form a vocab bank with all the "big" words and their synonyms and practice.

Edit: Haha this sounds psycho...but I didn't have VCE...!  But it was worth it in the end.

[kat148]

Try out a few UMAT practice exams here
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,15253.0.html
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,15195.0.html

~some discussion links:

General Advice on UMAT
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,8796.0.html

UMAT companies ratings comparison
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,14450.0.html

UMAT prep courses
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,12402.0.html
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,3168.0.html

When should you start
http://vcenotes.com/forum/index.php/topic,16999.0.html

[shinny]

I'd recommend the platinum ($495) one w/ group discount, which is what I got. Just get a few mates together, or even find people off here to group with. The workshop isn't THAT useful though compared to the online stuff, so you can always go with the distance ($395) one if you want to cut back a bit. The workshop gives quite a lot of interview help as well though, so it is still worth going. And yeh, practise definitely helps with section 3 (the shapes). I was initially around 70 percentile on MedEntry, and ended up getting 100 in the real thing. Section 1 is similar, although to a lesser extent. However, with enough practise, you can definitely improve it quite considerably. Section 2 on the other hand is quite difficult to improve, but remember that you don't need to score that well in all three sections anyway to get a good score. I got 60 something percentile on section 2 and still managed to get 98 percentile overall in the end anyway.

[Greggler]

Thanks for all your help guys
I think i've decided ill do a UMAT prep course too (probably medentry, but are there any other respectable companies in the same price range?), rather than some simple 3/4 prep lectures over these upcoming school holidays.
Would you reccommend going this early in the year..? or will i forget everything by the time i have to sit the umat...?

The reason im choosing early in the year is as i am only doing four subjects next year i'll have plenty of spare time and therefore plenty of time to get cracking on UMAT stuff asap into the year.

also if anyone else is interested in going to one of these courses, contact me as i'll be looking for two other people to get the discount shinny mentioned for a group booking

Also what kind of material do they give you at medentry, i was looking on their site and it says 10 prac exams (is this much?) and also some other things with catchy names eg. "eureka" or sections drills...

Anymore help would be greatly appreciated as usual

[samuch]

ill do it too

[Red_x_Lily]

Would you reccommend going this early in the year..? or will i forget everything by the time i have to sit the umat...?

Also what kind of material do they give you at medentry, i was looking on their site and it says 10 prac exams (is this much?) and also some other things with catchy names eg. "eureka" or sections drills...

Well, if this helps: I went for the first workshop, pretty much for the same reason - to start preparing asap. Yeah, you might forget a couple of fine details from the workshop or what you learn early on, but provided you practice consistently, a bit every week or so, you won't forget too much. Maybe a couple of fine details in methods (like in section 3), but overtime with practice you'll remember them.

Medentry gives you 10 Exam length exams. I did all of them, and needed to do all of them, but I know a lot of people who didn't and they did well. You can gauge your standard yourself, or according to percentiles that you will receive for each section once you complete them. These percentiles, obviously, give you an indication as to how you perform relative to the others who did them. Best to spread these exams out over the months as you do them, because you may need a few hours to revise each one properly.

The drills are essentialy about 10 - 20 questions grouped according to their "type", so you can have a more "focused" training; eg, In section 1 you can have drills for "Logical Reasoning", "Data Analysis", "Problem Solving" etc, Section 2 "Patient-Doctor Interaction", "Passages" (like excerpts from stories) etc, Section 3 "Pick the Middle", "Fourth in the Sequence" etc. Again, loads of good practice.

Eureka is for Section 3 training, essentially generates questions randomly, a lower standard than actual Section 3, but still alright for practice.

[Greggler]

Ok, thanks for info...
What about the actual lectures/workshops do they justify the extra price? or is everything covered well in the notes and stuff?

[Red_x_Lily]

The workshop goes through all three sections with a small intro, then doing a couple of questions as an entire group and going through them closely. In my opinion, not enough examples, but it was still OK. Latter half of the second day is spent going through general interview stuff. Also had a mini mock interview, with one of the students being the interviewee and two more being the interviewers, and the lecturer giving a few tips at the end.

To me, the most important part of the workshop is the practice exam you do on the second day. I'm quite certain a couple of the Section 3 questions was on last year's UMAT. You do it in "exam conditions" and it'll give you a good idea of where you stand and how much you need to improve.

So yeah, I thought it was OK. Not spectacular, not a terrible waste of time too (although I reckon it could have been condensed). The stuff is covered in the notes online, but not some of the specific examples and the sample exam, so yeah.

[boysenberry]

The workshop goes through all three sections with a small intro, then doing a couple of questions as an entire group and going through them closely. In my opinion, not enough examples, but it was still OK. Latter half of the second day is spent going through general interview stuff. Also had a mini mock interview, with one of the students being the interviewee and two more being the interviewers, and the lecturer giving a few tips at the end.

To me, the most important part of the workshop is the practice exam you do on the second day. I'm quite certain a couple of the Section 3 questions was on last year's UMAT. You do it in "exam conditions" and it'll give you a good idea of where you stand and how much you need to improve.

So yeah, I thought it was OK. Not spectacular, not a terrible waste of time too (although I reckon it could have been condensed). The stuff is covered in the notes online, but not some of the specific examples and the sample exam, so yeah.

In total, how many hours did the workshops consume of your two whole days?

[thanh.21]

The workshop goes through all three sections with a small intro, then doing a couple of questions as an entire group and going through them closely. In my opinion, not enough examples, but it was still OK. Latter half of the second day is spent going through general interview stuff. Also had a mini mock interview, with one of the students being the interviewee and two more being the interviewers, and the lecturer giving a few tips at the end.

To me, the most important part of the workshop is the practice exam you do on the second day. I'm quite certain a couple of the Section 3 questions was on last year's UMAT. You do it in "exam conditions" and it'll give you a good idea of where you stand and how much you need to improve.

So yeah, I thought it was OK. Not spectacular, not a terrible waste of time too (although I reckon it could have been condensed). The stuff is covered in the notes online, but not some of the specific examples and the sample exam, so yeah.

i dont know if you still want an answer . lol but . i went this year. and the first day was from 10 to 5 . and day two was 9 to 4 including breaks of about one hour and a couple of short 5 -15 minute breaks

In total, how many hours did the workshops consume of your two whole days?