How I prepared for the UKCAT
Okay so as I did my UKCAT not long ago, I thought I’d do a post on how I revised for the exam and the strategies I used, before I forget it all. Here are my UKCAT results, so you can decide based on that whether you want to take my advice or not! My score is not super high, but it’s above average, which is all I wanted.
General
Before you get practising, I think it’s important to familiarise yourself with the online layout and features of the test. The UKCAT website has a tour tutorial which I used and found really helpful. There’s also a question tutorial which breaks down the different subtests.
Flagging
This is one feature of the online test. You can click a button to flag questions that are taking too long, and come back to them at the end on a review page. All questions (except one type in DM) are worth the same amount. So don’t spend ages on one question! Flag it, move on, and come back to it at the end.
No negative marking
The exam is multiple choice, and you don’t lose marks for answering a question wrong. So when you go through the questions you’ve flagged, eliminate answers you know are wrong. This is so important because if there are 4 options, and you manage to eliminate 2, even if you guess the answer you still go from having a 25% chance of getting it right to a 50% chance.
Strategy
With the UKCAT, it’s all about trying to maximise your marks by answering as many questions correctly in the time as possible. There’s a few different ways to try and do this, but my main two were either:
do as many questions as possible then guess the rest
‘guess and flag’ more time-consuming questions to come back to (the guessing part was in case I didn’t have time to return to that question)
Verbal Reasoning
my strategy was to skim read the passage first, mentally summarising the subject of each paragraph, which gives you a general idea of the structure
next I would read the question / statement and try to find the relevant information in the passage
this is made easier by the fact that you already have an idea about where info is in the passage, so you can locate it quicker
also, when reading the question / statement, allocate keywords (such as names and dates) to help you navigate the passage quicker
when I was running out of time at the end, I would skim read, then answer the questions without returning to the passage to save time
when I was really really running out of time, I would go through and guess the rest
this strategy fell under type 1 above
Decision Making
there’s a wide variety of questions with DM, so figure out which ones you are better at and worse at
I would ALWAYS ‘guess and flag’ if it was the kind where there was a confusing table to read, but complete all the venn diagram ones (my fave)
REALLY GET TO KNOW YOUR VENN DIAGRAMS, not even kidding like 60% of questions involved one
top tip: if you’re given info that looks like ‘there are 25 kids. 4 like basketball only, 6 like swimming only, 2 like football only, 1 likes swimming and football, and 5 like all three’ etc, draw out a venn diagram!! It will help you visualise the info and solve it so much quicker
if you’re wondering what to draw on, you’re given a little whiteboard notebook thingy and a marker pen
also, you don’t have to solve the entire puzzle to answer the question!! often you won’t be given enough info to finish the puzzle but they will ask about parts that you are able to complete
then on to the argument questions, by which I mean the type where there’s a question and you have to select the strongest argument for / against
a strong argument: directly addresses ALL aspects of the question, does not make assumptions about what might/might not happen, and is based on FACT not opinion (backed up by stats is a bonus)
e.g. if it was ‘should we increase the legal driving age to reduce the number of young drivers and thus pollutants in the atmosphere?’ a bad answer would be ‘yes, young people drive too fast and cause 20% more deaths than older people’. Although it has stats, the question was asking about pollutants in the atmosphere so this argument is not relevant
Quantitative Reasoning
first of all, some questions are multi-step and take wayyy longer than others. I would always ‘guess and flag’ these and move on to questions that were quicker to answer
make sure you’re up to speed on your basic maths skills: percentage changes, percentage increase/decrease, ratios, fractions, conversions, area / volume, averages (mean/median/mode)
the one they ALWAYS test you on without a shadow of a doubt is speed = distance/time !! make sure you know how to rearrange it to find distance and time as well
with regard to graphs: avoid doing too many calculations, and try to eyeball it to see what is closest to the answers available
ahh, the on-screen calculator
it’s awful - BUT, I have a hack!! which I found out literally the day before lol
so I thought you have to click with the mouse to enter numbers and it was taking forever, but you can use the number keyboard!!
all you have to do is make sure that Num Lock is on! (thank me later)
I don’t really have much more advice for QR, just reassurance. I was getting like 500 every time when I practised, but the actual test I found a lot easier, and I got over 700
Abstract Reasoning
I didn’t actually do that well in this section lol
mneumonics seem to be the way to go though, and the one I used (as recommended by @medicslacks) was SCaN for Placement
shape, colour, number, placement
then also check things like symmetry and angles
just practise with this one though, it seems impossible at first but you do get better!
Situational Judgement
READ THE GMC DOCUMENT ‘GOOD MEDICAL PRACTICE’
THE LINK IS HERE
I printed it and read it. Not only does it help SJ, but in general it informs you about what is expected of doctors, and I’m sure it will help at the interview stage
generally, things that are important are: maintaining patient confidentiality, working well as a team (and if there are problems address the issue privately with the individual before involving third parties), accountability for mistakes (always apologise and take responsibility), knowing your limitations, maintaining public confidence in the profession
patient safety is the no. 1 priority so if anything threatens that it is ‘very inappropriate’
Useful Resources
These are the resources that I used during my preparation:
1250 UKCAT Practise Questions by Olivier Picard (latest edition) - I started off with this one. It was good if you want extra questions to practise with, but in the end I think I would have been better off sticking to online resources
Medify - I used this for the majority of my preparation. I had it for 2 weeks and I found it really useful. I recommend starting with the practise questions, then doing timed practise, then moving on to the mocks that are available
UKCAT practice tests - when you’re on to the final stages of revision, I recommend doing the official UKCAT practice tests. There are only 3 which is why I saved them until the end!
Okay so that concludes my post! The UKCAT is honestly the weirdest exam and I have no idea why medical schools think it’s an indicator of how good a doctor you would be. But good luck to anyone doing it, and I hope this is helpful! X
