UCAT Stress - exam next week and dont know what to do

Hey, my exam is next week and I am really stressed because I keep getting 2420-2500 on the practice tests, it seems like the QR section is bringing down my score the most and sometimes AR. I am using Kaplan for prep, is Kaplan reflective of the difficulty of the real thing? and any tips on QR?

Hey, don't worry too much. I'm also doing mine next week. Remember whatever happens during the rest will be the best you could have possibly done.
For AR write down the patterns you get wrong and use SCANS: Shapes/Colour/Angle/Number/Symmetry when doing the questions to find the pattern.
I'm not too familiar with Kaplan but the questions on UCAT website are a good representation and good for practice too as well as Medify. However, QR is normally not too difficult compared to Medify.
I'm struggling with VR and sometimes DM. Do you have any tips for me? I would be grateful. Good Luck x

If you don't feel ready, you can rearrange the test now and push it back a couple of weeks. As the above poster says, medify is good, it's what I mostly used. Maybe get medify for a couple of days. You can take the test (I think) up until mid to end of September, although it's recommended to do it as soon as possible to give you enough time to research your options.

Thank you for your reply, I will try that technique for AR, hopefully it will work.

For VR what I do is read/ scan the question first to know what I'm looking for, such as, key words. Then scan the text for the answer. If the question asks for a particular place I look for capital letters and dates are usually in order. If you struggle to remember the keywords you are looking for jot them down. When I realise I'm spending too much time on a question I make an educated guess and move on (don't know whether its recommended but that's what I do personally and it seems to work.)

DM, I've learnt to flag the questions with the 5 parts unless they look simple i.e one line of data. I then do the rest of the questions like the venn diagrams etc and then come back to the 5 parts at the end. When I do this I usually have a quite a bit of time left at the end to do them. With the questions that are like "There are 5 shelves in a supermarket, each shelf has one item..." etc (I cant remember what those types of questions are called lol) I always draw out a simple diagram and then note down the data in the right place on my diagram as I read it. This helps me to visualise the data and also means you don't have to remember too much at once.

Thanks for the reply, I did look into that but the dates they had left were in like late Sept and early Oct I think. Once I get back to school in Sept I have my EPQ and biology and chemistry tests straight away so I think I would be even more stressed.

Your techniques sound good. The technique I used for VR and NR was to only focus on 75% of the questions, and guess the rest if needs be, as I'm far more likely to get 33/44, aiming for 33, and utilising the extra minutes I'd save (from doing the extra 11 questions) to answer those 33, as 44/44 is practically impossible, so no point aiming for that. If you make a completely clueless guess, then pick the same letter, e.g. option E, every time, as you're more likely to get one right. Also, for NR if you're not used to using the keypad when using the calculator, then get used to it, as that saves far more time than using the mouse to click numbers into the online calculator

For AR it simply is lots of practice and getting familiar with the various patterns to the point where you've seen all the patterns. I was personally averaging around 650 during practice, but in the real thing I got 890 for AR (wasn't expecting it), so there is hope. I would say Kaplan was definitely harder than the real thing, but bare in mind they pull out questions from a random question bank, so you could get hard questions, or easy one's, it's difficult to say.

And most importantly, keep your calm. Don't worry about messing up, just focus and do the best you can. I panicked a bit during VR and got 550 on that, but I stayed calm for the rest and got NR - 710, DM - 700, AR - 890, and Band 1 for SJT. I averaged around 670 just before my exam

Thanks for the advice that makes me feel better actually lol. Trying to answer 75% properly sounds like a good idea, i'll try it. So you think Kaplan was slightly harder than the real thing, is that what you used? (ps NR is the same as Quantitive right?)
How did you get band 1 in SJT I've been stuck on band 2 throughout my practice.

Yeah Kaplan in my experience was harder for AR. It was slightly harder for NR and around the same difficulty for the other two. Yeah, NR = quantitative. Though you should remember that the exam questions are picked at random difficulties, so your book may not reflect the real thing, but it should be fairly close. Also, eat two bananas 15-20 minutes before your exam. It'll give you slow release energy to help you focus, as you don't want to be sitting a 2.5 hour exam on an empty stomach.

After doing enough questions for SJT you get a jist for the general principles that you need to abide by, like always putting the patient first, confidentiality etc. You need to think about what the medical council would consider right, not what you think is right. If that helps. After each question, understand the logic they used to deduce what was the correct answer, and also by what logic they deduced the wrong answer, and apply that logic to all questions.

Thanks for the advice that makes me feel better actually lol. Trying to answer 75% properly sounds like a good idea, i'll try it. So you think Kaplan was slightly harder than the real thing, is that what you used? (ps NR is the same as Quantitive right?)
How did you get band 1 in SJT I've been stuck on band 2 throughout my practice.

Yeah Kaplan in my experience was harder for AR. It was slightly harder for NR and around the same difficulty for the other two. Yeah, NR = quantitative. Though you should remember that the exam questions are picked at random difficulties, so your book may not reflect the real thing, but it should be fairly close. Also, eat two bananas 15-20 minutes before your exam. It'll give you slow release energy to help you focus, as you don't want to be sitting a 2.5 hour exam on an empty stomach.

After doing enough questions for SJT you get a jist for the general principles that you need to abide by, like always putting the patient first, confidentiality etc. You need to think about what the medical council would consider right, not what you think is right. If that helps. After each question, understand the logic they used to deduce what was the correct answer, and also by what logic they deduced the wrong answer, and apply that logic to all questions.

For SJT I suggest that you have a read of the GMC's Good Medical Practice. Don't bother to read the entire thing, just the first 15 or so summary pages at the start. A lot of the scenarios/situations actually SJT's are covered under Good Medical Practice, such as if a patient tries to offer you a financial gift.I got band 1 but can't really tell you exactly how to move up from band 2 as I was getting band 1 from the start.

The previous posters advice about gaining an awareness of general principles such as confidentiality and autonomy is excellent as these issues feature again and again in questions.

I scored band 1 in SJT, 740 in VR, 730 in QR, 710 in DM and 630 in AR last year. I really struggled with AR in the beginning (was literally failing to start with, scored like 350 on a mock once) and found just doing literally hundreds of questions helped me to improve.

After you have done the UCAT, the medic portal is a really useful website for suggesting medical schools based on your score. Like the above poster, feel free to DM for advice regarding personal statement/any other medicine application stuff. This year I managed to secure four interviews and three offers.

Oh my goodness, well done on your score and offers! Thanks for the advice, i guess I just have to keep practicing as many questions as I can.

I have another question...How similar is medify uckat mock 2 to the real thing? because for some reason I flopped DM (the rest was okay) and usually DM is one of my stronger sections.

Tbh I did my UCAT a year ago so of course I can't remember what individual mocks were like. However, generally I sometimes had one mock where I would do really bad or really well on one section. As long as you are generally doing okay at DM, don't worry too much. I found that some of the medify tests were a bit weird and much harder than the real thing.

How did you do?