Table of Content
- What is the UCAT?
- What is tested in the UCAT?
- How is the UCAT scored?
- When do I sit it?
- What is it like to Sit the UCAT?
- How to Prepare for the UCAT?
- Tips and tricks
- FAQs
What is the UCAT?
The UCAT, or the University Clinical Aptitude Test, is an online computer-based assessment designed to test your abilities across a range of different criteria. The test lasts 2 hours*, with various amounts of time being divided across 4 subsections: verbal reasoning, decision making, quantitative reasoning, and situational judgement. It was first adopted in Australia in 2019 to replace the UMAT but has been around in the UK since 2006 under its original name the UKCAT.
*Students with documented medical conditions or disabilities may apply for Access Arrangements to sit an extended version of the test.
What is the UCAT used for?
The UCAT is used for the direct entry (undergraduate) pathway into medicine and dentistry. This is generally a 5 or 6-year degree (depending on your university of choice) that accepts students straight out of high school.
The UCAT is used to help rank students who apply to each degree, alongside their ATAR and in some cases an interview. The exact requirements vary a bit between universities, but they all use a combination of these assessments with different weighting given to each component. Some universities donât require an interview, and some require an additional written application â so be sure to check the exact requirements of the universities you want to apply to on their respective websites.
What is tested in the UCAT?
As mentioned earlier, there are 4 subsections to the UCAT. In between each subsection, you will have 1 minute to read the instructions, or just take a break.
Verbal Reasoning
Verbal Reasoning is made up of 44 questions to be answered in 22 minutes. Thatâs less than 30 seconds per question, so, as with all of the UCAT, speed is of the essence.
VR is meant to â[assess] the ability to critically evaluate information presented in a written form.â You will be given several passages to skim, with a few questions to answer per passage, interpreting and inferring meaning from the text. This section will probably remind you of the NAPLAN questions, which are somewhat similar, but a lot easier.
Decision Making
Decision Making has 25 questions to be answered in 37 minutes, which is the most time youâll have to answer any UCAT question. The reason why is because it seeks to âassess the ability to make sound decisions and judgements using complex information,â so these questions are more complex and require a bit more thinking.
Quantitative Reasoning
Quantitative Reasoning has of 36 questions, which you have to answer in 26 minutes. It aims to assess âthe ability to critically evaluate information presented in a numerical form.â
Unlike Year 12 maths, you will not be using the quadratic formula, or solving for derivatives. Instead, you will be using simple arithmetic to solve problems, similar to NAPLAN! Due to time constraints, most people rely on mental maths to do the calculations. Though there is an online calculator built into the platform, it is clunky and slow. So I highly recommend working on your mental calculations. I personally used BBC Bitesize and other primary school websites to work on my mental maths.
Situational Judgement
Situational Judgement has 69 questions in 26 minutes, and seeks to measure âthe capacity to understand real-world situations and to identify critical factors and appropriate behaviour in dealing with them.â
You will be presented with potential scenarios that you could encounter as a student, doctor, or just in general life, and will have to rank how appropriate each suggested response is from "very appropriate" to "very inappropriate".
How is the UCAT scored?
The scoring is a bit complicated:
- For each section, you will get a score between 300 (the lowest possible) and 900 (the highest possible).
- Every studentâs test will be unique, but their scores are equated and balanced to ensure a standardised scaled score.
- You will get a breakdown of your scores in each section, plus a cumulative score that is the sum of the first three sections (Verbal Reasoning, Decision Making, and Quantitative Reasoning).
- The Situational Judgement is used as a standalone score that only some universities take into consideration.
This cumulative score, which will be between 900 and 2700, is the score most universities look at, with some universities placing higher or lower priority on individual sections. Online calculators can estimate the percentile each score correlates to, but these are rough estimates only.
Overall, what is deemed a âcompetitiveâ UCAT score varies each year, and is hard to pinpoint because the score is combined with ATAR and interviews.
Again, this is a very broad approximation, donât count yourself out until the offers are released. Scoring is multi-factorial, and you never know what will happen.
When do I sit it?
Students who are undertaking or have completed their final year of secondary schooling (Year 12) are eligible to sit the UCAT. The examination period runs from July to mid-August each year, and when you register, you can book to sit your exam any time within this period, at the testing location nearest to you.
As university applications occur at the end of Year 12, most people sit it during their final year of school. If you donât achieve a competitive score or donât want to add additional stress to your last year, you can take a gap year, sit the UCAT again (or for the first time), and then apply to the direct entry program for the following year.
This does not hold true for some universities in NSW, and entry requirements can be updated each year. So be sure to double-check your desired universityâs official website!!
What is it like to Sit the UCAT?
1. Registration
Once youâve decided to sit for the UCAT, you will need to register online. Bookings usually open in March and close in May, but make sure to check the exact dates of your year on the official website.
2. Day of the Exam
On the day of the exam, you will have to:
- Arrive 30 minutes before your appointment time
- Verify your photo ID
- Store all your belongings in a locker
The exam itself has a similar set-up to the test for your Learnerâs licence. Youâll be brought into a room full of desktop computers, and will follow the prompts to start the test. You will be provided with a whiteboard to do working out on (for me this âwhiteboardâ was a laminated piece of paper, a Texta, and tissues, so donât expect too much!).
3. Results
Once youâre done, your results get emailed to you within 24 hours.
How to Prepare for the UCAT?
People will claim that UCAT preparation courses are just money-making schemes designed to exploit vulnerable students. But itâs not (entirely) true. While it is an aptitude test, there is a steep learning curve to doing well.
- The exam interface is clunky, and you donât want to waste valuable time learning how to navigate it.
- If you get stuck on one question, it can ruin an entire subsection. So developing strategies to know when to skip and when to stick it out is crucial.
Getting over this learning curve is easier said than done, and can take up to a few months. It is important to note that some companies do charge eye-watering amounts of money, so I would encourage caution in these instances (as do the official UCAT consortium) since there are so many free or reasonably priced resources out there (including right here at KIS Academics) that offer everything you need to reach your maximum potential.
Official Exam Materials
Like any assessment, the most valuable resource you have is the official exam materials. In this case, that is the UCAT Consortium websiteâs official preparation material.
Anyone sitting on the UCAT should scour their website to learn everything they can from the people who wrote the test. It is free, and is the most representative source of what you will see on the real test. There are video resources, question banks, useful advice, and practice exams to help you prepare.
Other Resources
Free Resources
Other free resources that will help you along your way include the wealth of knowledge available on YouTube, free resources put out by various big companies, or a humble Google search for âUCAT adviceâ will do wonders.
Paid Courses
If you are interested in accessing courses designed to help prepare you for the UCAT (as I did in Year 12), there are certain characteristics I would look for:
- Resources that offer a well-structured approach: minimises time wasted planning what to do, or coming up with an order yourself.
- Something reasonably priced
- Look for resources from top scorers: UCAT is all about having the question types âfigured out,â and the top scorers are the best way to guarantee youâre learning from someone who has got a very solid grasp of what the exam is testing and how to answer it, over and over again.
Medify is a platform that ticks a lot of these boxes. It was originally made for the UKCAT, so has a very large question bank, and has a higher but still reasonable price. I personally didnât come close to getting through even half of the questions offered in the bank.
I encourage you to research other platforms as well to see what is on offer, and do a comparison of your own! There are also some UCAT preparation textbooks that you can check out as well, but given it is an online exam they will naturally have some limitations to them.
Advice from those who have sat the UCAT before
I also highly encourage you to reach out to people who were successful in getting into medicine/dentistry. Ask them to catch up for a coffee (your shout) to talk about their experience applying, and any tips and tricks they have to offer.
Tutoring
You could also opt to do individual tutoring that is personalised and can help guide you through mistakes, keep you accountable, answer any questions you have, and add a degree of support that is otherwise extremely lacking in your UCAT journey. KIS Academics has many top scoring Medical students who offer UCAT tutoring.
Tips and Tricks
Learn from Your Mistakes
To improve in the UCAT, you should spend a considerable amount of time analysing your mistakes, figuring out WHY you made them (misread the question, didnât understand what it was asking, made a mistake in your reasoning, rushed, etc), and coming up with a strategy to ensure you never make the same mistake twice.
A good way to do this is by keeping a âmistakes logâ that will help you target your practice toward the areas where you are making the most mistakes.
Think like an Examiner
Iâve written UCAT questions for companies in the past, and it isnât easy. There are only so many patterns you can come up with, and layers that you can add to questions to make them more challenging. If you learn to see past the scary facade of the questions, it can make them just a little bit easier. Check out how to ace the UCAT exam here.
Focus on adopting a growth mindset
There is quite a bit of variation between practice tests, so itâs important to not freak out if your improvement doesnât follow a linear growth pattern (each score higher than the last). It rarely does, but especially not in the UCAT. You learn more from your mistakes than you ever would from getting something right, and so a lower score in a practice exam simply means more to learn from!
Get into a routine
Unfortunately, a lot of the UCAT comes down to how well you can perform on the day. By following a regular sleep schedule, minimising distractions, and getting the most out of your physical and mental health, you can try to maximise the chance you perform at your best on exam day.
Lean on those around you
Unlike school, where you have plenty of teachers, classmates, and friends around you to support you through the process, the UCAT is largely an independent process. By forming study groups with your friends, you can keep each other accountable, share strategies for answering questions, and make the overall experience a whole lot more enjoyable.
Conclusion
All in all, the UCAT is a pretty overwhelming experience. It drains a lot of time from already overworked Year 12 students, and it can be challenging to get over the learning curve, making it rather discouraging to prepare for. Having a tutor, as well as a solid support system, can make a big difference.
Also, remember that there are always other pathways to getting into medicine and dentistry, so donât put too much pressure on yourself. For more useful tips and UCAT preparation advice, check out these KIS Academics article:
Manoj Arachige
Manoj Arachige
Manoj Arachige
FAQs
What is the best way to prepare for the UCAT?
Anyone sitting on the UCAT should scour their website to learn everything they can from the people who write the test. Not only is it free, but itâs also the most representative source of what you will see on the real test and will help you become familiar with the exact format that you will encounter on the day. Check out how to ace the UCAT exam here.
How are UCAT questions chosen?
There is a larger pool of questions that get used each year, which are selected and presented at random to each student to neutralise the possibility of cheating - as every studentâs test will be unique. While the questions differ between students, their scores are equated and balanced to ensure a standardised scaled score, so you will not be disadvantaged by when you chose to sit the exam.
What is the alternative pathway to Medicine that does not require the UCAT?
The main alternate pathway into medicine, the post-graduate pathway, doesnât require the UCAT. In this pathway, the UCAT is replaced by the GAMSAT, and the ATAR is replaced by your undergraduate university scores â which can be in any degree, but most people chose a health/science-related degree such as biomedicine, science, or nursing.
Need some support? Check out some of Australia's best UCAT Tutors.
Written by Cody Bellgrove who pursued a Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine (MD) â Direct Entry at Monash University.
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