An NMAT Guide

A graduate who is still unsure of what to do after the board exams.

[nmatguide]

An NMAT Guide: How to study and get a high grade

Okay, the title was kind of a bait hahahhaha but this is a serious guide.

There are a lot of NMAT guides out there. Why make another one? Personally, I think it gives a sense of comfort reading from the experiences of previous NMAT takers especially if it will be your first time taking one. I remember looking at a lot of blogs just to be prepared when I took the NMAT last October 2015.

I’m not sure if this will cover everything but I’ll try my best to compile the things that needed to be compiled and things that you’d pretty much want to know.

I didn’t enroll in a review center because it’s quite expensive and I was pretty busy with school. I have no regrets taking it while I was a graduating student but there are some people who’d rather get it after graduating. It depends on you, but I took because at least if I got a low score, I’d already have a feel for what’s to come. 

Let’s get real.

What really happens when you are already taking the exam?

The first part of the test was really hard. Not only because of the test questions but because of the time that they impose on you. 

You’re given 3 hours to finish a 120-item test and it’s still not enough? Damn right it is not enough. There are four subtests, verbal, inductive reasoning, quantitative, and perceptual acuity. Usually, they give a recommended time frame (40, 50, 50, 40 minutes respectively) in which you should the test within those limits but they give you the 3 hours to manage it the best way possible.

The first thing that you need: A WATCH. Write it down. Buy one if you still don’t have one. YOU WILL NEED IT. Not only so that you could track down the time but also for your SANITY. Imagine the agony of trying to finish a test with a lot of numbers still unanswered and you have no idea how much time there’s left. Imagine the unimaginable when the proctor suddenly says 20 minutes left, or worse, 10 minutes left, and you still have ONE WHOLE COLUMN (aka subtest) UNSHADED. So yes, a watch. It is a must. You don’t even need to synchronize you just need to take note of the three hours, when you started and just add 3 hours to it so you know when you should end.

Next: Other than the necessary pencils [No. 2 or HB] (Bring 2, maybe 3 at most. I brought around 5 to the table when I actually only used 1. Paranoid much?) You’ll need an eraser. A good one. Not a cheap one which can smudge your marks but a good one. Staedtler perhaps? I’m not exactly sure SINCE I DIDN’T BRING ONE which I REGRET. Well, I brought one but I left it in my bag so I wasn’t able to use it and relied on my Mongol pencil eraser. So why did I regret not bringing it to the table? 

I made a lot of mistakes in the test and of course, I erased it using my eraser but dun-dun-dun, it wasn’t cleanly erased! There was still a light shade of gray no matter how much I erased, it wouldn’t come off. I think I even made the test circle lighter. But I didn’t care, I thought it was the wrong answer and I’m going to change it and I had no choice with my eraser. YOLO. So imagine the stress that I had after taking the exam and testing the eraser I brought, comparing it with the Mongol pencil eraser and see that the eraser erases cleanly. (Shoutout to Staedtler!) So bring an eraser. So that you wouldn’t stress about the mistakes and shading that you made. Remember, a person’s loss is another person’s chance of getting a higher rank.

When answering the test, try to start on the easier parts. 

Case in point 1: There was a girl who answered and she answered the questions by the book, following the sequence. Maybe she wasn’t able to track time because I saw that there were just a few minutes left and there’s more than a column I think that she still hasn’t answered. 

Case in point 2: Another girl, I saw that when she answered she went to the Perceptual acuity part first, specifically the identical information. That time I was answering it by the book just like girl 1 but I realized that my time is ticking and so I followed her. HAHAHA. I answered PA, then Quantitative, then went back to inductive reasoning (number and letter series ugh), then went back to all my unanswered questions.

Now, after part I (the most exhausting test I ever took and I kind of swore not to let myself undergo that stress anymore) (unless I’ll change my mind about going to medical school immediately and my NMAT will expire then I have no choice but to take it again. Ugh.), is break time. Chocolates. You’ll need it to comfort yourselves and your brain. It’s so fun after that when you see some people that you’d know and you’d talk about how stressful that first part was. Of course, take your necessary break. Don’t starve yourself. You’re already stressed, now don’t get hungry.

Part II is more on subject proficiency (Bio, Physics, Soc. Sci, Chem)  so if your bachelor’s degree prepared you well for this then nice. It’s much more helpful for you. If not then better read up on the basics of these things. I repeat, the basics since it’s too big a coverage and only a few items about it will come out. 

This part of the test was okay. Lighter than part I but still hard because there will be some concepts which you are kind of unfamiliar of but it’s more of a “heck, I have no idea this is so I don’t really care what I pick anymore” kind of thing unlike part I which is “DAMMIT I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS BUT I DON’T HAVE TIME SO I THINK ILL JUST PICK THIS INSTEAD BUT IF I HAVE TIME LATER ON ILL GO BACK TO THIS” But you won’t have time and will end up using the answer.

After taking the test, go out, breathe and well you did it. It might not be the best or it might have been the best you did but that was it. You did it and there’s no taking back that test paper from the proctor. Feelings of regret of unpreparedness and maybe feelings of fulfillment that you are already one step closer to your dream of being an MD will wash over you. 

After taking the part II I still wasn’t able to get over part I. It traumatizes. Part II was a breeze, though hard. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating about part I but at least, you’ll know what to expect. Unlike me, this is purely my experience. HAHA.

Oh, don’t forget your permits and maybe a jacket. My testing room had an aircon and surprise, surprise, I didn’t bring a jacket.

What comes BEFORE the test date?

Of course, you prepare. Some people prepare for months for this just so they can get a really high rank. Some people prepare just weeks or days before. Others don’t even prepare at all. 

I started preparing seriously around a month before the test though I already had reviewers months before. School and internship were really hectic, I didn’t have much time for review and one scolding from my mom, a ripped otakuzine, and a ripped reviewer changed it all. (The ripped reviewer was MSA btw, I just taped it back. T.T) She thought I wasn’t taking it seriously (I was totally chill about the NMAT. Maybe because Med School wasn’t really on my mind but I do intend on taking Medicine but the reality hadn’t hit me yet.) 

So HOW do you prepare?

Simple answer: It depends on you. It depends on how you manage your time and how studious, and how determined you are.

However, here are some things that you’d need to prepare. 

The internet.

It’s an arsenal at your disposal in achieving a high grade. You could try to learn more about the NMAT using their Bulletin of Information found here. I’d rather not reiterate what they’ve written there since it pretty much covers the basic: what it is about, how they grade you, the time they allow for the test, what you need to apply, etc.

So my friend, use the internet to search for guides, to practice, and tips on how to get a high nmat grade,  because there’s no passing score here, just a percentile rank that you need to achieve.

As early as now the competition starts. I do not want to think of myself as a competitive person but that’s the reality of this test. You have to think of others too. As written by other bloggers, they’ve said that you should do your best in subjects where others are expected to have a hard time on. (Ex. Physics, Chemistry) They grade you according to the percent of people you got a higher score on.

Reviewers.

Nah, this is just an OPTION, much like a review center, it depends on you if you want reviewers other than the practice set that they’ll give you. I self-reviewed but I bought a reviewer online from someone who took the nmat before who got it from her review center. It’s used but it really helped me practice on my quantitative skills, inductive reasoning, and perceptual acuity. It definitely helped for part I. 

You could enroll in a review center and get hold of their reviewers but it’s kind of a waste if you don’t attend.

I have the MSA reviewers and like what they all said, it’s definitely hard but the good thing about it is that there are concepts there, they explain the concepts behind each question they pose and it helps if you need more reading on the concepts, equations. I don’t think you should time yourself while answering the MSA reviewer because it’s really hard and quite pointless but the theory behind each question is kind of helpful.

THE NMAT PRACTICE SET.

This is it.  This is what you will need the most. Why? Because it’s simple to understand. You can time yourself answering this, and it’s given by CEM so it gives you an overview of the test.

Guys, I don’t think I can stress enough the pressure of time on the first part of the test. If you’re a fast test taker,  good at math, good at finding differences, vocabulary, and context clues then it is a definite advantage. But if you are not any of these things and even if YOU ARE these kind of people, I recommend practice. It might seem tiring already reading the word ‘practice’ from all of these blogs but, it’s really true. You do need to practice because practicing with the time ticking is really helpful on how you can do well on the test day.

Now how do you answer the practice set?

1. Just answer it. Time yourself, use a sheet of paper and write your letters down. After each time, check your answers. Once you’ve answered everything or just a part that you want, reflect. Which parts did I get wrong? Then what you could do, which I did for me, is number 2.

2. Find out WHY that is the answer. This is really helpful. I tried to find out the reasoning behind each answer. The internet, google, and Yahoo! Answers are your friends here. Find out the concepts, jot down the formulas, read up on the theories behind it.

So what about each subset?

Verbal: This test depends on vocabulary and how you’ll understand the articles given to you. Your stock knowledge on words and your ability on context clues will help here.

Inductive reasoning: Practice. It’s practice that we need here. This is where the ‘what comes next’ problems start. With the figures, and the number and letter series and the figure grouping which is finding the odd one out. It helps if you write the alphabet and write the corresponding letter. It will help a lot in the number and letter series. Patterns are your friend.

Quantitative: Again, practice your arithmetic skills, algebra skills. geometry? trigonometry? skills. Practice answering equations. Remember basic formulas especially for geometry (lol Pythagorean theorem), and symbols too.

Perceptual acuity: One of the hardest. The hidden figure is a pain in the brain, also the others but trying to find the hidden figure amidst all those lines and they all look the same, it just sucks. Mirror image might seem hard at first but according to other blogs (a tip that I used), You should NOT compare each figure to the main one. You should compare the choices among themselves. Find the odd ones, compare the odd parts of it to the main one and see if they fit. Do the same with the identical information.

PA was one of the hardest since my brain was already rushing through time and some questions just looked all the same time to me that I kept wondering is there really something different about these choices? But there it was, it took me some time but after closing my eyes for a while, breathing, thinking clearly, looking at it, it actually is just there right in front of your eyes. 

“The closer you look, the less you see.”

But remember, no matter how prepared you are with the concepts and formulas, all of those will be USELESS if you won’t be able to finish the test ON TIME. So go on, practice.

I won’t even stress about the part II subjects because I don’t think I can give many tips to these subjects since each of them is a complex science that I think your stock knowledge on them from your general education subjects is the only thing that you’d need. Of course, even if it’s hard to learn the 4 subjects (Bio, Physics, Soc Sci and Chem), please do not forget to read a bit about them. Even just through the MSA reviewers or NMAT practice set that by looking up the reasoning behind the PART II questions. Do not forget your formulas for Physics and Chem I guess. Personally, one of the most important formulas that I memorized to heart for this part was Q=mcΔT. It helps. Trust me. 

Bio was kind of an advantage for me since it’s related to my course, a health science. Though I had a hard time with plants since we didn’t have botany in school.

Physics has been a hard subject for me since high school but I tried to memorize formulas and theories as much as I can. 

Chemistry, I can’t say much about it but it’s the lowest score that I had among the four of them. 

Social Science, just know the basic terms, scientists, and maybe your own moral values hahahha, sorry, I kind of forgot.

Again, my tip for part II is to answer the practice set and look at the reason for the answers and read more on them. Rather than immersing yourself in a biology book or a book dedicated to that science. Not everything will come out there. Just the basics my friend.

That’s basically it. I think. I’m not sure if this will also help you but this is what I did when I took the NMAT. Be sure to search the internet for how to get high nmat grades. 

Here are some links that helped:

One & Two & Three (This has a rationale for the NMAT, I think it’s not that complete but it helps you get started.)

Of course, you can also read every blog out there about the NMAT (No, seriously. It really does help reading about their experiences.)

Don’t forget to also focus on your studies if you are still a graduating student, though, and never forget to pray. I offered eggs in the monastery the day before hahahahaha just to have the faith that I’d get a high score and if I don’t I’ll be able to accept it.

These are the things that I did which may or may not be helpful for you. With the perseverance, I thank the Lord which gave me a much unexpected 99. Not with a plus, but it’s certainly more than I hoped for. I was expecting a line of 9 since I needed to have a scholarship but not as much as that. When looking at my scores, I didn’t have a 700+ and all of them were 600+ but I focused on my strengths when answering and my weaknesses when studying/reviewing. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope this could be of help. 

God bless, future doctors!