How to Guess in UCAT

When You Need to Guess in UCAT, Beware of Your Hunches

You know that whenever you can make a quick guess on a question to avoid leaving it blank, you should take the shot. The key word here is quick; you can always afford to guess, but you can never afford to waste time.

So, how should you guess? Let’s be clear about something: guessing does not mean selecting a choice at random. But it also doesn’t mean selecting the choice that seems to be right. Guessing means selecting the choice that has the greatest chance of being right, regardless of whether that choice “looks right” or “looks wrong.”

Another adage that needs to be added to our growing list of “world’s worst UCAT advice” is this: when in doubt, go with your first hunch. In real life that advice has some merit. On the UCAT, however, only rarely should you go with your first hunch when you’re in doubt.

Think about it. When are you most likely to be in doubt, on the easy questions, the medium ones, or the hard ones? The hard questions, right? Okay—and make sure you understand this point—the reason a multiple-choice question is hard is that everybody’s first hunch on it is wrong. If everybody’s first hunch on a hard question were correct, it would be an easy question, not a hard one.

Here’s the problem: everybody’s first hunch on a question tends to be the same one or two choices. In other words, everybody always goes for the same, popular choices on questions. On easy questions, those choices are correct. But on hard questions, those hunches have to be wrong—not might be wrong, have to be wrong.

Now, sometimes you’ll find yourself stuck on an easy question. It happens. Then you should trust your hunch; after all, it’s an easy question. In fact, we could define easy questions as those on which everybody’s first hunch—the most popular choice—is usually right.

Medium questions are a bit trickier in this regard. The answer won’t be too easy, but it won’t be too hard, either. So rely on your hunches on medium questions with caution. On hard questions, those on which you’re most likely to be in doubt, your first hunches are extremely suspect.

Through the MedEntry UCAT prep course, you will be shown how to apply this principle on the different question types you’ll encounter on the UCAT, how to identify whether a question is easy or hard using LMS etc. Incidentally, the best guess on any given question is not always right, but it’s always the way to go. When you’re in doubt you have to play the odds. If someone asked you which team was more likely to win a game, Team A (first place in the league) or Team B (last place in the league), obviously Team A would be more likely to win. Would Team A always beat Team B? Of course not—even though in any given match, you’d always expect Team A to beat Team B.

The same is true on the UCAT. Easy questions have easy, popular answers; hard questions have hard, unpopular answers. If you’re not sure on a question, that’s the way to guess.