How I'm Doing The UCAT: Tips for the UCAT
Updated: May 23, 2021
With the summer holidays started, I've now got to focus on the UCAT and I'm not enjoying it. I find it quite hard to blitz through questions for longer than 10mins. I thought a new desk chair would help me sit for comfortably- it didn't. Nevertheless, here's a list of the material I've been using.
1. 1250 UCAT Practice Questions
2. The UCAT Study Guide
3. Medify
4. Notion
Quick side note: The UCAT website has 4 mocks which are pretty useful and a few question banks- emphasis on few.
1. 1250 UCAT Practice Questions
Everyone told me to get this book; I don't think it's very good. If you want loads of questions, get Medify. The main problems with this book is the abstract reasoning and the qualitative reasoning. If you want UCAT questions for a low price, this book isn't too bad, save those sections. It contains general tips at the start of each section which are broadly helpful and yeah, it has a decent amount of questions.
My problem with this book is that the AR questions are way too hard. Using Medify and the official UCAT website has taught me that I'm not actually bad at AR, this book is just really hard. The good thing is that if you find this book easy, you'll find the actual UCAT easy. Don't be put of if you find the AR in this book hard though.
With regards to QR, there are very few questions that I struggled with doing an official practice test. It lacks questions on tax, interest and timetables. It's mostly about interpreting information.
My other problem with this is that it being book isn't very helpful. Since UCAT is an online test I think it's best to use online resources such as Medify. If you just want a couple of questions to get you familiar with the UCAT and looking for something cheap though, this book is for you.
2. The UCAT Study Guide
I bought this book because it sounded good. The marketing of this book is topnotch. It's content? Not so. 50% of the book contains a 30 day plan for studying for the UCAT. Not very helpful if you ask me. Its overview for the UCAT is pretty useful, but only if you have no idea what's going to be in it. Also, you can easily find a lot of its material from free sources. The rest of the book consists of tips for each section. Yes, you'll find a couple of good tips here and there but again, nothing you won't find on the Internet. In general, I don't recommend this book.
3. Medify
The best resource out there, in my opinion. It's basically an online question bank, and so its most like the actual exam. Plus there are a couple of mocks and you get to see what your stats are like, like which section you're worst at.
I think this is most useful for AR and QR, not to say it's not useful for the other sections but I improved the most in those sections with Medify. It is pretty pricey but they do offer discounts, scholarships etc. I definitely think it's worth the price. Although I know several people who aren't using Medify and did really well. I personally would recommend it but it's not essential.
Post exam edit:
Really my only problem with Medify is that it's VR section is a bit dodgy. Having spend almost 2 months revising with Medify, I decided to move onto some mocks from the UCAT website and realised the VR questions are slightly different to the ones on Medify. This was slightly off putting but since I only had a couple of days left until my actual exam I didn't dwell on it too much. The actual exam was more around inference rather than looking for facts in the text. So, inevitably this was the section I screwed up on :)
4. Notion
I will probably write more in depth about Notion later- it is just such a versatile tool. I use Notion for almost everything. How I used it for UCAT was writing out tips/notes on mistakes/ things to remember in the exam. It's just a really convenient way to have everything in one place.
So these are the resources I'm using. Stay tuned for specific tips and strategies for the UCAT.
Click here for that link.