UMAT. How do you fit it into your work schedule?

[ganges]

Just wondering how everyone does it.
I try and do about 1 hour a night on a school weekend and about 2 hours of school work, its very draining!!!

how does every1 else go?

[ed_saifa]

I haven't done any preparation for about a month.

[BA22]

Just wondering how everyone does it.
I try and do about 1 hour a night on a school weekend and about 2 hours of school work, its very draining!!!

how does every1 else go?

You're wasting an hour a night

[ninwa]

what BA22 said

[gta007]

I think he means on a school weekend.

[midas_touch]

Just wing it......

[ninwa]

I think he means on a school weekend.

he's still wasting that time

go watch a movie or something instead

[BA22]

We don't mean to be  . . mean, but UMAT prep is not worth it, and i assume you're paying some god awful extortioniate fee for it too. I have posted regularly discouraging UMAT prep. It's almost scam worthy. The bevahiour of this institutions reveals the truly money driven nature of their business. ACER is the only entity you should be dealing with for any questions you have about the UMAT. Everyone else is guessing.

[ninwa]

Mmm yeah.

ganges, take it from someone who spent about $700 on UMAT preparation materials and didn't get into medicine - those things are a massive, massive waste of money; you're better off just getting those ACER booklets and saving the money for more useful things!

EDIT: and take it from someone who DIDN'T get tricked by UMAT prep companies and ended up getting into medicine (BA22)

[BA22]

Yeh, and just to be clear, i (parents) paid for two courses from my teacher's reccomendation and found them both to contradictory and pety. Icarus college paints a particular antagonistic and narrow minded perception of interviewers, claiming that they are ruled by bias, and the only way you can get into med is if you say the right thing (basically what they tell you to say).

Avoid them, and avoid preparation courses. You should not walk into the umat feeling prepared because you will be kidding yourself

[ganges]

LOL

I think you guys are the ones being sucked in by ppl that run the UMAT cuz i heard that they dont want ppl to find out that prep helps.

Who ever told you that preparation is useless? i have actually significantly improved after doing about 10 drills, i dont think i would have done the same with ACER.

Well it works for me anyway, not sure about u guys though...........

[ganges]

yeh i am with medentry by the way(forgot to add it in), i spose if u do a cheap course then ur wasting ur time

[BA22]

No, i clearly outlined my experience, as did Ninwa.

I never said they don't help, i just said that they are not worth the money. If you want to familiarise yourself with the UMAT, do so with ACER. Why pay $500-1000 for a course that assures you of results that it can't possibly promise. They do work for some people, yes, but i will still warn people against them. You can't truly prepare for the UMAT.

Why would ACER try and suck you in? They have no vested interest in what your results are.

Why would preparation courses suck you in? Money.

I'm not the only person who holds this opinion, it is held by ACER, every med faculty in the country and AMSA (Australian Medical Students Association).

One thing you can say about a cheap course is at least it's cheap. Don't kid yourself that your course is quality just because you paid alot for it.

[ninwa]

yeh i am with medentry by the way(forgot to add it in), i spose if u do a cheap course then ur wasting ur time

I also did MedEntry. I improved my average scores for each section from about 40% when I first started to high 90s around a week befor the UMAT. There were even some exact copies of MedEntry questions in the UMAT.

However, I still ran out of time in the actual thing. Still had to guess half of section 1 (because when you're out of time, you're not allowed to go back to that section, so I was just filling in random circles on the answer sheet just because I'd have more chance of getting marks if I filled some of it rather than left it blank), 1/3 of section 2 and pretty much all of section 3, which was about 10 times harder than the standard of section 3 MedEntry questions.

I ended up with 59 for my overall score (259 in terms of percentile). Monash's cutoff for interviews was 59; I only just got an interview. Stuffed that up big time too, so here I am at the law faculty now (which happens to be right next to the Med area - who the hell designed Clayton campus ><)

Meanwhile, people who had not done any preparation end up with scores in the 270th, 280th percentiles ...

Moral of the story: if you're naturally a crap UMAT-er like me, no amount of prep courses will lift your game up, and you're much better off doing a much more fun course like Law, because Med is horribly boring and stupid (yes I am still bitter )

[bilgia]

i got owned by icarus.zzz