Help UCAT + Medicine

Hello,

I am resitting my A-Level Chemistry AQA in June 2025. I would like to ask, since I intend to apply for medicine, how I should structure my UCAT revision. I am a private candidate, and so I have lots of time to myself for revision, and I do revise everyday - it’s something i enjoy.

I have purchased Medify for UCAT, and I am unsure about:

- how to use it
- when to do the full mocks
- when to do the mini section mocks
- not sure when to do timed practice
- when not to do timed practice and if i was to do timed practice what option is the best in terms of how many question sets and time I chose.
- I also am not sure when to incorporate the actual UCAT questions provided by UCAT themselves.
- I am unsure if I should even revise the UCAT in the following months: May and June. June is the month of chemistry exams on the 10th, 16th,20th. May is the month before where I feel like I should dial in on Chemistry instead. Overall I am unsure if July, August, September will suffice for UCAT preparation as I have failed terribly at it before

I will sit my UCAT at the end of September to give me plenty time.

Other than that, I would like to ask what UCAT score I should aim for as I have done it in the past and done terrible on the UCAT (2400/3600 and B2). Since there has been the removal of AR, resulting in a total of 2700 marks available I am unsure of what score to aim for.

I know the score I aim for is dependant on the universities I chose to apply to for medicine. On my first alevel sitting i got A for biology, B for English literature, and C for Chemistry. I am resitting Chemistry only aiming for A minimum. Due to the resit I am so lost in terms of what university I would have a chance to apply for, since most of them have rules regarding resits, such as a minimum grade you need on a first sitting to be able to apply with a resit, or a minimum grade on the latest sitting to apply, or even a policy involving both. The university I match best is with is the BM6 Extended 6 year Medicine Course at University of Southampton, as I do meet the specific criteria.

If you do have any suggestion for Medicine courses I would match with please do let me know - even if the course is a gateway to medicine, or extended medicine degree.

I do know this post is a lot - sorry :smile:

(edited 3 weeks ago)

Reply 1

TSR Hippocrates

Hey there, thanks for posting a question in the Medicine forum. :biggrin:

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Reply 2

18sphillips

Original post by MilanFilo

Hello,
I am resitting my A-Level Chemistry AQA in June 2025. I would like to ask, since I intend to apply for medicine, how I should structure my UCAT revision. I am a private candidate, and so I have lots of time to myself for revision, and I do revise everyday - it’s something i enjoy.
I have purchased Medify for UCAT, and I am unsure about:
- how to use it
- when to do the full mocks
- when to do the mini section mocks
- not sure when to do timed practice
- when not to do timed practice and if i was to do timed practice what option is the best in terms of how many question sets and time I chose.
- I also am not sure when to incorporate the actual UCAT questions provided by UCAT themselves.
- I am unsure if I should even revise the UCAT in the following months: May and June. June is the month of chemistry exams on the 10th, 16th,20th. May is the month before where I feel like I should dial in on Chemistry instead. Overall I am unsure if July, August, September will suffice for UCAT preparation as I have failed terribly at it before
I will sit my UCAT at the end of September to give me plenty time.
Other than that, I would like to ask what UCAT score I should aim for as I have done it in the past and done terrible on the UCAT (2400/3600 and B2). Since there has been the removal of AR, resulting in a total of 2700 marks available I am unsure of what score to aim for.
I know the score I aim for is dependant on the universities I chose to apply to for medicine. On my first alevel sitting i got A for biology, B for English literature, and C for Chemistry. I am resitting Chemistry only aiming for A minimum. Due to the resit I am so lost in terms of what university I would have a chance to apply for, since most of them have rules regarding resits, such as a minimum grade you need on a first sitting to be able to apply with a resit, or a minimum grade on the latest sitting to apply, or even a policy involving both. The university I match best is with is the BM6 Extended 6 year Medicine Course at University of Southampton, as I do meet the specific criteria.
If you do have any suggestion for Medicine courses I would match with please do let me know - even if the course is a gateway to medicine, or extended medicine degree.
I do know this post is a lot - sorry :smile:

Hii, I sat the ucat last year.
definitely prioritise your chemistry. You'll have plenty of time for ucat after. Intense practice is much better than doing a little bit less often in this particular case and 3 months is more than enough time to get really good at the ucat.
start with untimed practice of each section until you are getting most questions right.
around 6 weeks before your ucat, start full mocks and mini mocks of your weekest sections.
around 4 weeks before, try and aim for 2 or maybe 3 (if you're feeling particularly productive) mocks a day so you're literally dreaming of ucat questions.
if you want to do timed practice, I would do this after a couple weeks of untimed practice and use them as extra mini mocks, so do the same number of questions as there would be in that section in the ucat.
Use the full ucat mocks in the week leading up to the exam.

Also, you'll probs know this if you've used medify before, but the questions are generally harder than the real thing and the scaled scores are really harsh - I liked to use online raw score converters to make myself feel better about my scores - so don't feel put off if you get really low scores, especially at the start.