Easy UCAT questions have obvious and popular answers: how to avoid falling into UCAT answer traps!
4 years ago by Robert
Easy UCAT questions have obvious and popular answers: how to avoid falling into UCAT answer traps!
As you complete more and more practice UCAT exams you may start to notice the following UCAT trend: Easy UCAT questions have obvious and popular answers, whilst hard UCAT questions have unexpected and unpopular answers.
It helps to think of UCAT questions as popularity contests. The answer to an easy question is the most popular choice. The answer to a difficult question is the least popular choice. In other words, popular UCAT answer choices on difficult questions are traps.
If you think about the UCAT for a moment, you’ll realise that questions have to be designed this way. Since a multiple-choice question provides the answer, the only way they can make a UCAT question difficult is to camouflage the correct UCAT answer and make the wrong choices more appealing. Another way to look at the UCAT multi-choice options is whether they are attractive or unattractive. The answer to an easy question will be an attractive choice; that’s why it’s an easy question. The answer to a difficult question is an unattractive choice; that’s why it’s a hard question.
What makes a UCAT choice attractive or popular will depend on the type of UCAT question. On a UCAT QR question, any easy numbers that seem to solve the problem will be popular choices. Sometimes a question will have more than one attractive UCAT choice; sometimes it won’t have any.
If you’re stuck on an easy UCAT question, remind yourself that the answer should be easy and obvious. If you’re stuck on a hard question, remind yourself that the answer should be hard and unexpected. And if you’re stuck on a medium question, remind yourself that the answer shouldn’t be too easy or too hard.
Knowing the difficulty of the UCAT question you’re working on is a powerful clue for checking your work. If you’ve solved a difficult UCAT question but your solution is an obvious UCAT answer choice—one that would attract other students—you’ve probably made a mistake. Knowing the difficulty of the UCAT question is also a powerful tool when you’re forced to guess a UCAT answer. Practising on MedEntry LMS will enable you to judge whether a question is hard or easy.
For more helpful UCAT tips and free UCAT preparation resources please see MedEntry UCAT preparation or check out our blog series UCAT test tactics and preparation.