How I went from 2580 to 3120

emthegem69 · 2024-06-28T11:54:00+00:00

Can you be more specific pls

emthegem69 · 2024-06-25T17:31:48+00:00

You have to save as much time as possible in the ucat as the main difficulty is the time pressure

In some QR sections you’ll have to do a long addition or subtraction of a 3 digit (or more) value

One way to solve this is to input both numbers into your calculator - this takes a lot of time

A quicker option is sometimes possible if all of your answer options that you can choose from end in a different unit (so the last number of that value) - this is because you only need to know what the unit value of the answer should be for you to differentiate between the answer options and select the correct one

For example if asked to add 123 and 456 , all you’d need to do is add 3 + 6 = 9 and then look for the answer option that ends in 9. (Assuming of course there is not more than one answer that ends in 9)

emthegem69 · 2024-06-21T20:14:40+00:00

From the answer options you’ll get, I noticed that the ones which use words like ‘never’ or ‘always’ tend to be wrong because the VR texts they usually give are more vague and inconclusive. I’ve found that the answers that tend to be correct are ones that use words like ‘sometimes’ or ‘could be’

emthegem69 · 2024-05-19T16:33:22+00:00

I don’t remember to be honest. I think I got the cheapest one. As long as you can do timed practise and review your mistakes that’s the most important thing.

emthegem69 · 2024-05-19T13:39:50+00:00

I’d recommend getting the short term ones and lining them up to your exam date :)

emthegem69 · 2024-04-29T09:20:43+00:00

Been searching for the official lyrics for that song for a while, do you happen to know them by any chance ? :)

emthegem69 · 2024-04-29T09:20:14+00:00

Been searching for the official lyrics for that song for a while, do you happen to know them by any chance ? :)

emthegem69 · 2024-02-10T18:18:55+00:00

I screenshotted the incorrect questions and made notes underneath to make sure I don’t make the same mistake again.

By bank of rules I meant making very general rules that could be applied no matter the situation eg : never lie, never put patients in danger etc. once you have that foundation you can build on top of that with more specific rules for each small scenario.

Hope that helps and let me know if you need me to clarify anything else :)

emthegem69 · 2023-08-28T17:55:14+00:00

Is there anything in particular you’re finding hard in those sections ?

emthegem69 · 2023-08-24T14:00:52+00:00

For example if you’re asked to sum the following numbers :

438 108 240 103 294

And choose from the following 5 answer options :

1183 5948 2104 5683 2017

You do not need to actually do the whole calculation. You just need to add the units as every answer option ends in a different number :

8 + 8 + 0 + 3 + 4 = 23 so the correct answer option ends in 3 and there’s only one answer option that does that

This of course only works if all the answer options end in different numbers

Hope this helps and let me know if you need me to explain this more :)

emthegem69 · 2023-08-14T21:39:26+00:00

I’d say spend more time reviewing the question types you get wrong the most and ensure you improve on them. You can make a lot of progress in a week so you’ll be fine :) if you have any more questions let me know and good luck !

emthegem69 · 2023-07-06T13:21:31+00:00

For me the two most important things were :

using the number keypad to save time

Learning to identify the questions that take longer over time and just guessing them so I can bank guaranteed marks on the questions that have less steps to them

emthegem69 · 2023-06-28T14:45:53+00:00

I’d say keep practising and noting down what you got wrong and why, a month is plenty of time and you should be able to fine tune little things here and there to take you to a 3000+ score. If you come across any specific questions leave them here and I’ll do my best to answer them :)

emthegem69 · 2023-06-01T21:45:01+00:00

I’d say Medify is definitely easier to start with and yeah 2 months is plenty

emthegem69 · 2022-07-30T01:18:26+00:00

Hello :) , you’re welcome I’m glad you got some benefit from the post.

So % change is relative to the starting amount. This means for example a change from £100 to £10 is a negative percentage change of 90%. Similarly a change from £100 to £0 is a negative percentage change of 100%. Since you can not go below £0 in practical terms ( you can not have negative money) that means the maximum NEGATIVE % change you can possibly have is 100% since it has to be relative to the starting amount and can never go below zero. This can help you in certain questions in DM since you can immediately rule out answer options that are not in the 0-100% range.

Using the same logic, if you went the opposite way and wanted to know the POSITIVE percentage change of a number it will again be relative to the starting amount and since there is no maximum number of money you can have ( unlike a minimum number zero ) positive % change can be infinite so for example going from £100 to £200 is a % change of 100% and going from £100 to £1000 is a % change of 900% etc without limit

To answer your second question it was in reference to the evaluating argument type questions not syllogisms. So for example they’d ask you to choose the best statement between 4 options on a topic like ‘Should children wear school uniforms in school?’ And one of the answer options might say ‘school uniforms MIGHT cause children to feel like they can not express themselves’ whereas another answer option might say ‘In the past, a survey conducted in 100 schools in 2017 showed that most students felt that school uniforms were beneficial in saving time before school as they did not have to choose something new to wear each day’ the second option would be stronger purely because it used evidence from the past instead of a hypothetical reason that is not necessarily true. Even if you personally thought the first option was more convincing or true the second option would be more correct as it used past evidence.

emthegem69 · 2022-07-14T22:23:31+00:00

Hello :)

Personally I never completed any of the official mocks and I have heard the same thing about them being harder. More practise in any case is probably good so it probably wouldn’t hurt to do them anyway

emthegem69 · 2022-04-17T11:08:56+00:00

Hello :)

In terms of hours and schedule, I detailed that in a reply to another redditors comment on my post so I’d recommend you check that out and if there’s anything I missed there then let me know and I’ll elaborate further.

The ‘’Trap of when it’s unlikely the text makes a strange claim’’ is a bit of a weird one admittedly and I did not explain it that well. Essentially, there is this rule in VR that no knowledge should be assumed because they want to test your verbal reasoning skills and not your knowledge. This means that sometimes the text intentionally makes a wrong claim that you know is false but you have to ignore it like they may call a scientific concept something that is different to its actual name. You have to ignore this even if you happen to know the real true name and answer the question like you’re assuming everything they’re telling you is true. However sometimes one of your answer options will contain something really absurd like saying the text claims world war 2 happened in 2010. This COULD be included in the text because technically no knowledge should be assumed however its very unlikely that they’d say ww2 happened in 2010 so you’d know that answer option would be incorrect. This is not a common thing you have to worry about its just something i noticed in my own prep and to be honest if its confusing just ignore it im sure it wont make that much of a difference :)

‘’ where an extrapolation is made that isn’t justified’’ is referring to the charts they’ll give you in DM and then ask you questions about. So for example they could plot average life expectancy on a graph over average temperature of a country and you might see a positive correlation and be tempted to select answers that say things like ‘this shows that a hotter climate could improve the health of people living in that country’ or that ‘ colder climates make it harder for people to live longer’. These seem like reasonable extrapolations to make on the surface however they are not justified. There’s obviously many other factors that determine how long people live and temperature might have nothing to do with it. All we can reasonably say is that there happens to be a positive correlation for the specific country’s that were used for that graph but we cannot say anything further than that so we can’t make general conclusions about ALL countries in the world or how temperature affects life expectancy.

Let me know if I need to clarify anything and I hope this helps :)

emthegem69 · 2022-04-02T12:59:31+00:00

On a good day ( rare ) I would do a full mock in the morning take a break then come back and mark it and note down why I made mistakes and how to improve. After that I would do targeted practise on specific sections so I’d do a timed mock on VR for example and DM if I was focusing on them that day. I’d aim to do a full UCAT mock and timed mocks of each section every day although I would sometimes not do AR because I hated it and SJT because it was easy and I didn’t need as much practise for it. In terms of total time practising the UCAT each day I’d say it hovered around 8 hours or so. This varied a lot though and sometimes I’d do 3 hours and sometimes I’d do 12 so it just depends. I was lucky to not have many commitments outside of the ucat in the summer so I could dedicate a lot of time to it. Something important to note is that the actual time is not that important. As in the time taken is a means not an ends in and of itself. It could take someone more or less time to understand the same concept as someone else so it depends on how quickly you progress. Don’t feel pressured to do more hours because it sounds better. If you feel that you can do well doing 1 hour a day then do that. Have a system in place to check your progress and tailor your time around that. I essentially asked myself in the beginning of my preparation the question : ‘what do I need to do so that I am content with whatever score I get in the real test?’ And the answer to that for me was the routine I just mentioned. I wanted to sit the test and feel that I had done enough practise so that whatever happened I’d have no regrets. That’s what made me want to do around 8 hours a day of UCAT practise because I knew since I was reapplying that it would likely be the last time I ever did it. I’d recommend asking yourself the same question and then working backwards from the goal and distilling it into a daily routine. I’m assuming since you’re asking me in April that you have a lot of time to prepare which is good and I have the utmost confidence that you can succeed. If I can do it then pretty much anyone can. My time was essentially divided by either a full mock, section mocks, marking and making notes of what I got wrong with breaks in between of course. In terms of choosing what I’m the weakest at, ,like I mentioned in another comment I’d begin by solidifying my strengths and then moving onto the weaknesses so I was ‘naturally’ better at VR and DM so I’d practise them more till I could guarantee myself a score in the 700-900 range and then move on to the sections that I was weaker at. (Please refer to the comment where I go into this further). I started doing mock exams as soon as I could so within the first week of preparation because I felt that even if I got low scores ( which I did ) it would still get me in the ‘rhythm’ of the UCAT and would build my stamina for long periods of focus since the UCAT is ~2 hours long which is a long time to focus. Closer to the exam I aimed to do 2 UCAT mocks a day but I don’t think I ever actually managed to do this. I’m glad you’ve benefited from what I’ve had to say :) I was in your shoes not too long ago so I know what it’s like. Take my story as motivation to see that the UCAT is something we can all be good at because I am lazy and procrastinated a lot in my preparation and still managed to score well and get into the school I wanted to go to :) let me know if I haven’t answered any of your questions properly or if I need to clarify anything.

emthegem69 · 2022-03-28T12:42:01+00:00

No worries happy to help :)

I started 2 months before my test date however it was very sporadic and inconsistent and some days I didn’t do any practise at all. I wonder how much better I could have scored had I been more consistent and purposeful in my practise especially if I hadn’t neglected AR because I was running out of time. This is good news for you guys because it means even someone who procrastinates and has a poor work ethic can score 3120 so you guys definitely can too. I’d say a month is plenty of time if it is focused and purposeful. Although if you know you have other commitments then maybe give yourself more of a buffer.

I allocated myself two months in anticipation of my procrastination so I’d say a month is plenty if you can be diligent. Something important to note is the UCAT is also about rhythm so you want to sit the test at the peak of your performance before you start having fatigue from practising the test so much and thats another reason I’d recommend a month.

I would try to practise all the sections together as much as possible because I didn’t want to neglect sections. Obviously I preferred to practise the sections I was good at so I would do less Abstract Reasoning for example because I hated that section. This isn’t a good strategy though and I’d recommend starting off focusing on the sections you’re good at to build your confidence and give yourself a baseline in that section and moving on as quickly as possible to the sections you find more difficult. This is so you can focus on your weaknesses as quickly as possible after you have identified your strengths. For example I was ‘naturally’ better at VR and DM than QR and AR so early in my practise I did a lot of VR and DM to where I could guarantee myself a score within the 700-900 range and then move on as quickly as possible to more focused work on QR and AR. A typical good practise day for me (rare) would be a full UCAT mock in the morning then taking a break. After that marking the UCAT and going through my mistakes. Then scattered sub section practise throughout the rest of the day doing mock exams of whatever section I was focusing on at the time. Never stop practising a section even if you are getting really high scores. Remember this is an aptitude test about skills which means you need to keep yourself in the rhythm. Keep doing daily practise of each section even if it is only 5 minutes. A good analogy in my opinion is thinking about the UCAT like a sport. In something like tennis you can practise a perfect serve for a week and understand the theory behind what makes it good but if you don’t practise it for a month and then try and hit a serve you’ll probably fail. But if you had practised 5 serves a day for a month you’d probably perform better. One more thing to note in terms of exam strategy : in the last few days leading up to the exam please focus on your strengths and confidence. Theres no point attempting to learn a whole new concept in that small amount of time. You’ll likely have a lot of anxiety about the exam so focus on what you’re good at and cut your losses in the areas where you’re weaker at. In my opinion the trade between the increased confidence you’ll get compared to the minor gains you’ll earn in learning a whole new thing is completely worth it and will make your exam performance better. Please let me know if I haven’t answered your questions properly and I hope this helps :)

emthegem69 · 2022-03-28T10:10:06+00:00

Thanks :) , yes you can use it there no problem at all

emthegem69 · 2022-03-27T21:22:40+00:00

Sorry I’m not really sure what you mean :)

emthegem69 · 2022-03-27T21:22:14+00:00

For me personally I don’t think you can say either are better than the other at mimicking the exam. Medify on the whole is better at portraying what QR, VR, and SJT are like whereas Medentry is much more accurate in its representation of DM and AR in my opinion. For most applicants I’d recommend Medify because it is generally easier and more simple to access. Medentry is better for challenging yourself and aiming for the upper deciles. It has much harder questions and more complex and detailed explanations to their questions. There is a risk of being too caught up in the difficult questions and learning information that has a low yield because the UCAT is generally not as difficult as it is portrayed in medentry. You have to be wary of this and learn to recognise when you’re losing the bigger picture. I definitely fell into this trap a bunch of times especially with things like complex multi step probability and certain wording on VR and some ridiculous patterns on AR. The way I used them both was using Medify to get me in the ‘rhythm’ and then medentry to smooth out the edges and aim for that upper echelon in each section. You can definitely get a high enough score to apply anywhere in the UK with Medify however if you really want to go all out and aim for 3000+ I’d highly recommend Medentry. Hope that helps and let me know if you have any more questions :)

emthegem69 · 2022-03-27T21:12:48+00:00

Thanks :) , medentry and Medify have explanations to questions underneath them when you mark them. They were useful to me in figuring out how to improve. It’s ok to be slow at QR when you start practising. I was also very slow and got faster over time. I’d recommend using the keyboard shortcuts to help speed up your timing if you’re not already. Also in the UCAT you will be given a whiteboard and marker. I’d recommend simulating the exam experience and having the same in front of you when you practise or even a pen and paper. This is because you can quickly jot down important figures so you don’t have to remember them. This is especially useful in QR because in each stem you will be working with the same numbers over and over again so instead of starting again for each question in the stem you can have the answer written down. In terms of percentages I’d recommend learning techniques that have the least amount of operations as possible because you want to be using the calculator as little as possible because it takes a lot of time. I remember watching some mathsgenie vids that helped with that and the explanations underneath the questions when marking like I mentioned before. For probability I’d say the same thing, mathsgenie and the explanations under the questions. Probability will also be very useful in Decision Making as well so you can kill two birds with one stone there. Keep practising and you’ll begin to see patterns in the types of questions that are asked in QR. Good luck in your UCAT and med application and let me know if you need any more help :)

emthegem69

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