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UKCAT help

hey; have any of you done the UKCAT or doing it now? got any tips or advice on how to do it well? is it possible to resit it????
any help will be much appreciated
thank you
Reply 1
Avatar for astrodr
astrodr
3
I sat the UKCAT last Summer, and used: the UKCAT pdf on the website, to make sure I knew the kind of questions that would be asked; 'Passing the UKCAT and BMAT' by Rosalie Hutton, (incl. practice questions); practice papers on the website; timing myself on some of the Quantitative Reasoning Questions on the Kaplan website (free). I have also heard that Medify is great for UKCAT practice; it has a lot of questions to practice and advice on the different sections. I think the Situational Judgement section is quite difficult to get right, and I spent time looking at different examples. I started practising about 3-4 weeks before, and took my test in the middle of Summer. It honestly wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

You can only sit it once in each cycle, and if you are unsuccessful in getting a place for that cycle, you would have to resit it again the following Summer.

All the best; if you have any more questions re UKCAT or medicine applications in general, don't hesitate to ask me :smile:
Reply 2
Avatar for PhRose
PhRose
OP
2
thank you very much for the information you have provided me with but is there any advice you can give me on how to prepare for it I know you cant really learn anything for it so are you just supposed to do the questions again and again
Reply 3
Avatar for astrodr
astrodr
3
Yes I think that's a good idea. Do as many questions as you can and get used to the timings - verbal reasoning is tricky in the time you're given, so get used to reading text quickly and answering questions on the text. I found QR easier in the actual test than on any of the practice tests, but practice these too. For AR, get to know the types of patterns you usually get - its surprising how familiar they get after a while, and patterns are often repeated; I made a list of the ones I came across. :smile:
Original post by astrodr
Yes I think that's a good idea. Do as many questions as you can and get used to the timings - verbal reasoning is tricky in the time you're given, so get used to reading text quickly and answering questions on the text. I found QR easier in the actual test than on any of the practice tests, but practice these too. For AR, get to know the types of patterns you usually get - its surprising how familiar they get after a while, and patterns are often repeated; I made a list of the ones I came across. :smile:


Would you mind, if it's not too much trouble, posting the list please? D:
Original post by PhRose
hey; have any of you done the UKCAT or doing it now? got any tips or advice on how to do it well? is it possible to resit it????
any help will be much appreciated
thank you



Get the 600 questions book and redo the hell out of that thing. I did it last year and got 730.
Reply 6
Avatar for PhRose
PhRose
OP
2
Original post by FutureHeartSurg
Get the 600 questions book and redo the hell out of that thing. I did it last year and got 730.

wow-that's a very impressive score
have you got any advice on the QR?
Original post by PhRose
wow-that's a very impressive score
have you got any advice on the QR?


Thank you and as for the advice : same thing I said earlier- get on that 600Q book. You need to repeat the QR questions as much as you can until solving them becomes almost instinctive. They're much harder than the actual questions so once you get to the real thing it seems easy.
Reply 8
Avatar for astrodr
astrodr
3
Original post by Clive Bixby
Would you mind, if it's not too much trouble, posting the list please? D:


No problem at all :smile: Its not exhaustive but just something I drew up as I went along:

ABSTRACT REASONING
Stage 1:

•

Number

•

Size of shapes

•

Shape types

•

Characteristics (open sides, intersections, divided, enclosed regions, line type (dotted, straight), drawing without back tracking, number of right angles)

•

Colour



Stage 2:

•

Repeating patterns

•

Rotation

•

Mirror images (horizontal or vertical)

•

Direction (diagonal, top left to right etc.)




The steps to take are:

•

Identify whether the change lies within stage 1 or stage 2



Look out for shapes with two of the criteria – they will belong to neither set
Look out for at least a certain amount of shapes
Look out for a particular colour being counted differently (e.g. doubled)
Look out for shapes inside shapes
Look out for half number of sides etc. = number of shapes

Things to look out for in abstract reasoning:

•

Negatives of images

•

Number of enclosed sections

•

Number of intersections

•

Number of divisions within a shape

•

Number of shapes enclosed within a shape

•

Number of repeated shape

•

Minimum/ number of similar pairs/black and white pairs

•

Type of line enclosing/lining a shape

•

Number of a particular shape being number of total shapes

•

Number of straight/curved sides

•

Number of right angles/number of particular shape/number of shapes with right angles

•

Lines of symmetry

•

Taking pen of page/back-tracking

•

Reflections – horizontal or vertical

•

Rotations

•

Repeated shapes

•

Black and white shape numbers

•

Number of curved shapes



Process:

•

Number of shapes

•

Number of sides

•

Colorings

•

Repeated shapes

•

Right angles

•

Types of line

•

Reflections and rotations

Reply 9
Avatar for PhRose
PhRose
OP
2
Original post by astrodr
No problem at all :smile: Its not exhaustive but just something I drew up as I went along:

ABSTRACT REASONING
Stage 1:

•

Number

•

Size of shapes

•

Shape types

•

Characteristics (open sides, intersections, divided, enclosed regions, line type (dotted, straight), drawing without back tracking, number of right angles)

•

Colour



Stage 2:

•

Repeating patterns

•

Rotation

•

Mirror images (horizontal or vertical)

•

Direction (diagonal, top left to right etc.)




The steps to take are:

•

Identify whether the change lies within stage 1 or stage 2



Look out for shapes with two of the criteria – they will belong to neither set
Look out for at least a certain amount of shapes
Look out for a particular colour being counted differently (e.g. doubled)
Look out for shapes inside shapes
Look out for half number of sides etc. = number of shapes

Things to look out for in abstract reasoning:

•

Negatives of images

•

Number of enclosed sections

•

Number of intersections

•

Number of divisions within a shape

•

Number of shapes enclosed within a shape

•

Number of repeated shape

•

Minimum/ number of similar pairs/black and white pairs

•

Type of line enclosing/lining a shape

•

Number of a particular shape being number of total shapes

•

Number of straight/curved sides

•

Number of right angles/number of particular shape/number of shapes with right angles

•

Lines of symmetry

•

Taking pen of page/back-tracking

•

Reflections – horizontal or vertical

•

Rotations

•

Repeated shapes

•

Black and white shape numbers

•

Number of curved shapes



Process:

•

Number of shapes

•

Number of sides

•

Colorings

•

Repeated shapes

•

Right angles

•

Types of line

•

Reflections and rotations



thank u very much :smile:
This may be a dumb question but what is meant by an enclosed region? I can't even seem to understand the answers at the moment!
This may be a really dumb question but what is meant by an enclosed region? I can't seem to even understand the answers in my book!

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