UKCAT for 2017 Entry to UK

Cool, thanks Jess

no problem, where are you planning to apply?

Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and St Andrews. You?

Newcastle both a100 and a101, Warwick and Leicester i think

Im desperate to get in to Glasgow but their UKCAT requirement is huge! But I want to stay in Scotland. My friend from the year above me is starting at Warwick this year!

all the unis im applying too have high ukcat newcastle this year was 700 and 743 and warwicks will be in 700s no doubt. what did your friend get? they havent released their cut off for 2017 yet. i applied for 2017 entry but my ukcat wasnt high enough i got 643 average

Can I ask both of you about your technique is for this year after doing the UKCAT last year? Are you concentrating on the parts that you did worse on last year? I only got 600 on verbal reasoning, so I'm trying to do as much practice on that as I can because I know Warwick uses that section to decide on interviews etc. I got 710 on abstract reasoning and 720 on quantative reasoning. So I'm hoping if I just concentrate on the new section and verbal, and just do a bit of the other two (situational judgement I'll just spend a day on) and hope it wasn't a fluke last year. Uhh! I'm already thinking I haven't got enough time to brush up on it all. Are you two just concentrating on your hardest sections, or just practicing all of it again equally?

Can I ask both of you about your technique is for this year after doing the UKCAT last year? Are you concentrating on the parts that you did worse on last year? I only got 600 on verbal reasoning, so I'm trying to do as much practice on that as I can because I know Warwick uses that section to decide on interviews etc. I got 710 on abstract reasoning and 720 on quantative reasoning. So I'm hoping if I just concentrate on the new section and verbal, and just do a bit of the other two (situational judgement I'll just spend a day on) and hope it wasn't a fluke last year. Uhh! I'm already thinking I haven't got enough time to brush up on it all. Are you two just concentrating on your hardest sections, or just practicing all of it again equally?

Hi there :-) For what it's worth, I think focusing most on your weaknesses is definitely a sensible thing to do (though obviously don't completely neglect the other sections!). Many students find VR to be the hardest section, especially in terms of the time pressure.

Is there a particular aspect of VR that you struggle with? Do you have a specific technique for tackling VR questions because in our experience of helping students, a consistent and time-efficient algorithmic technique can drastically improve your score. Feel free to ask on here for specific VR advice or checkout our website UKCAT Ninja for lots of practice questions and technique tips :-)

https://ukcat.ninja/

Best,

Alex, 4th year UCL medic
6med

hi well firstly i concentrated on the new section but i quite like it and seem to do quite well. in my actual ukcat last year i got 610 VR, 610 AR and 710 QR, during practice AR was always my best so i didnt concentrate on that enough really so will do more of that, and i need to keep practising my timing for QR, pie charts came up last year and i hadnt seen one question in books or medify so i flunked on those questions but an extra 4 right answers could have went a different way but nevermind ahah, just trying to be all rounded i think. and just practice and practice. but overall i would say equally.
where are you applying and where did you apply last year?

I'm definitely practicing a lot! I think I'll start on the other two sections next week, I'm worried that QR might let me down this year, I'm sure it was just good luck last year because my maths isn't that great! I applied to Warwick (where I really want to go), Newcastle and because of various reasons I could only apply to queen Mary's and barts, so I did even though I didn't have a chance. This year I'm not sure. Definitely Warwick, but not Newcastle. I'll have to have to wait and see what my ukcat score is and then I'll have a look where's most likely to accept me. Where are you applying? Are you just going for ukcat unis?

My VR technique is pretty bad! Last year I started off quickly skimming the passage before looking at the questions. Now I've realised that's really not the best way to approach it! Now I read the question and find a key word from the answers. Then I work through them one by one. Even then I struggle. I also keep getting confused and misreading the questions and finding something that's true instead of false etc, but that's just in my panic I think. I'm fine with the true and false ones, it's the ones that have sentences for each possible answer, it just takes me forever!

Hi all - I'm doing the UKCAT for the first time at the beginning of July. Doing about 2 hours a day at the moment (I work full time so I have to do it before and after work). I'm using Medify and the ISC1250Q's book.

One bit I'm particularly worried about is the QR - I can comfortably get 100% when it's untimed in all the questions I've tried, but when I add in the timing I'll be lucky to get 50% of them - throw in some really hard questions and i'll be even lower! Has anyone got any helpful tips about strategy, or is it just practice practice practice?

Hi all - I'm doing the UKCAT for the first time at the beginning of July. Doing about 2 hours a day at the moment (I work full time so I have to do it before and after work). I'm using Medify and the ISC1250Q's book.

One bit I'm particularly worried about is the QR - I can comfortably get 100% when it's untimed in all the questions I've tried, but when I add in the timing I'll be lucky to get 50% of them - throw in some really hard questions and i'll be even lower! Has anyone got any helpful tips about strategy, or is it just practice practice practice?

Hi all - I'm doing the UKCAT for the first time at the beginning of July. Doing about 2 hours a day at the moment (I work full time so I have to do it before and after work). I'm using Medify and the ISC1250Q's book.

One bit I'm particularly worried about is the QR - I can comfortably get 100% when it's untimed in all the questions I've tried, but when I add in the timing I'll be lucky to get 50% of them - throw in some really hard questions and i'll be even lower! Has anyone got any helpful tips about strategy, or is it just practice practice practice?

just practice, its the hardest section for timing in the ukcat, i started by just trying to do it as fast as i can and time myself before proper timed because it gets stressful. things like a question with a table theres often paragraph of text at the top which often doesnt need to be read just a quick skim read to see if theres any information. i then look at the information quickly sort of the headings of the tables or axis on a graph so when you read the question i know where to look. ive used bbc bitesize in the past to make sure i can do the maths quickly like percentage change, pie charts etc so when you read the question you know how to do it in a few seconds rather than trying to work out what to do

I agree with what JessScott, practice first until your confident before you do it timed. Make sure you know how to do simple equations, I used BBC bitesize as well for things that I haven't done for ages. I find the hardest thing with QR is the fact that they write things in a way that sounds confusing but it's actually easy. Also changing things like measurement in the answer. So you'll work it out in meters, but they ask for it in centimetres. Definitely practice and don't be afraid to mark any answer and flag it and move on if you don't think you'll manage it in a reasonable amount of time. I think the first question that I got in the actual exam I couldn't do and I felt a bit panicked because i hasn't even started properly I was running out of time towards the end, but my last couple of questions were so easy I didn't even need to calculate anything. If I spent too long at the beginning I wouldn't have got the easier marks. So don't be put off if you can't do some questions