UKCAT Mock: UKCAT Vs. Medify

I’m not completely sure but it’s never certain how they mark SJT, so it’s best to take things with a grain of salt. As long as you’re getting band 1/2 overall, don’t worry too much. Realistically you would want to aim to get about 75% correct which should hopefully be the boundary between band 1 and 2. I hope this helps!

The reasoning behind the correct answers is based on the opinions of a panel of experts. The reasoning behind their answers is derived largely from the GMC’s ‘Good Medical Practice’. If you usually answer in accordance with the values in ‘Good Medical Practice’, then you’ll usually be right, so it’s probs a good idea to give it a read if you haven’t already.

UKCAT sample SJT reasoning is probs more accurate, just because it’s produced via the same method as the actual questions are produced.

thanks so much for your help! Ive never gotten below band 2 and have been doing quite well on my recent mocks so hopefully all goes well as I have my UKCAT tomorrow!

No problem, how did it go? ❤️

Great! I got an average of 752.5 and band 1! I was so happy cause I didn't think SJ was going that well during the exam but obviously it did!

Aww well done that is an amazing score, in fact that's my goal! Do you mind giving any tips that helped you?

Thanks so much! I was delighted with myself.

So firstly Im sure you know for VR to read the question first and then scan the text. What I also did was I used to answer every T/F/CT question and flag and mark a question for all of the other time consuming ones, however not going over the time on the T/F/CT. At the end of answering all the q's I would have a good bit of time left over obviously as I had only attempted to answer some, so then I went back and did all of my flagged harder q's. This made sure that every single question had an answer marked for it and I also got to properly attempt the easier questions. Once I started doing this my results in my medify mocks definitely changed and I would quite frequently get 800 in VR. Most of the time I would never get to go back to all of my flagged questions, but I still felt that doing this helped me a lot as I would often still get marks for questions I had just guessed. However I didn't do as well in my real exam as I had been doing in my mocks and I think this was because the T/F/CT questions were harder as the answers were not as simple and obvious as medifys ones, so just beware of this.

Then for DM, I would always write down information in a notepad as this made everything much clearer for me and I could pick out exactly the answer I needed. I found this particularly useful for the questions where they give you parts of information and you have to piece together everything to get the final answer e.g. Person A lives in the red house and likes dogs, Person B doesn't like fish, where does person C live? etc.For the DM questions that were kind of opinionated and you had to find the best answer, I would look for the ones that would relate to all parts of the question, and then I would choose the one which was the most factual. Make sure for these types that it refers to everything the question says as otherwise it is not related. People say that drawing Venn diagrams helps for syllogisms but I didn't find this particularly useful. Also try to use basic mental maths skills in DM as it definitely saves you time.

QR I tend to be quite good at because I can see what you have to do straight away and my mental maths are quite good so I don't have to do all the questions, so I'm not sure I have too many tips for this section. However, if you can tell a question will be time consuming don't even attempt it just mark an answer flag it and move on ( these are for questions like how many hours in total were all the box office movies? and theres about 20 of them there). Then if you don't get an answer and want to make an educated guess, for lots of questions that can trick people out (even if they knew how to do the question), there will be 2 answers with about one decimal point in between them, and its a good guess to choose one of these. Even for ones without a decimal point between them, ones that are just a single number in the difference can trick people too. One of these number is almost always right in my opinion, and you have to decide whether its the bigger or smaller one based on the situation. For example, if asked " Truck B can carry x kilo's in 4 trips, if Truck A has a volume of y, how many trips will it take them to carry x kilo's" So for this question, a lot of the times the answer will be a decimal for example 5.3, and obviously you can't carry something 5.3 times so the answer must be a whole number and must be rounded up regardless if its closer to the number beneath it. So in that circumstance, you would know that of the two closest answers, the higher one would be right.

AR I really struggled with initially, but if you practice them and write down all of the different patterns you come across ( besides the completely obvious ones if you understand therm) and regularly read through these, and practice a ton of q's, you should be able to begin to pick up on recurring patterns. Another tip is if you see a pattern, which you know is the most basic part of the more elaborate pattern, if you are struggling to pick up on the rest of the pattern quickly, then just go with what you see. For example, in my exam I had a complex pattern but I was able to deduce that there were squares in set A which affected something else I couldn't tell, and arrows in Set B doing the same job. Of course there was much more to the pattern than this, but at least by going with this and not wasting time, I was able to give my answer a greater chance of being right. And as you know, look for the simplest box first and see what would work for this box and other boxes in the set. What also helps is comparing the simplest box from one set to the simplest box in the other set, as very often the patterns are an inverse of each other.

And finally SJ. To be honest, I found this quite hard in a lot of the questions. I was never ever stuck for time, or even felt that my extra time helped me get the right answers. I think for this you just have to think what they would have as the right answer rather than what you would have. Something that helped me asses each situation was the acronym CHECC-APE which stands for confidentiality, honesty,empathy,communication,conduction,autonomy of patient and equity. These are important things noted in good medical practice( which I would recommend reading also) to take into account for each situation.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

Thanks so much! I was delighted with myself.

So firstly Im sure you know for VR to read the question first and then scan the text. What I also did was I used to answer every T/F/CT question and flag and mark a question for all of the other time consuming ones, however not going over the time on the T/F/CT. At the end of answering all the q's I would have a good bit of time left over obviously as I had only attempted to answer some, so then I went back and did all of my flagged harder q's. This made sure that every single question had an answer marked for it and I also got to properly attempt the easier questions. Once I started doing this my results in my medify mocks definitely changed and I would quite frequently get 800 in VR. Most of the time I would never get to go back to all of my flagged questions, but I still felt that doing this helped me a lot as I would often still get marks for questions I had just guessed. However I didn't do as well in my real exam as I had been doing in my mocks and I think this was because the T/F/CT questions were harder as the answers were not as simple and obvious as medifys ones, so just beware of this.

Then for DM, I would always write down information in a notepad as this made everything much clearer for me and I could pick out exactly the answer I needed. I found this particularly useful for the questions where they give you parts of information and you have to piece together everything to get the final answer e.g. Person A lives in the red house and likes dogs, Person B doesn't like fish, where does person C live? etc.For the DM questions that were kind of opinionated and you had to find the best answer, I would look for the ones that would relate to all parts of the question, and then I would choose the one which was the most factual. Make sure for these types that it refers to everything the question says as otherwise it is not related. People say that drawing Venn diagrams helps for syllogisms but I didn't find this particularly useful. Also try to use basic mental maths skills in DM as it definitely saves you time.

QR I tend to be quite good at because I can see what you have to do straight away and my mental maths are quite good so I don't have to do all the questions, so I'm not sure I have too many tips for this section. However, if you can tell a question will be time consuming don't even attempt it just mark an answer flag it and move on ( these are for questions like how many hours in total were all the box office movies? and theres about 20 of them there). Then if you don't get an answer and want to make an educated guess, for lots of questions that can trick people out (even if they knew how to do the question), there will be 2 answers with about one decimal point in between them, and its a good guess to choose one of these. Even for ones without a decimal point between them, ones that are just a single number in the difference can trick people too. One of these number is almost always right in my opinion, and you have to decide whether its the bigger or smaller one based on the situation. For example, if asked " Truck B can carry x kilo's in 4 trips, if Truck A has a volume of y, how many trips will it take them to carry x kilo's" So for this question, a lot of the times the answer will be a decimal for example 5.3, and obviously you can't carry something 5.3 times so the answer must be a whole number and must be rounded up regardless if its closer to the number beneath it. So in that circumstance, you would know that of the two closest answers, the higher one would be right.

AR I really struggled with initially, but if you practice them and write down all of the different patterns you come across ( besides the completely obvious ones if you understand therm) and regularly read through these, and practice a ton of q's, you should be able to begin to pick up on recurring patterns. Another tip is if you see a pattern, which you know is the most basic part of the more elaborate pattern, if you are struggling to pick up on the rest of the pattern quickly, then just go with what you see. For example, in my exam I had a complex pattern but I was able to deduce that there were squares in set A which affected something else I couldn't tell, and arrows in Set B doing the same job. Of course there was much more to the pattern than this, but at least by going with this and not wasting time, I was able to give my answer a greater chance of being right. And as you know, look for the simplest box first and see what would work for this box and other boxes in the set. What also helps is comparing the simplest box from one set to the simplest box in the other set, as very often the patterns are an inverse of each other.

And finally SJ. To be honest, I found this quite hard in a lot of the questions. I was never ever stuck for time, or even felt that my extra time helped me get the right answers. I think for this you just have to think what they would have as the right answer rather than what you would have. Something that helped me asses each situation was the acronym CHECC-APE which stands for confidentiality, honesty,empathy,communication,conduction,autonomy of patient and equity. These are important things noted in good medical practice( which I would recommend reading also) to take into account for each situation.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

You did sooo well. What did you get in each section if you don't mind me asking?

Oh my god. I honestly don’t have words, thank you so so much. You took so much time to write this and I appreciate it, not many people would do that! I am really thankful and I hope your application goes well, you deserve to get in ❤️ thanks so much, I’ll keep your tips in mind in fact a few I hadn’t even thought about so that’s really great. Thank you again!!! 😃

No worries at all! Im so relieved to have it over and anything that I can do to help others get through this stressful situation I will! You're so kind! I hope you get on incredibly in your exam, let me know how it goes. And I'm not sure my tips will work for everyone but try them out in a mock or two and see if you notice any difference!

I have completed all 7 UKCAT mock exams on Medify with quite variable results (low: 587.5, high: 785: avg: 697) Any last minute tips on how to perform on exam day? i have the real exam tomorrow! Do people tend to score more highly in the actual exam than in the Medify mocks? I need to score 750+ as I am set on graduate medicine

I have completed all 7 UKCAT mock exams on Medify with quite variable results (low: 587.5, high: 785: avg: 697) Any last minute tips on how to perform on exam day? i have the real exam tomorrow! Do people tend to score more highly in the actual exam than in the Medify mocks? I need to score 750+ as I am set on graduate medicine

My first few Medify exams were lower aswell but then my last few were higher than what I achieved. I would say that you do have good chance of getting 750+ if you have achieved higher than that in your medify exams, however its unlikely that people do swell in the actual exam as in their best medify mocks due to stress and other reasons. For exam day though what is good to do is to get your brain in the zone before the exam by doing some puzzles or scan reading the newspaper before the exam. I just did a sudoku puzzle to get my brain warmed up. And then during the exam once you have finished a section just completely forget it and focus on the section in front of you. Whether you feel you have done really well or really badly in a section just forget about it until after the exam because otherwise you will be distracted. Also what I did during the instructions of my exam was I wrote down the words of my acronyms for AR and SJ,especially I found it useful for SJ as after I had read the situation and the question I would analyse with my words and I got a better idea of what was the best answer. Hope this helps and best of luck, sorry I don't have any more last minute tips!

My first few Medify exams were lower aswell but then my last few were higher than what I achieved. I would say that you do have good chance of getting 750+ if you have achieved higher than that in your medify exams, however its unlikely that people do swell in the actual exam as in their best medify mocks due to stress and other reasons. For exam day though what is good to do is to get your brain in the zone before the exam by doing some puzzles or scan reading the newspaper before the exam. I just did a sudoku puzzle to get my brain warmed up. And then during the exam once you have finished a section just completely forget it and focus on the section in front of you. Whether you feel you have done really well or really badly in a section just forget about it until after the exam because otherwise you will be distracted. Also what I did during the instructions of my exam was I wrote down the words of my acronyms for AR and SJ,especially I found it useful for SJ as after I had read the situation and the question I would analyse with my words and I got a better idea of what was the best answer. Hope this helps and best of luck, sorry I don't have any more last minute tips!