National Education > UCAT
Exam Day UCAT Strategies
fun_jirachi:
Just going to address a few more of your concerns :) ~
--- Quote from: A.Rose on May 18, 2020, 05:55:17 pm ---Yes, I am quite nervous for the exam. Mostly because of the time constraint
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You can look to tackle this issue in a few different ways. Some of my friends who did do better than me did daily rigorous practice under timed conditions, while I took time pressure out of the picture completely, and just timed myself after doing a set of questions (without worrying about time as any sort of constraint) or even just in a chill untimed way. What's important to note here is that there is no one way to succeed - you can try one of the above two ways, none or both and any number of them could work!
Some important considerations:
- Ask yourself 'how do I function best in a school-based exam?' - this will give you some sort of measure as to how you already cope with time pressure -> think particularly about exams where you have to write (time constraints are particularly tight here) or mathematics (relevant subject matter).
- Not completing all the questions in practice is not something to worry about - if you're getting close enough to finishing in the time limit, that's excellent; you do tend to go a tad bit quicker in the actual exam and you'll probably finish with an exam adrenaline rush type thing
- Even if you're not close, it's important to note that you should focus on maximising the marks you can get instead of maximising the marks you can't -> just get as many questions as you can right in the time limit over finishing all the questions :)
--- Quote from: A.Rose on May 18, 2020, 05:55:17 pm ---I am trying to do thorough preparation - a bit during the week and then lots on my weekend and then I'll have two weeks I can completely devote to UCAT in my holidays. I am purely using the free UCAT resources on the website as well as free video tutorials as I decided not to rely on external providers. Hopefully, I can still do well without relying on external resources (and UCAT stressed that they don't endorse these so I'm following with that).
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I never paid for anything either - it's so crucial to see just like how in school effort =/= marks, money spent =/= higher UCAT score. What's more important is how well you understand what the questions ask, how focused you are and how well you can cope with pressure. If you can do that without spending any money and you can back your own ability, you'll do better than almost everyone that pays to succeed, and everyone will think you're 10x cooler for a bit - you can 110% do well without relying on external resources.
--- Quote from: A.Rose on May 18, 2020, 05:55:17 pm ---Would I be right in saying, you try and finish the whole test but maybe you have to make guesses for the rest you don't finish due to the time pressure?
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Typically, as soon as you see a question you can't answer quickly, you skip it, and come back at the end - for verbal reasoning, you tend to skip the whole question set since you don't want to have to read the passage twice, synthesise it twice for two separate attempts at different questions in the set. This holds true for abstract reasoning particularly, since the time you get is literally criminal.
If you do find yourself running out of time, you should guess - it is better than putting nothing down at all. It's always good to be glancing at the time remaining frequently to know when you need to up the ante a bit - depending on your confidence with each section, it might also be a wise decision to start making educated guesses earlier than making random guesses when you're really running out of time.
--- Quote from: A.Rose on May 18, 2020, 05:55:17 pm ---Also, did you find the actual test to be very similar to the practice tests in terms of difficulty and question type similarity?
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It actually depends. I think in my year there were three different tests in rotation and you got one of the three. Some companies apparently had tests which were bang-on in terms of difficulty, but for all the F2P people, the UCAT website did an excellent job compared to the majority of companies who were basically clueless in the first year of UCAT. I don't remember the UCAT tests as well as the actual exam, but I do remember feeling more confident the more I went through the exam, and that they were reasonably similar enough because at no point did I actually get thrown off. At any rate, all practice is good practice, if it helps you understand the concepts better.
Hope this helps :)
A.Rose:
Thank you so much fun_jirachi!!
Your advice is amazing, I really appreciate the time you have put into giving me some thorough tips.
--- Quote from: fun_jirachi on May 19, 2020, 04:59:52 pm ---I never paid for anything either - it's so crucial to see just like how in school effort =/= marks, money spent =/= higher UCAT score. What's more important is how well you understand what the questions ask, how focused you are and how well you can cope with pressure.
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It certainly also makes me more relieved to hear that just using the UCAT provided resources will still give me just a good chance. I definitely agree with what you said about making sure I practise well, understand the questions and practise with time pressure.
Yes, I did begin with untimed conditions as I wanted to have time to go through the question and solution one at a time. Now I find that for VR, AR and SJ I manage to answer the majority of the questions in time but when I time myself with DM or QR its much more pressure!! Even DM is better because some questions aren't mathematical and you don't have to calculate/write anything but QR almost all the questions require multi-step calcs and I am not fond of the on-screen calculator (the memory function is quite useful though). So if anything Quantitative reasoning is the one I am most worried about due to time and having to understand exactly what the question wants in a short time frame.
Thanks again!
fun_jirachi:
--- Quote from: A.Rose on May 19, 2020, 05:27:49 pm ---I am not fond of the on-screen calculator (the memory function is quite useful though). So if anything Quantitative reasoning is the one I am most worried about due to time and having to understand exactly what the question wants in a short time frame.
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I think this seems to be the issue that I haven't properly answered, sorry about that! :)
If you can, try to develop your mental arithmetic, so that using the on-screen calculator isn't always necessary. I agree that it is a bit tacky, and I honestly didn't really use it - it was either quicker by hand or to make educated guesses. There are ways to make each aspect of this sort of arithmetic better:
- Where possible, look to use 'back-of-the-envelope calculations' this will save you loads of time. If an answer is the only one within the correct 'ballpark' - it must be right, thus ruling out all the other options.
- This site might be helpful for developing mental arithmetic speed, and not just for UCAT, it's very handy and very fun (depending on what your idea of fun is)
- In general, the questions that only use addition and multiplication will be easier to handle without a calculator. Toss in subtraction and division and it becomes almost a 50/50 on calculator/no calculator, but with percentage and other slightly more complex arithmetic you might feel safer using a calculator for more insurance. But again, this depends on your level of confidence at the point of sitting the exam
In addition, with synthesising the question - you seem to have fewer issues with VR and SJ, so try adapting a similar approach! Whether that's reading the question first to target parts of the context, or using a keyword search (or something along those lines), it's important to do a) what works for you and b) cut out the parts of the question that will lead you away from the relevant parts, in that order! In general, for QR, you want to be targeting relevant numbers, proper nouns and salient data. Usually from a quick skim you should be able to tell which parts these are, and you will get quicker with more practice.
There is still plenty of time, so there is still loads of time to improve. Keep going and stay confident :)
A.Rose:
Hi!
Thanks so much for all of your advice! I really appreciate it!
I have a bit under 4 weeks to go and I'm still super nervous! I've finished all of the question banks on the website finally. My timing still isn't great but I know I just have to keep practising. The annoying thing is - I do quite well when I do untimed tests then when it's timed I end up guessing way too much and therefore I get more wrong. :-[
I'm currently working through one of the practice tests and I'm saving the others for two weeks before my exam when I have my holidays and I can completely focus on UCAT.
I have come across a few free tests from external companies and I have noticed how different the questions seam to the UCAT questions on the website so I guess I'll still utilise them since they're free but I will focus on UCAT web resources.
Any further advice for me at this time would be much appreciated! I hope I am allowing myself adequate time with two weeks before. I have been studying for UCAT for a while but only about 1 or 2 days per week.
Some advice for abstract reasoning would be good as there are some patterns that I just don't see straight away. I know mnemonics are a popular strategy but are there any other useful ones?
Thank you!!
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