Medicine 2012...(hopeful entrants) !!

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BMAT bad(just above average). My UKCAT score was average ( 612.5). My personal statement and reference was ok - scoring 9/10 and 10/10 according to Leicester respectively. I had good predicted grades:a*a*aa (maths, chemistry, physics and biology). I have lots of work experience and I've been in lots of societies (both as a member and the leader). However, I didn't do my high school in UK(I did it in Nigeria). I'm a home student though. I think UKCAT/BMAT and lack of GCSEs let me down. Last year, I applied to Kings, Leicester, UCL and Imperial. I've learnt from my mistakes though. Not choosing Kings, UCL and Imperial this time around.

VR is pretty good for me. QR is very easy for me, but the timings are a bit tight. DA is alright, timings are tight. AR is terrible, I managed to answer 35/65 on the practice test, and even then I only got 7 of them right. I want to cry.

Yes me too! I'm doing all my practise with an on screen one though, so hopefully it'll become more natural. I agree, the QR is my most time pressured section. :/

Any tips for VR? I seem to be better at the paragraphs that interest me, the one's to do with history etc, I just seem to blank out and loose interest on, oopss..

DA is okay timing wise I think, I did a practise section earlier and had 4 mins left to spare. The worst bit is where you have to pick words to add to the list. It's like you need to be a thesaurus, haha!

Thats probably a good idea.. I will start doing that!
Is the on screen one the basic-type calculator??
Yeah but QR is not necessarily my worst section but definitely the one that I see to run out of time on!

For VR, I never bother reading the whole thing properly. I just look at the question, and then skim the passage to find the key phrases to answer the question.

It does sometimes annoy me when they ask you something in VR, and there is nothing in the passage to say it's true/false, so it seems to be can't tell. but sometimes it turn out to be false even though there's no evidence to directly contradict the statement, and more information is required for it

Thanks Yes it confuses me if it's false / can't tell sometimes. :/

I've ordered the 600 questions book, so hopefully I'll be able to improve before I actually sit the damn thing

Yeah. When's your test?

Sure thing How did AS exams go? And don't you find Decision Analysis hard?

Erm I think I emailed them asking for it I only did it for one or two of them cause I didn't really care about the others Took a little for it to come through but it came and was pretty useful In my opinion if you do get rejected (hopefully not) only apply for feedback from the uni's you like or would want to reapply to because each uni wants different things. And if each of them didn't like a particular aspect then you'll be left feeling really bad. But get just the ones you want and use it as constructive criticism

I haven't booked it yet, but considering the end of August/beginning of September. As long as it's after results day, so I know whether I've actually got an A in chemistry!
You?

I've practised AR and am getting better, it's just about thinking up before hand of the rules that could apply like, even/odd number of shapes, shading, number of edges etc..

When's your UKCAT?

So what are the rules/parameters?

-number of shapes
-shading
-number of edges
-any more?

I haven't booked mine yet, but likely to be end of August if I can get a slot then.

Also, how are you using an on screen calculator, just the standard one included with Windows?

The list is infinite I think but some others include:

-Positioning of shapes in box
-Type of shape
-Curved/straight lines
-Unique shapes
-Shapes inside another shape
-Patterns in the shape

I just use the calculator from my start menu.

True that, but thanks for compiling that, at least I'll know where to start.

Hmm, but is that the same as the UKCAT one? Once the first people come back from their tests, I'll know what it's like

I doubt an on screen calculator can vary that much.. besides all I've needed to use so far are the basic number buttons and functions.

Well, one thing which irks me about the standard one, is that you can't use your keyboard to type in the numbers. So if I had to type in 38768.6 on the keyboard, it would take me 1-2 seconds, but if I had to do it manually with the mouse on the computer, it would take 5-6 seconds, and QR is the most timepressed one, so I need those extra seconds.

There's nowhere near enough time to do everything in QR D;