UCAT/BMAT/GAMSAT difficulty for a 4A* student?

Been stressing about this for the last few nights, can someone please give me an honest answer.

For someone who got 4A* with little effort and a load of extenuating circumstances (rest of academic record is just as good), am I basically guaranteed to score well enough for interview in these as long as I put in a month or so prep?

So far looked at the bmat which seemed very easy in all sections, and ucat which was very easy in a few but decision making/verbal were challenging, although both of these were literally no prep. Typed in a few scores from Warwick and they were 95th percentile, which is higher than I’d like lol.

Hi, I did the UCAT and got in the 97th percentile. It honestly depends on how much practice you want to do and how much time you can dedicate within your prep time. I gave myself 3 months because I knew that some weeks I wouldn't be able to do much practice at all as I was also working and attending conferences, I had a really busy summer. I think I did around 14000+ questions in total by the time I wrote the UCAT. I found that online prep, e.g. Medify was really helpful as I got used to using the keyboard shortcuts and working the simple calculator, timing is so important in the UCAT exam.

Timing, knowing the shortcuts and figuring out a technique really helped me with verbal reasoning, I did drop from what I was achieving in practice but still got 700 for this section. My best section was Quantitative Reasoning- 880, knowing how to use the calculator is super important, e.g. I learnt to use the memory function which helped me a few times as I didn't have to write down and then type in long number sequences if they needed to be used for the next question.

i got 5a* and i found it hard

Thanks. When you say you did 3 months how many hours a day are you talking about? Having a hard time balancing this around work as well.

That's the thing, it wasn't the same amount of time every day, in the beginning, some days I couldn't do any significant practice but I always tried to at least do a few questions on Medify each day, other days at least an hour or 2. Then there were days where I could dedicate most of the day towards prep but this is also while dealing with other parts of my application, e.g. personal statement prep and work.

I also had shadowing and a four day conference in August, I wrote the UCAT in September. The last 2 or so weeks I managed to get time away from my project to focus on the UCAT so maybe doing 5-7 hours per day, but this is also while working on my personal statement. The last week was completely for UCAT prep, so doing mocks. But, then again I know people who only did a few weeks prep and did okay in the UCAT so it honestly depends on you and how much you want to do. I wanted to go in feeling really prepared and ready to take on the Test if that makes sense. I didn't want to risk not preparing well enough and then getting a poor score. I have a friend who came top in 3 of her 4 subjects in S6, so Advanced Highers and always got high A's and yet she struggled with the UCAT, earning low scores both times so high academic scores don't automatically mean that the UCAT will be easy.

I work part-time in a research internship so some days I could dedicate more time then others -I tried to learn theory and techniques first, e.g. common patterns in AR, common types of questions and how to answer them for DM, etc. Try to identify your strengths and weaknesses, this helped me with targeted practice. Also doing short sets of timed questions on Medify really helped me when it later came to doing full mocks and the actual thing as personally what I believe makes the UCAT difficult is the conditions and the timing.

I used a variety of resources to prepare, Medify, the Free UCAT ninja question bank, the official UCAT question bank and Mock exams, the 1250 question book (wouldn't really recommend this as it is very different from the UCAT, doesn't recreate conditions, etc. I used it as a bit of a top up for questions), I did go on a 1 day MedicPortal course which was good because it helped with my confidence and helped me guide my learning but honestly not really necessary, I also received a free e-book with questions from the course. Keep an eye out for free online webinars about UCAT and BMAT, I signed up for a Kaplan webinar. I used YouTube for advice on sections, learning how to use the memory function, etc.

When I did the Medify full mocks, I even used ear plugs and my headphones as I knew that I would have those available in the actual exam and I wanted to get used to wearing them so it wouldn't act as a further distraction- super helpful!!! Also if you have access to a computer keyboard rather then a laptop one, I would strongly recommend using it. I pretty much developed muscle memory of where things were on the keyboard without needing to look down very much and automatically placed my one hand with my fingers over the most important and commonly used key- Alt N- for next question, Alt F to flag the current question, for QR Alt c- to bring up the calculator, etc.

Well... we know that those who are predicted A*A*A* get offers at more than twice the rate of those who are predicted AAA. It is not too much of a stretch to assume that those who achieve highly in A-levels also achieve highly in the entry tests.

Having said that, these are tests taken by pretty much only AAA+ students, so standards will be high and I wouldn't assume anything.

One month's prep is plenty.

The 2nd paragraph is this part which worries me. And thanks, good to know a month prep is enough.

My BMAT and UCAT scores were both very high this year (in the top 1% for UCAT, not too sure about BMAT) and I still find getting A*s a struggle without lots of revision, so you should do well if you prepare for them. Also which subjects did you get your A*s in because some of them, such as further maths correlate highly with admissions test scores.

It was mathsy subjects (maths, f maths, Phys, computer sci), and congrats on your scores!

Well done on 4 A*s, do you know which unis you're going to apply to?

It was mathsy subjects (maths, f maths, Phys, computer sci), and congrats on your scores!