Medic Mind Free UCAT Half-Term Crash Course - Introduction to UCAT

um and then the last uh important thing there to say for general advice is Theory then timing doing questions in timed circumstances is really difficult it's very nerve-wracking and it's very easy for students to start doing timed questions and to then feel demoralized when they find the timing difficult so it's really important to make sure that you know the theory and that you're really comfortable with the theory and then go on to introducing the timed aspect of your answers to those questions um And in regards to that as we've said there timing is everything when it comes to the ucat and when I Was preparing for the ucat myself um one of the people that I was working with told me that if you had an entire weekend to sit the ucat you would nearly get a hundred percent or you would get 100 and that speaks to the kind of test that the ucat is so the ucat is not inherently complex in the questions that it asks you the difficulty of the ucat is the time in which it gives you to answer those questions and on the screen here you can see that we've put the average time per question that you have in the ucat so it ranges from 15 seconds to 60 seconds so the most time that you will have per question in the ucat is one minute um and hopefully that speaks to how tricky it can be to get the timing right for this exam as well as that one of the important things to talk about in terms of the timing of the ucat is the fact that you cannot transfer timing from one section to another so verbal reasoning the first section for the ucat for example is always 21 minutes if you finish earlier than that 21 minutes you don't then get to start the next section decision making early you have to do the full 21 minutes for verbal reasoning you then go straight on to decision making and then straight on to quantitative reasoning afterwards so again that can make the timing really challenging so you have to make sure that your timing is correct for every single section of the ucat so not just one of the sections and make up for it with another but you have to be very well-rounded and that in itself can have lots of challenges here are some examples of some of the typical questions that you could get for the ucat and hopefully this shows you the variety of questions that you can get when it comes to the ucat as well so in the top left hand corner here we can see that we've got a verbal reasoning question so we've been given a passage of information and we're then asked a verbal comprehension question based on that passage in the bottom left hand corner here we can see that we've got a decision making question so this will typically be a logic puzzle question so you have to work through you have to deal with the different variables that you've been given with the question and come to a logical conclusion based on those in the top right hand corner we can see a quantitative reasoning question it looks like a question that has come straight out of the GCSE maths paper you can see that we're using mathematics to calculate what looks like an area in this instance and then in the bottom right hand of the screen we can see that we've got an abstract reasoning question so this involves looking at various shapes having to spot patterns and sequences that are going on within those shades and the whole point of this is to show that there is a variety of types of questions that are asked in the ucat and this really speaks to what we were talking about previously in terms of strengths and weaknesses so you are naturally going to have some topics in the ucat that you'll be weaker at and some that you'll be stronger at that some people find that they're better at verbal comprehension other people find that they're better with the more diagrammatic style questions and the important thing is to be able to maximize your strengths and limit your weaknesses by working really hard at the things that you find more difficult okay so what questions do we have at the moment regarding the ucat so is the ucat hard and the ucap is a difficult exam one of the main aspects of the ucat that makes it challenging is the fact that it's so different to the way that you have been um tested previously so we saw their abstract reasoning for example asks you about pattern recognition and sequence processing and that's not really a style of question that you're typically asked about either a GCSE or at a level or indeed on other types of qualifications um so as a result of that it is a quite difficult pest to get used to but it is a test that you can get used to over time which is why we recommend starting a bit earlier so that you can be more comfortable um should we brush up on GCSE knowledge um not particularly so GCSE maths can come into play when it comes to the quantitative reasoning section aside from that you are not tested directly on any content in the ucat it's instead a test of aptitude so it's about understanding the way that they were asking questions rather than what they're asking you questions about um The Benchmark result for looking to get into Dentistry and Medicine is really interesting um in general what we've typically recommended previously is to get an average of 700 in the first four sections of the ucat and a little bit later on we'll talk about the scoring of the ucat itself um so that's previously been quite a good Benchmark for getting in and however we are seeing that the ucat scores required by universities is increasing every year um the number of people sitting the ucat and applying to medicine is only increasing I believe in the previous year there were around 5 000 more applicants than they'd had the year before that um so it is getting more competitive um and so because of that you want to try and get obviously the largest score that you can possibly get but an average of around 700 in the first four sections tends to be a quite strong score when it comes to your application um and we'll be talking about some of the courses we can offer in terms of that a little bit later on and we'll discuss other ways that we can revise for it as well um excellent okay so we'll move on to talking about where does the ucat take place so the ucap will take place in uh something that looks like this so it's a regional test center that you'll have in your local area um for anyone who's gone to sit other exams for example a driving Theory test it's the exact same style of test center as well um so what will happen is you'll go into the test center you'll provide them with evidence to show that you are who you say you are so some form of ID and they will then provide you with one of these pods that has a computer and headphones with it and they will also give you a whiteboard and Pen as well and you'll be able to use those as you go through and answer the questions um you'll then have two hours or roughly about two hours to sit the exam we said that there are five sections between each of the sections you'll be given a one minute break so unfortunately it doesn't really lend itself much time to be able to do things like uh have something to eat or drink or go to the toilet um but that's how this will all be set up for you so it all happens in these test centers they're very used to running these types of tests so they're they're very well experienced when it comes to helping you sit the ucap so some of the main topics that we're going to go on and talk about now are when is the ucat um we'll talk about how many sections there are talk about the way that they're scored um and what to expect there we'll discuss uh how should you revise and when should you start revising and we'll also talk as well about which of the universities use the ucat too so key dates when it comes to the ucat and the 20th of June is when you can start booking the ucat um as we recommended it's important to try and book the ucat as early as possible um just to be aware of how much time you've got to prepare and and to to know what is going on around your sitting of the ucat the first test date this year will be on the 10th of July and the last test date will be on the 28th of September and so just remember that if you've got other things going on around the UCA for example if you're going on a trip with family or friends um if you've got school starting in early September it's very useful to try and plan your new cat around those events that will prevent you from studying fully and so sitting the ucap early but giving yourself enough time to fully prepare can be really important and and all of this information can be found on the official ucat website through Pearson as well um in terms of these sections for the ucat there is a slight change this year so the change that we've had this year is in the number of questions and the situational judgment section so as a few people in the questions there were very correctly alluding to there are five sections within the UK um in terms of both sections they are always in the same order so everyone sitting the ucat will always experience the sections in the exact same order so there is consistency in terms of that the first section is verbal reasoning so you have 21 minutes to under to answer 44 questions and as we said previously verbal reasoning tests you on your verbal comprehension this is Then followed by decision making which gives you various forms of logic puzzles to answer um followed by quantitative reasoning which is the mathematical section in terms of the maths that it will ask you about none of it goes beyond a greater depth than what you're expected to know for GCSE maps and so for example some of the most common topics that can come up for the ucat in quantum state of reasoning include things like percentages things like proportion understanding various forms of graphs and knowing how to interpret those as well is really useful so there's nothing like integrating or differentiation that you might have already done for your a-level math courses but it's important to understand the simple aspects of GCSE maths to a really good degree and the fourth section there is abstract reasoning abstract reasoning as we said is the section that involves looking for pattern recognition so understanding how to spot patterns between various shapes and there are also some questions as well that will test you on sequences and the processes behind that and then your final section will be situational judgment so situational judgment is a section that tests you on how appropriately you can respond to different situations in clinical environment in terms of the way that the scoring is done for the different sections of the ucat the first four sections so verbal reasoning decision making quantitative reasoning and abstract reasoning will all be scored through 300 to 900 so the maximum that you can get in each of these sections is 900 the minimum you can get for each of these sections is 300. those four sections all together will give you one score so from that you'll get one score which will be anything between twelve hundred to thirty six hundred for the first four sections situational judgment will give you a different score which is done slightly differently so the scoring for situational judgment is given to you in different bands so you can get band one which means that you've got nearly every single question correct you've handled the situations very appropriately you can have Band 2 which means you've judged most of the situations correct and you can still handle situations appropriately and then band three or four which mean that you've got some questions slightly Incorrect and there are some situations there that you might not have judged as appropriately as you would want to um we discussed previously the types of scoring that the universities are looking for um the different universities will look for different things from applicants they will all of course use your ucat and your bmat scores but they'll use them to various degrees and so because of that it's very important to understand how those universities will use scores like the ucats when it comes to the application process some universities will give your you can't score a very direct score itself when it comes to giving you an interview so for example Leicester have a scoring system that they use for your ucat results and that will be part of how they decide whether to give you an interview or not and other universities will use the ucat to a lesser degree so for example Keel is a university that's a much more likely to use something like um what they call a roles and responsibilities form as opposed to scoring your ucat as highly as other universities so it's important to understand how the universities that you're applying to use the ucat scores themselves you can find our comparison tool on the medic mind website which can be a really helpful way of understanding that as well as that we also have University Consultants who can help you in terms of directing you towards appropriate medical schools for you to apply to depending on your application but in general we spoke earlier about this average of 700 between the first four sections and so we said that they're scored between 300 and 900 getting an average of 700 between them so getting a total score of around 2 800 can be a really good way of um getting a good score and previously that's been quite a competitive score when it comes to your applications when it comes to situational judgment we found that obviously a lot of the universities would prefer you to have a band One scoring in terms of fat um but most universities will be happy to accept Band 2 as well fifty percent of people who sat the ucat last year achieved a band too so it's the most common scoring and that will not hold you back when it comes to applying to these universities and but as we said it's very important to understand how the universities that you're applying to view the ucat in terms of the scores and and especially the uh the average score from the first four sections is typically what they look at the most okay in terms of how long it takes to prepare for the UCard this is something that varies between different people um and so because of that it's important to give yourself enough time to be fully comfortable with the exam and the types of questions that the exam will ask for you um that's why we recommended at the start of uh of this session to start preparing for the ucat as early as possible doing a small amount each day can be really beneficial in terms of having that long-term preparation and making sure that you're fully comfortable with all of the types of questions by the time that you have your exam as well as that we've also mentioned making that transition from just revising the theory to introducing timed questions into your practice and that can be a really challenging aspect of the prep Preparatory process for the ucat um as a result of that you also want to give yourself enough time fully to integrate into timed questions so for example verbal reasoning is a section where you have roughly about 30 seconds per question and and what we typically recommend to students is to start off by giving yourself more than 30 seconds but still giving yourself some type of time pressure so what I recommend to my students when they're doing verbal reasoning is to start off trying to do verbal reasoning questions in one minute once you are happy doing them in one minute then lower the amount of time start trying to do questions within 50 seconds once you're happy with 50 seconds go to 45 once you're happy with 45 go to 40 and work your way down incrementally until you can do each question in 30 seconds um that is very achievable but it does take time to be able to do that so as a result of that and we recommend doing consistent revision for roughly around two to three months before the ucap and then in the weeks leading up to the exam itself making sure that you are doing much more intense practice so making sure that you can focus fully for the two hours that you have the exam and it can be very difficult to focus completely for two hours by itself though I typically recommend to my students as well to work on their and their kind of focusing stamina so that they're able to fully give their all of their efforts into that two-hour exam okay so from the audience members here um for those of you who have started prepare preparing for the ucat yourselves um how have you been preparing for the ucat how have you found preparing for the ucat so far um and there will be people that say that they haven't started preparing that's completely natural and that is that is quite a natural thing and uh and a regular thing that we hear from students at this point in time um so it's important to remember for those of you who are currently doing your A Levels you will have just had your end of year um exams or most of you will have just finished your a-level exams so if you haven't started preparing that's no problem at all there's still plenty of time to start preparing before your exam good so what we can see so far um is for quite a few people are starting off slowly with some practice questions um you're using various resources like books and videos um trying to come to to our sessions to learn how to prepare um which is really useful doing a mixture of timed and untimed questions um which is great brilliant and I hope that uh what this question does as well is that it also reassures those of you who haven't started to um I think it is very important to to start when you're ready and and when you're comfortable and to give yourself enough time to prepare and there is plenty of time to prepare between now and the ucap exam so if you haven't started yet and you've been feeling a bit stressed for the exam don't worry at all and there's plenty of people who are in the same situation as you and that is not going to stop you at all from achieving really good results great um excellent so we've spoken about when to start that preparation generally two to three months beforehand tends to be quite a sweet spot when it comes to that preparation so just giving yourself enough time to be fully comfortable with all of the different question types in each of the sections this is the general kind of timeline of preparation that we tend to recommend to our students and um it's all about making sure that you can progress right from the very beginning of your preparation up to being able to do full mock tests understanding the methods of answering each type of question on each of the different sections so it starts off by getting the grips with the test format so you want to make sure that you understand how much time have you got per question how many sections are there what are the different types of questions that you can get for each of the sections and as well as that's something that's really important is to understand the layout of the screen that you'll get in the ucat exam and so as we said you'll be using those computers that they've got at the testing centers do you want to understand what the exam is going to look like on your screen so that's also something important to keep in mind tackle each section on its own and this is something that I recommend when working through the ucat with students I found in when I've been working with students previously but if you dot around from section to section and sometimes you can often forget small details between each of the different sections and that can make it quite difficult when you're then revisiting the first section you went over for example because you then have to re-familiarize yourself with the content completely so what I tend to recommend is to go through each section completely finish that section and then come on to a new one and start preparing that one from scratch and that tends to work really well with the sections that have similar quests and styles and similar question layouts so for example in verbal reasoning the questions are all laid out very similarly and a lot of the methods for answering questions tend to be quite similar and so as a result of that it's much easier to go through the full preparation for verbal reasoning rather than doing a bit of verbal reasoning and then a bit of quantitative reasoning and kind of dotting out to different sections definitely understand how the timing works and what I recommend to my students is to number one memorize the time that you have per question for each of the sections so verbal reasoning it's 30 seconds decision making it's 60 seconds quantitative reasoning is 40 seconds abstract reasoning is 15 seconds and situational judgment it's 20 seconds you need to know those off of the top of your head because that helps you to figure out if you're halfway through a mop test or halfway through the real thing you can work out where you are in terms of time so you need to have a good grasp of whether you are doing really well for time in that section in which case you can slow down a little bit it means that you can fully work on some of the more challenging questions or if you're aware of the fact that you're running behind the the amount of time that you've got you then know that you need to start catching up and working through the questions a little bit quicker so understanding the time in the ucap is vital for helping you to get the best score that you can and so understand the different times that you've got per section and the official ucap website has some really great practice tests on there and so it has practice sections for each of the five sections which are complete with various different types of questions and it's also gotten complete mock tests on there as well which have different questions to the other practice banks that they've gotten there so those are really helpful for learning the layout of the exam for understanding some of the different types of questions on the exam and also for beginning to prepare for the timing of the exam as well so definitely make full use of all of the resources that you're given on the official ucat website and make sure that you're carrying out effective ucap preparation um it's much more important to make sure that you're doing dedicated preparation which is really focused and effective as it says that you'd much rather do one hour of intense Focus preparation then do three hours of preparation that isn't intense you're not focused and you don't end up taking much away from it so it's important that when you do prepare for the ucat you do so with a particular focus and something that helped me when I Was preparing was thinking okay and today I'm going to go through this particular section going through these particular types of questions and so having a particular Focus for what you're preparing for is really useful for maximizing the progress that you can make per session and then lastly we recommend practicing the exam in a slightly unfamiliar setting and the reason for that is that when you do the exam in the test center that is likely going to be a very unfamiliar setting for you the practicing exams in a public library can be really useful if you can practice one of the exams in your school library for example that could also be something that's really helpful for you and but just making sure that you are comfortable with the settings of the exam is really vital and you don't want anything to throw you off on the day that you do sit the exam you want to prepare for the scenario completely and you want to make sure that you're as comfortable as possible so practicing and doing timed questions practicing doing full marks and practicing doing so in some form of public setting can be really useful okay so we're going to go through some questions here just to show you what some of the questions for you can be like um these questions are not designed to scare you at all they are not going to be the most challenging questions that you can get on the ucat but it's to start giving those of you who haven't done any questions yet a bit of an idea of the types of things that you'll be asked in the ucac and it should start getting you thinking about how you might want to prepare so the first question that we're going to be looking at is this from the situational judgment section so I'll leave you to read the scenario there as we've said situational judgment is all about making sure that you can be safe in clinical environments and that you can effectively and appropriately think about the ways to act in those types of situations so we'll go through um this uh this first question I'll show you the answer I'll give you another 30 seconds or so to answer the question and then we'll go through the answer here together okay excellent so we'll uh we'll briefly discuss this question so this was a question all about a medical student potentially assisting on a procedure and how they should respond to the doctor encouraging them to take part in the procedure in this case the medical student has said that they don't have the skill to perform these procedure so they don't think it's appropriate for them to carry it out and this would be um and I'll I'll leave you to to think about what you would say in terms of how appropriate this would be okay fantastic so everyone has voted congratulations to everyone that said that this would be a very appropriate thing to say um as we said the situational judgment is all about testing how appropriately you can respond to different situations in this case the reason why this is very appropriate for the student to say is that they have sensitively and professionally um explained the fact that they are not comfortable taking part in this procedure because they are um not suitably experienced enough to take part it's very important whether you're a medical student or even a doctor yourself to admit when you don't have enough experience to take part in a procedure particularly when making a mistake in that instance would have an effect on patient safety so patient safety is one of the most important things to consider when you go through situational judgment questions because as the General Medical Council indicates every action and every decision that you may should be with a patient's safety in mind so in this case the student is thinking about patient safety they've realized it's better for them to not take part in the procedure and they've professionally communicated that to the doctor hence why this would be a very appropriate thing for that student to say yeah using the same scenario then if the student were to then say something different so if they were to say I would be happy to help with the procedure would that change the um Range of answers that we get in terms of how appropriate this would be so it's the exact same scenario but in this case the student is instead saying I would be happy to help okay I'll leave you to answer that one and then again we'll discuss the answer there brilliant so we've got many more answers going down the inappropriate route in this instance and in this case it would be a very inappropriate thing for the student to say again it all boils down to patient safety so the student in this instance yes they've got the theoretical knowledge to take part in that procedure but they don't have the experience involved and as a result of that any mistake that they might make and they are likely to make a mistake because of not having that experience could have a large effect on the patient's safety and the patient's quality of life following that procedure so as a result of that and it would be inappropriate and very inappropriate in fact for the student to then go and say that they're happy to take part and hence why the answer is so um so brilliant I hope that's given you a little bit of an insight into situational judgment we'll go over one more question and this will be a very standard style of question that you would get for quantitative reasoning so this is going to test you on some of the mathematical elements of the new cats so I'll leave this screen up again for around another 30 seconds and then we'll go through the answers foreign excellent so feel free to put in your answers and and then and then we'll discuss what the answer is brilliant so congratulations to the 53 of you who says chalk bar you were absolutely correct in saying that um and I hope that that question demonstrated to you the difficulty of the ucat in terms of the time that you had to answer that question and as you all saw when answering that question the mathematics itself that you were being asked about were not that complicated so it was a case of division in that instance um the difficulty of that though was that you were being asked to do lots of division in a very small amount of time so quantitative reasoning itself is a section that students who often worry about quite a lot in terms of what they will be asked to do and the most important thing with quantitative reasoning is that you're able to do these simple Concepts effectively and quickly so addition subtraction multiplication division if you can do those mostly using mental math and you can do them in a very effective and quick manner then you are going to be hopefully getting a really good score at quantitative reasoning um so it's not about the complexity of the mass it's about the challenge of the time itself um that is quite a tricky question to give um so for those of you who didn't manage to get chalkboard don't be disheartened at all it is something that becomes a lot better the more that you work at it but thank you so much for taking part in those three questions I hope that's demonstrated to you a little bit in terms of what the ucat is about and some of the ways that you might want to start preparing for it and and that's where we at medic mind can come in and start helping you in terms of that preparation um it's something that we've been doing for quite a few years now and it's something that that we really enjoy doing and we're really happy to do um the first way that we can help you are that we have quite a few free resources when it comes to ucat preparation so we've got talks such as these that can give you lots of really useful information for how to prepare for the ucat how to prepare for the bmat as well and we've also got a series of talks regarding other application processes like Oxbridge 2 that can be really helpful um we've also got practice questions on our website so if you have a look at the medic mind website you'll be able to find over 500 free practice questions on there those questions can be really helpful both in terms of looking at the different types of questions and thinking about how they will be asked to you and therefore how you need to go about answering them but also in terms of preparing your timing for the ucat they can be really helpful as well we have a ucat Blog up on our website as well so you'll be able to find that on the medicine ucas guide aspect of the website and that can be really useful in terms of giving you lots of helpful trips uh helpful tips sorry for applying for the ucat um for preparing in terms of improving your timing for example for the different styles of questions you can get on the sections um it's a really useful read so I would definitely recommend going on there and having a look at the blog and then we've also got our YouTube channel as well which I think a few of you mentioned previously having a look at YouTube videos on the ucat um I would highly recommend that I think that the videos we've got on our YouTube channel are very useful firstly when it comes to preparing for the ucat and as well as that they are very digestible when it comes to Gathering the information so the main aim of those videos is to give you lots of useful information in a short amount of time each of them are between five to ten minutes long so it gives you as much useful content as possible in a short amount of time to help you to digest it so that's really useful for you to have a look at as well um we've also got some WhatsApp groups where we can send you lots of resources and tips that can be really useful so we've got one WhatsApp group for medicine entry and we've also got one WhatsApp group for Dentistry entry as well so I'll leave this QR code up on the screen for another 10 seconds or so for those of you who are interested in interested in applying to medicine for this upcoming year and we'll be sending you lots of free resources both for the ucat as well as for the bmat and we'll also be sending you some tips in there as well and we're also doing the same thing for Dentistry too so it can be a really useful way of of just keeping up to date with how we can help you with uh with preparing for the ucat with the bmat um with thinking about things like your personal statements your interviews as well and we can help to support you for every single aspect of those application processes so please feel free to join those subgroups and then we can send you all of the various support that we've got from there great um we do also offer one-to-one tutoring when it comes to preparing for these tests um and it can be a really useful way of working on the different styles of questions and developing methods for answering them the benefits of a one-to-one tutoring is that they can be completely personalized and tailored to your own strengths and weaknesses which means that it can help you to progress really far um and uh and it can make sure that we address the areas that you can improve the most on to maximize the score that you can get following on from that um all of our ucat tutors uh have to have scored within the top 10 of the exam so the year that they took the exam and so because of that the tutors are very well versed in terms of what the ucat will ask you and how you should go about answering those questions to get the best score possible and we do keep a regular progress updates with both students and parents when it comes to that preparation as well um one one-to-one tutoring is a really useful way of preparing um so if anyone is interested in in having that with us then please do reach out and then we can help you from there that's great um in terms of that we can cover all of the the sections of the ucat we do also have tutoring when it comes to preparation for the bmat preparation for the personal statement um as well as University specific interview tutoring so we have um interview tutors from every single medical school in the UK so if you are interested in a particular medical school um and you really want to have focused interview tutoring that is specific to that medical school then we can help you out with that too um every single aspect of the application process we can help to support you with whether it's with those free resources or whether it's with this one-to-one tutoring we can help you to uh to hopefully get into medical school or Dentistry school um and uh and hopefully help to train up some of the future doctors and dentists of the country and we've got lots of reviews when it comes to this type of tutoring as well so we've got well over a thousand positive reviews on on various websites that detail exactly how we've helped lots of students um I've been a part of medic mind for over three years now helping students with the ucat and with the interview process and and it's a really delightful process being able to help students to to go from the start to getting into the universities and so we're really happy to help you out if you would like some extra support for that um and when it comes to other aspects of the applications as well so some of those aspects that are quite tricky to achieve in some cases so for example if you're looking to get some work experience and you've been finding it difficult to find some we do have a work experience program which is starting um so this is partnered with London Hospital it's being run by doctors and Medics themselves so um it's being run by people who have gone through the exact same process that you're in at the moment and by people who have direct first-hand knowledge of working within the NHS um you are provided with a certificate at the end you get to gain lots of fantastic practical medical skills that I didn't get to to learn about until I got to medical school um so I'm a little bit jealous of those of you who who do get to go on these types of experiences but it is a really fantastic week and we've partnered with the NHS and over 30 schools when it comes to Preparing programs like these so it comes highly recommended excellent and we've also got the same thing for Dentistry as well so we're not forgetting about new Dentistry applicants as well um so again it gives you a really useful um week of experience that you can then go and talk about in your personal statements you can talk about in terms of your interviews as well and you get to view all types of useful interactions and areas of knowledge in a practical setting that you can then put to use later on for your application if you'd like to find out any more or those topics that we've just discussed so any of our resources any of the one-to-one tutoring or for our work experience course as well um you can find the details for all of those on our website that's www.medicmind.co.uk and you'll be able to find all of those from there excellent so for the remaining around uh five to six minutes or so we'll just go through um some of the other questions that we've been asked on here as well just to see if there's anything that we haven't covered um in terms of what is an outstanding score we've mentioned that an average of 700 tends to be a strong score outstanding scores of course will be anything that goes above that um however as we said previously the way that the different universities will score the ucat varies so an outstanding score for one University might be different for an outstanding score for another University and so that's just something to keep in mind so have a look at our University comparison tool and have a look at our University consultant as well just to gain an idea of what an outstanding score might be for the universities that you're interested in um there is no pass Mark when it comes to the ucat um as we said some Unis will have cut-off marks when it comes to the ucat applications um that cut off Mark varies in different years so in previous years and some universities have had cutoffs around uh 2500 other universities will have higher cut-off marks so as a result of that again it's important to maximize your chances of getting a good ucat score and it's also important to be aware of what ucat score the university you're looking for might be interested in in terms of the best way to manage time during the ucat um having a a really good strategy for the ucat is very important um so there is a topic called flagging on the ucad which is really useful so flagging is where you can click as it would describe a small flag in the corner and that then allows you to see that question again when you finish the rest of the questions in that section and it's a really useful way of coming back to a question that you previously found difficult so one of the strategies that me and my students will often work on is to be to be able to recognize questions that are very difficult and will take you lots of time to work out so verbal reasoning you have an average of 30 seconds per question if you see a question that you automatically know will take you longer than 30 seconds to answer you can flag the question and you can then come back to it after you've answered every other question and what that does is it maximizes your chance of having good answers for every question in that section which maximizes your chance of getting a good score we do have some YouTube videos on the flagging function so please do go and look those up it's an excellent strategy to use to maximize and manage the time that you spend per section as well as that one of the most important things to be able to do is to understand which questions you find the most difficult and to work on those thoroughly so that's very important as well um in terms of only one test per cycle what that means is that you can only sit The ucat Once and have that score be valid so otherwise what that would mean is that people would be able to sit the ucap as many times as they want between July and September and then submit the score that they are happy with um what's having only one test per cycle means is that you can only sit the ucat once between July and September and that's the only score that will count towards your application if you get a score that you're not happy with you can of course then go and sit the bmat and you can apply to bmat universities um but then if you want to reapply you will then have to reset the ucat in the following July to September you'd have to reset the ucat again between July and September of 2024. um how many hours and how often is advised for Preparation um I think it's important to avoid burning burning out when you're preparing as well so starting off I think 13 minutes per day is quite reasonable you slowly ease yourself into preparation once you're really comfortable with 30 minutes go up to an hour per day and then kind of making sure that you scale it up um I think when you have a few weeks to go until the exam you should be doing quite intense revision so potentially up to you know four to six hours per day depending on how long you've been working for before that and but it's really important to not be doing multiple hours per day for multiple months on end that's a very easy way to burn out in terms of the ucap um and from there you run the risk of um burning out and then not doing any work directly before the exam which can be quite harmful so it's important to manage yourself appropriately um in terms of the results of the UK out this is an excellent question for discussing that and the results of the ucap are given to you around 15 minutes following the exam so it's really useful because you get the results almost instantly what will happen is you'll finish sitting the exam you will then be shown to the front of the test center they'll print off a paper for you and that paper will have on it all of the results for each of the sections as well as the band that you get for situational judgment so it can be a bit tricky to tell what band you're in between your preparation particularly if you're using something like a paper resource to revise but when you're sitting the actual exam you will find out very quickly what your result is and what your banding is and that can be really helpful when it comes to deciding which universities to apply to foreign so we're coming to the end of this talk apologies for those of you who didn't manage to get around to your questions but I hope that the previous answers were also useful for you as well um if you would like to and if you're able to please do leave us a review about what you thought about the webinar today um leaving us your reviews finding out what we've done well and if there's anything that we could have done better is a really useful way of making sure that we can make this as useful for you as possible and we've got several webinars coming up both uh this week and in the following weeks so this week we'll be focusing on some of the particular sections of the ucat so I'll be taking a few of those webinars to talk through the different sections we do also have webinars on the Oxbridge application process as well including one today directly at 7 pm and so if you're also interested in hearing about that application process then please do sign up for that too if it's possible please do leave us a review as well um and um if you do need any more support please feel free to email us info medicmind dot Co dot UK give us a call on our o2o number you can find all of this information on the website as well we'd be more than happy to help you out however that we can um so if you would uh want any more support if you've got any more questions at all please feel free to give us a an email or give us a call on there and we'll be happy to help in the meantime I'll leave up this this review thank you so much for attending today as I said in the next couple of days we'll be going over some of the particular sections of the ucat um so we hope to see you there otherwise have a very pleasant rest of your bank holiday weekend so thank you for coming

Channel: Medic Mind

Views: 261

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Id: Nblc8UoeUCU

Length: 50min 21sec (3021 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023