UKCAT for 2017 Entry to UK

Found it the same as the practice questions, really. The situational judgement was a bit confusing though. Are you sitting for yours soon?

In set B, the number of right angles is always equal to the number of triangles.
Can't seem to find the rule of Set A at the moment What is it?

It is one of the master class questions from How To Master The UKCAT. I only have a copy of AR without answers

Not bad, that reminds me I should really do a bit of SJT, been neglecting it, in a couple weeks

Ah, I just got it!

Set A : No. of acute angles (in triangles) = No. of other shapes.

Thank you so much!!

Depends which section you look at.

1 - You would expect the official UKCAT website to accurately reflect the difficulty of the exam. Unsurprisingly it is not far off, though perhaps slightly harder. However This is the case when you look at the average difficulty of questions. Some questions at the exam are much easier and others are much harder.

I can't comment on Kaplan because I haven't used them, but here is my verdict on the two that I have used: ISC 1000Q and Medify.

Verbal reasoning
Quite hard at the exam, a tad harder than the official site. I found ISC 1000Q was the closest to the exam. Medify was easier in many ways.

Abstract reasoning
The 1000Q book is harder than the exam but good prep as it helps you think about the various combinations. Medify in line with the exam, but it does not have the two new types of questions if my memory serves me well.

Quantitative reasoning
In the 1000q book, the first half of the questions are in line with the standard exam difficulty, the second half in line with the harder/longer questions asked at the exam. I would suggest you set yourself a time limit of 50 seconds for those. But once you've done them you will find the exam a piece of cake. Medify questions slightly more on the easier side of the exam.

SJT
Both ISC1000 and Medify pretty much in line with the exam.

I think overall it is probably good to use the ISC book for technique and Medify for practice closer to the exam.

Did my UKCAT today and thought I could give some tips:

VR: 720
QR: 890
AR: 680
SJT: Band 2

Average: 763 Total: 2290

Resources- Kaplan 2 day course and online tests, Medify and the ISC 1000 questions book (3 weeks preparation in total)

Overall I thought that Kaplan and Medify were both very useful and they are essentially equal in terms of the difficulty of questions (Kaplan has more practice tests). I personally liked the weekend course, as the class was relatively small and I learnt all my techniques from there and used the online tests to put these into practice. Make sure to do as much on-screen practice as you can to simulate the exam conditions. I did not like the 1000 questions book as the difficulty is too hard to do in timed conditions and would only recommend using this for untimed practice at the start of preparation.

VR- The questions on Medify and Kaplan were the same difficulty as the exam. I had a lot of statement questions with few true/false. My technique was to never read the full text and instead just scan for the information required from the question but I know some people skim read the whole text first. Just make sure to stick with your technique and don’t change between questions.

QR- The questions in the exam were easier than both Kaplan and Medify. I still had to guess some of the obviously harder questions, but the majority were doable in 30 seconds or under each. Make sure to practice with the onscreen calculator and number pad on the keyboard. Don't always go to the calculator straight away, there were answers that could be obtained through smartly rounding numbers in your head to get approximations that were close to the final answer.

AR- The questions on Medify and Kaplan were slightly harder than the exam. I found some of the patterns easily whereas others I just guessed. Rule of thumb for me was is if I didn’t get the pattern in 20 seconds, just guess and move on as I didn't want to lose time on other patterns that I could have identified later on. The only way you can get better at this is to keep practicing and you will get better at identifying distinguishing features of sets.

SJT- Same difficulty as Medify and Kaplan. Similar scenarios come up in preparation so just learn the key principles for the general scenarios.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Hi,
I am really struggling with VR because of the timing. Do you guys have any useful strategy how to tackle the questions? I don't know if I should read the passage first and try to understand it or only look for keywords. Unfortunately I am a really slow reader and there is not much I can do about it since English is not my first language and skim-reading with good comprehension is very difficult to me
Please help

I'm finding that with medify there isn't enough questions for me to do more than 1.5 hours or so a day for 2 weeks. How do people do 3-4 hours a day?

Revised a ridiculous amount. I did 6 weeks of revision probably averaging 4-5 hours a day. Mocks showed progression started averaging just below 600 and worked my way up to 710 on the best mock.

On the day:
VR 520
QR 650
AR 670
SJ band 1
Average of 613

VR I got ~12:32 of tfc:statements.
The statements were 2-3 lines long and very difficult to understand. And the text was very long for most of the sets. I'd say much more difficult than all the resources I used.

QR must've been the worst set of questions ever given to anyone because I udually did quite well in this. Nearly every question was a 2 step or more calculation. The difficulty was closer to the UKCAT1000 book than medify.

AR was my strongest section in revision. I always got 700+ in the mocks. I have about 10 type 2s, 5 type 4's, and the remaining were type 1. Difficulty was similar to ICS UKCAT1000.

SJ was almost identical to what is seen on medify however in mocks I never got band one.

I revised using ICS' UKCAT1000, Kaplan's mastering the ukcat and medify.

I wanted to apply to GEM seeing as I'm on a solid first in a science degree, may consider doing the gamsat because I don't believe this is a true reflection of my aptitude.

What is part of my prep is GCSE maths revision (revising the maths required for the QR) as well as reading articles and books etc. to get my VR up...

I also have other resources such as the updated 600Q book. UKCAT site also has practice questions.

I see your point but I don't really agree (other than there's no need for courses). Everyone is different, for some it takes like two seconds to get the hang of each section, for others it takes much longer. The UKCAT has a difficulty level that is unique to each individual. If someone is struggling to get the hang of it, I don't see why an extra week or two is not going to help. As you said, the effectiveness is the most important factor but without understanding it's hard to progress onto that stage. I started six weeks in advance (doing a little practice here and there) and I can tell you that without those extra weeks I wouldn't be in the position I am now

I would agree with you!
I never actually said that more practise wouldn't help, I was just saying that it wasn't always necessary, and some people are panicking and starting to (seemingly) do too much. There are several people saying that it is very much possible to peak before your exam if you do too much (not sure how I feel about this, but ah well).

I'm really sorry that my intentions weren't more clear (don't mean to make excuses, but I was very tired when I wrote this ) But I was hoping to help people relax about it a bit, so they could stop comparing themselves to others, because as you said, the UKCAT's difficulty is very personal, and everyone will have a different experience with it. If you have a different experience, it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong.

I guess if someone is struggling to get the hang of it, that's perfectly normal. As you said, it can take different amounts of time for people to do so, and more practise will always help you to get the hang of it, but if you do so much practise, and you don't improve, it may be a better idea to start a new approach - that's why this thread is so good, you can ask questions when you're struggling, and find new approaches to the test, which is absolutely wonderful, the only downside, is that it's so easy to compare yourself to others on here, and as I said, the demographic of TSR is somewhat select, and you do find some of the top individuals on here.

Sorry if I was repeating myself lots, still quite tired, but I hope I cleared things up

Oh it's fine, seems I got the wrong end of the stick as all!