Blogs
3rd October 2020
UCAT Prep: Establish your personal scoring goals
Your main goal should be to maximise your potential on the actual UCAT test. Very few students get every question right. You have to be realistic. Strive to work within your own abilities. Students often ask: How does my practice test performance translate to how I will perform on the actual UCAT test? Questions are “graded” for difficulty throughout the MedEntry UCAT prep ...
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3rd October 2020
UCAT: Speed Reading
The following reading efficiency techniques can boost your reading rate. But even if your rate is fine, these techniques will help you boost comprehension and concentration. (i) Mechanical Approach You’ve probably seen speed-readers moving their hands down a page as they rapidly read the material, the theory being that their eyes follow their hands. The problem with this approach is that it ...
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3rd October 2020
Why do universities need UCAT scores? Isn’t my academic score enough?
Good university admissions officers will use your UCAT scores to help them assess your readiness to do tough medical school work. Although the UCAT does not assess broad subject knowledge, it provides a universal benchmark that your high school transcript can’t. It assesses skills that are essential to succeed in a competitive Australian medical school: problem solving, data interpretati ...
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3rd October 2020
Doesn’t the UCAT do a poor job of predicting medical school grades?
UCAT-bashers have long liked to claim that the UCAT isn’t valuable to universities because it doesn’t predict university grades very well. They miss two important points: first, smart university admissions officers don’t want it to predict grades, and second, it correlates very well with something more important than grades—real success in academic fields like medicine ...
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3rd October 2020
Doesn’t the UCAT just measure “test-taking skills”?
Unfortunately, some UCAT prep courses try to convince students that taking the UCAT has nothing to do with real academic skills. They prefer you to believe that it’s all about their test-taking “secrets.” This is great marketing for them, but little help for you. Although there are a few basic test-taking skills that you should know about—process of elimination, intelligent guessing and chec ...
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3rd October 2020
Speed Reading in UCAT
UCAT is not just a test of speed reading: it is more than that. It tests your higher order thinking skills as illustrated by Bloom’s taxonomy. However, improving your reading speed will certainly be of help in UCAT. Speed reading is a collection of reading methods which attempt to increase rates of reading without greatly compromising comprehension or ability to recall and analyse. Me ...
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3rd October 2020
Why is so much weight placed on just one test, the UCAT?
It may seem unfair that a two hour test is so important. Remember, though, that the UCAT is not a one-shot, all-or-nothing affair. Your standardised test scores account for about a third of your medical school entry, depending on which university you apply. The other essential components include your ATAR score and medical entrance interviews. Further, if you score poorly in the UCAT (due to ...
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3rd October 2020
In UCAT, Do Not “Read into” Things!
Warning, Warning, Warning! Do Not “Read into” Things in UCAT One of the most dangerous traps smart students fall into while reading the UCAT passages is ‘reading into’ things. You should re-read in the context of what you’ve learned about the reading passage—you do not want to interpret what a passage says, or make any subtle assumptions. Restraining yourself from making unwarranted “leaps” o ...
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3rd October 2020
UCAT Preparation: Getting into the Right Frame of Mind
At the end of a season and leading up to the championship, athletes go through a “tapering phase” to make sure they perform at their peak when it counts. In a sense you’ve been a mental athlete, and you want to make sure that you perform at your peak when it counts: on the actual UCAT. For you, tapering consists of scaling back gradually the amount of preparation you&rsquo ...
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3rd October 2020
The Day before the UCAT Test
The day before the UCAT If you haven’t already, make sure you know the location of your test centre. If you don’t know how to get to the centre, print out directions from Google Maps. If you haven’t taken a test before at your test centre, ask around among the seniors you know or go and check it out before, to see whether there’s anything you need to know about the place. If someone is sup ...
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