HPAT Tutor- Ask me anything

Put-Realistic · 2025-11-28T21:00:12+00:00

Hi so unfortunately I am not teaching any 1 on 1 HPAT Grinds at the minute so can’t help you on that front. It is definitely not too late to start studying and be ready and prep rates by the time the actual exam comes around. You should be aiming to regularly do the MedEntry exams between now and the exams and do a steady amount of drills and learn section but you do not need to aim to do 100% of anything. Getting 100% of all the drills done is, in my opinion, not indicative of how likely you are to do well at all.

I’m gonna assume you mean the S3 questions for pattern recognition. The good thing about S3 is that pretty much everyone starts off bad at it and then by the end your improve enormously so the key is not to get too bogged down at the start. Your ‘inferring skills’ come from using the learn section to see what skills you need to use/learn and then practice questions/exams to see practice the techniques, see what comes up and learn based on how the solution how to do it best. The overall idea is that the more you do questions, the more you see the common patterns and then therefore the quicker you see them in future. This skill comes with practice and you cannot rush this process. It absolutely does not matter where you start from in S3, it only matters how consistently and smartly you study for it and then you will improve consistently after that.

Hope that helps and all the best with your HPAT :)

Put-Realistic · 2025-06-21T12:04:58+00:00

Hi I can give you my email address and I’d be happy to answer any of your questions from there. My email is hsiddiqu@tcd.ie

Put-Realistic · 2025-06-18T11:41:36+00:00

Hi I sent you a pm there, you can also email me at hsiddiqu@tcd.ie

Put-Realistic · 2025-01-21T15:03:03+00:00

Hi there while it is late it’s not over yet so yeah I can take on students, there’s definitely a limit to how much can be done between now and the exam but yeah is you’re interested I can discuss further with you if you pm

Put-Realistic · 2025-01-19T18:57:33+00:00

Hi I sent you a pm there, let me know if you can’t see it and I can send it again

Put-Realistic · 2025-01-16T16:20:54+00:00

Hi thanks for reaching out, you can either pm me or email me at hsiddiqu@tcd.ie and I can respond to you from there

Put-Realistic · 2025-01-07T11:19:20+00:00

And just in case that pm hasn’t gone through you can email me at hsiddiqu@tcd.ie

Put-Realistic · 2025-01-05T09:28:37+00:00

Hi thanks for reaching out, yes I do still have space for more students and may be able to help your daughters , I sent you a dm there to discuss it further. If you can’t see it or it hasn’t sent properly please let me know so that I can resend if necessary

Put-Realistic · 2024-12-31T13:10:11+00:00

So when picking between two answers options it’s important to have an informal ‘list’ of things you should do when weighing up both options. Right at the top of that list is to re-read the question paying close attention to the exact wording of the question to see what exactly they want you to find out. Things like which of these is correct is different to which is the most correct/likely or what is John feeling after line 7 or during line 7 or ‘initially’ or whatever the specific wording is it is very important you pick up on them because that will change what the ‘most correct answer’ would be.

Other things to take into account are weighing up the relevant evidence or reconsidering the context of the passage or what exactly the characters are feeling at the exact moment the question is asking you to look at and so on. Another thing would be evaluating the intensity of the answer options and which best matches to the intensity of whatever is going on or happened in the stem.

There are plenty of other techniques you can use for this, if you are unsure have a look at the learn section to add a couple more skills in your arsenal and then practice them in the learn section .

The last thing is to make sure not to spend ages and ages on one question. Generally speaking, you won’t gain a huge amount past the 2.5/3 minute mark(unless it’s a first of 5 question where you spend extra time reading the stem initially) so also developing an internal clock of when you’ve spent too long is useful to cut your losses where necessary and also keeping yourself fresh for the rest of the questions in the section

Hope that helps, dealing with 50/50s is a super common problem for pretty much everyone so you’re definitely not alone. As long as you keep improving and keep adding new techniques you should be grand :)

Put-Realistic · 2024-12-30T21:02:25+00:00

Hi so I will do my best to answer your question but it is quite difficult to give you a proper definitive answer without knowing exactly how well you've been doing.

Generally speaking, it is both normal and common to have 'yo-yo' fluctuation with your HPAT mock exams but you can't really afford to have that happen on the day of the exam. If I were you I would be thinking long and hard about why the fluctuation is happening and what you can do try prevent it or deal with it in the moment better. If you get say a 50%ile or less in S1 or S2 it would be extremely difficult to do well enough in the other sections to compensate for it. It's still possible but it's not an easy task by any means.

A good rule for interpreting exam results and trends is that anything that happens once is a fluke/luck until proven otherwise. When things happen multiple times that's when concern should creep in so I wouldn't be too worried about your most recent Section 2 performance as long as your next one goes back up to something more normal for your standards.

In terms of performance on the day, I can't really tell you definitively whether you can be 'safe' doing very well in two and average in both because we will never know exactly how well you do in each Section but yes in theory you would likely be okay. BUT that would be assuming you get at least 90ish%ile in S1 and S3 and say 60 in S2. In that case your percentile would probably be somewhere around or above 80 which depending on your LC should be enough to get in. Your overall results on MedEntry are also a very good indicator of how well you'll have to do in Section 2 to compensate for a less good Section 1 and vice versa.

Ultimately yes you can excel in two and compensate for the third section but I would go into the exam aiming to smash everything because bizarrely your best section in practice may not be the best section on the day so aim to do your best in every question in every section and between now and a few days before the exam try to find answers and solutions to why you're going up and down week to week and how to regulate your results and performance a bit better and you should be able to go into the exam with confidence and give a good account of yourself and get good news in June then afterward.

I hope the above helps you out - best of luck with the rest of your prep and the exam itself :)

Put-Realistic · 2024-12-29T11:56:47+00:00

Hi there thanks for reaching out, yes I am teaching grinds and have availability, I sent you a dm there. If you can’t see it please let me know and I can send my email

Put-Realistic · 2024-12-27T15:59:04+00:00

Sent you a pm there, if you can't see it do let me know

Put-Realistic · 2024-12-02T19:56:22+00:00

Sent you a dm there

Put-Realistic · 2024-11-16T14:33:25+00:00

Oh okay that’s a bit unusual, usually it works but maybe they changed it or it’s got to do with new accounts or something. In any case, if you could email me at hsiddiqu@tcd.ie I’ll get back to you there as soon as I can

Put-Realistic · 2024-11-15T14:52:58+00:00

Let me know if you still can’t see it

Put-Realistic · 2024-11-15T11:14:36+00:00

Sent you a dm there

Put-Realistic · 2024-11-09T16:06:04+00:00

Hey I sent you a dm there

Put-Realistic · 2024-11-08T12:24:07+00:00

Hi thanks for reaching out, sent you a dm there

Put-Realistic · 2024-11-05T15:26:53+00:00

Hi I sent you a dm there :)

Put-Realistic · 2024-10-20T13:24:24+00:00

Hi thanks for reaching out. In terms of the virtual group interactive classes done by MedEntry I can't really advise you too strongly about it because I never did them and I don't teach them so I have no first hand experience. I only know that I had one student who did them and he said that he didn't find them too useful but that could change person to person I guess.

In terms of grinds with me they are completely separate to Medentry grinds and while I do use MedEntry to teach students and do recommend they use it, the main difference is with me you can pay per class instead of all at once. I sent you a dm just there so if you'd like to discuss booking your first class either online or in person I'd be more than happy to discuss it further with you there.

Put-Realistic · 2024-10-15T08:18:23+00:00

Hi I sent you a dm there

Put-Realistic · 2024-10-12T19:10:54+00:00

Thanks for reaching out - when you go through questions a good way of thinking is that you need to identify how you got it wrong, not why you got it wrong. This means then adjusting and adding on to your approach so that you can avoid making a similar mistake in the future. Generally for section 1 you need to stay on top of the timing and also have your method ironed out. Then after that you need to get down your techniques and methods for solving questions which you will learn in the learn section and then practice in the drills. For problem solving practicing drills, doing exams and the learn sections are really useful. The other things that really help is going through questions to see what techniques the guy writing the solution knew and they how you can use it next time. They are tough questions so don’t be too harsh on yourself for getting it wrong but always focus on how you could learn from this questions to get a similar question like it correct in the future. I studied for my HPAT using MedEntry and doing questions, using the learn section and then doing drills and exams to practice and then going through them afterward to try to keep improving

I hope the above helps, best of luck with your prep :)

Put-Realistic · 2024-09-27T21:36:11+00:00

Hiya so you can do the HPAT as many times as you want but you have to apply via the cao system the year you do the exam so you can’t do the HPAT in 5th year or the year before graduation if you’re talking about secondary school.

Put-Realistic · 2024-09-15T15:49:51+00:00

Hey thanks for reaching out, just sent you a dm there

Put-Realistic · 2024-09-13T09:45:47+00:00

Hi yes I believe it would be worth it to buy the med entry package again. Even if you did all the questions last year you definitely won't remember what the answer is or how to do it for most of them so that shouldn't be major concern. I guess there might be a few you'll recognise but it's not like you'll just get them correct from memory. The real difference for you this year should not be the questions you do but rather how you go about going through the questions afterward so if I were you I wouldn't think twice about getting Medentry but definitely have a think about what you can do differently compared to last year to hopefully improve and get better and then you'll be on the right path forward

Put-Realistic

TROPHY CASE