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UKCAT help!!

lucieprior2001

What’s the best way to improve in the UKCAT because I’m average on it and I really need to get better in the next 3 months. Please has any body got any tips, advice or thing that worked for them, that could help me ?? :smile:

Reply 1

jsg9

Pick up a copy of the ISC medical UKAT 1250 practice questions, read through all of the advice and tips in there but most importantly just bash out the questions over and over again. I never paid for any online subscription type things to help with mine but if you have the money to do so it can’t hurt, I’ve heard good things about Kaplan. There’s lots of tips on YouTube by lots of different people and companies, which are free of course. The main thing is practice, over and over again. Where I started compared to where I finished was mostly just by quickly reading over tips, remembering things like steps to take in the abstract reasoning and how to approach questions and then just doing them. This will also help you identify your weak areas. In the end I got a fairly respectable score and Band 1, which I’m sure could have been improved with even more practice - especially at abstract reasoning. Good luck with your UKCAT.

Reply 2

lucieprior2001

Thank you so much! This was very helpful :smile:

Reply 3

jsg9

Original post by lucieprior2001

Thank you so much! This was very helpful :smile:

No problem, feel free to PM if you have any more questions :smile:

Reply 4

lucieprior2001

I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks :smile:

Reply 5

The Medic Portal

Original post by lucieprior2001

Hi there!

The best way to practise for the UKCAT is to complete practice questions online - our UKCAT Question Bank has thousands of questions, detailed answer explanations and is also completely FREE!

We also have a range of resources on UKCAT tips and preparation which you might find useful:

- UKCAT Guide
- UKCAT Preparation
- UKCAT Verbal Reasoning
- UKCAT Abstract Reasoning
- UKCAT Quantitative Reasoning
- UKCAT Decision Making
- UKCAT Situational Judgement

Hope this helps! :smile:

The Medic Portal

Reply 6

Im285

Original post by lucieprior2001

Hey!

First off, I just wanna say that 3 months is plenty of time to improve so don’t worry! I’ve sat the UKCAT twice (in 2016 & in 2017 cos I reapplied) and for me, I felt that the main difference in my UKCAT averages between the 2 years (so basically the difference between a 600 & 700 score) was purchasing the Medify & Kaplan self-study online courses.

I cannot stress how much I recommend you purchase the Medify online course, if you haven’t already. Personally, I felt that, out of all the resources I used, it reflected the difficulty of the UKCAT most closely (but it still wasn’t exactly representative of it). And it’s definitely worth the money (about £40/£45 for 2 months). I felt that, overall, the VR section in Medify was slightly easier than in the actual UKCAT, the QR harder, the DM slightly harder and the AR easier than the actual UKCAT (obviously it depends on which section you're stronger in and the questions you get on the day). I'd strongly advise that, if you choose to purchase Medify, you practice questions using the time-limits as timing is key in getting a good UKCAT score.

Personally I believe that the Kaplan self-study online was NOT worth the money. The mocks were completely unrepresentative of the difficulty of the questions (that I got anyway). I found the Kaplan QR and DM sections WAY harder than they actually were on the day. So for this reason, I personally wouldn't recommend that you use this as an accurate representation of the UKCAT. While the extra practice from the 6 Kaplan mocks was extremely beneficial in terms of practicing how it was gonna be like on the actual day, I felt that the mocks were just insanely hard and that it actually lowered my morale more than anything. Perhaps you could buy the 2017 Kaplan Book from eBay instead (since it contains some super helpful tips that may help you to boost your average), but it’s entirely up to you.

I know some people manage to achieve a solid UKCAT score by revising solely from the ISC 1250 Questions Book but, personally, I wouldn’t recommend it for the main basis of your revision. I found it to be a poor representation of the actual UKCAT, particularly of the QR section since it was insanely hard!

**ADVICE:
• Learn the keyboard shortcuts (alt + c for calculator, alt + p for previous question, alt + n for next question, alt + f to flag the current question). They may take you some getting used to but they will save you valuable time on the day!
• I found that the main difference between my UKCAT score in 2016 and 2017 was that I learned when to just guess an answer & move on. It's better to guess a few questions that you're likely to get wrong anyway and maximise marks on questions you can answer quickly. Flag and move on! It's the best advice I can give.

Best of luck! 😊