The Truth about UCAT prep

As a customer, it is difficult to choose from various UCAT course providers, especially when outlandish claims are made through slick and deceptive marketing strategies. As in most cases, 'Word-of-mouth' recommendation is the best. Please ask around for the impressions of students who have attended a UCAT course.

Quality of products

• Your performance in the UCAT will only improve if you practice on questions which simulate the real UCAT. Practicing on questions which are unrelated to those in the UCAT or questions that have a different structure to those in the UCAT may adversely affect your performance. It is like preparing for a Physics exam but finding at the exam venue that in fact you are being examined on Biology.

• Numerous students have been misled by the purchase of practice tests which have little resemblance to the real UCAT, which resulted in them performing poorly. Please make sure you do not become one of these unfortunate students – you only get one chance per year. Further, do not make purchases or assumptions about the quality of products based on free sample questions. Numerous students have made purchases based on the fact that the sample questions 'looked good', only to find that questions provided were of extremely poor quality and did not simulate the UCAT.

• Be wary of practicing on "past UCAT Books". Remember that the UCAT is continually evolving. Preparation materials that are a year or more old are usually out of date. Further UCAT is on a computer, not on paper.

• In general, quality is inversely proportional to quantity. It is easy to put together and sell thousands of poor quality questions which have little resemblance to UCAT questions. However, preparing top quality questions which simulate the UCAT takes time, expertise, knowledge, skill and resources.

• We do not recommend any other resources for preparation other than those provided by MedEntry (due to their poor quality, lack of simulation to UCAT, etc).

• Numerous students, in the past, have been promised thousands of questions by some providers. Unfortunately, the students have been provided with only a few hundred poor quality questions.

• The format of UCAT is constantly changing and evolving (for example the introduction Decision making from 2017). Amazingly, some books are being sold in the old format since the sellers do not have and/or do not want to spend time and resources updating the materials.

• Beware of people selling illegal copies of outdated materials. Please note that posession or purchase of pirated copies of MedEntry's material may lead to prosecution and even imprisonment.

• Avoid the cheapest product. Remember, good services are seldom cheap and cheap services are seldom good.

Deceptive tactics

• Remember that anyone can publish anything on the internet. This is one of its greatest weaknesses for those seeking accurate, balanced, objective and reliable information.

• Be warned: the internet is a magnet and fertile ground for cheats, crooks, bankrupt businessmen, fraudsters and con artists; dodgy companies promising you all sorts of things and delivering very little; and worse, misleading you. Hence our plea: Caveat Emptor or Buyer Beware. Don't become one of the many who have been fleeced and found to their regret later that there is very little they could do. More than 70 years ago, W.C. Fields said that a sucker is born every minute. With the internet, it's every nanosecond.

• Please take note of warnings issued by the Department of Fair Trading and numerous consumer organizations against internet service providers: do not rely on information or purchase from sites which do not give an authentic physical address, landline phone number and Business Number. There is a good reason why they don't give these details: because they have something to hide. You will be misled and will have no recourse.

• "The bottom line is to avoid a site that does not say who is behind it." (Readers' Digest, January 2005, p26). Hence our plea: do not buy from sites and do not rely on information from sites which are not authentic and hide behind a facade of anonymity. Andrew Keen, in the book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture wisely states that 'if we are to save the Internet, we need to confront the curse of anonymity.'

• Beware of unscrupulous providers trying to pass themselves off as MedEntry by false advertising. Please make sure you go to our correct and authentic website: www.medentry.co.nz

• Some companies try to lure you with 'free' online questions and tests, which are worse than useless because they mislead. These are designed to obtain your email, so that they can bombard you with unsolicited spam, marketing material, 'phishing' and various forms of online fraud.

• Insist on 'seeing before buying'. Any genuine and authentic organization should offer to show all their materials before you spend a cent. Once purchases are made, you will have no recourse, and you will not receive a refund.

Forums

• Avoid unauthentic online forums: they are not independent and are used as advertising and marketing tools which mislead and trap unsuspecting students/parents. Such forums are run anonymously and their purpose is to criticize and defame other providers whilst praising one provider lavishly.

• The bottom line is to only trust learning forums (such as MedEntry's) which you know are genuine because you know who the moderator is, who the contributors are and which organisation is behind it. Mark Twain said: "A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants" – this is particularly true with anonymous online forums.

• Any genuine and authentic on-line forum would make publicly available the verifiable name, address and contact details of the moderator and administrator, who are legally responsible for postings on the site. Please do not rely on information from sites which are not authentic and hide behind a 'facade of anonymity'.

• Owners and associates of competitors criticise MedEntry and provide false information. Ask for word-of-mouth recommendation and you will find everyone recommends MedEntry.

Message to Parents

• For more information and advice on preparing your son/daughter for the UCAT, please read our Message to Parents by clicking here.