UMAT Section 3 Guide

[paulsterio]

Well, everyone's making subject guides, so I thought I might as well do one of these


So, a little bit about myself first, I completed the UMAT in 2011 and Section 3 was my best section, I've always found it quite fun and entertaining and it's always quite a good change from Section 1 and Section 2.


Section 3 is all about shapes, patterns and non-verbal reasoning. Basically there are three different sorts of questions, "Complete the Series", "Complete the Diagram" and "Pick the Middle"


Out of the three types, "Complete the Series" is the easiest because it's the most intuitive, we usually can track things and find out their patterns. "Complete the Diagram" requires a little bit more intelligence and experience. "Pick the Middle" is probably the hardest, but that's because it requires a few artificial techniques in order to really nut it out.


I'll start off with the easy one first - "Complete the Series"
"Complete the Series" usually requires you to track elements in the shape and to find out what follows.
Usually they're pretty straightforward but here are some of the tricks which you might find handy, if you can't seem to track anything

• Look at the number of lines (number of sides) of the shapes - they might be increasing or decreasing
• Look at the number of intersections between lines
• Look at the number of curved lines (or the number of straight lines)
• Look for repeats, is the 3rd one the same as the 1st one?
• Assign numbers to each element and track each element individually if it's a "motion" type progression

"Complete the Diagram" comes in many flavours, "Squares", "Circles (pies)" are the most common.


In squares, you usually have a square which is divided into 9 smaller squares (divided into 3x3)
In these sorts of questions, you have to fill in a blank square
There are essentially two types -


I'll finish and format tomorrow, sleepy now

[paulsterio]

Reserved

[Hellrocks]

Great work! Looking good already