The UKCAT (or UCAT as it is now called!) can be such a scary thought for aspiring medical students – it’s likely to be different to any exam you have ever done before, and many unviersities put such a strong weighting on it. If you are planning to do the UCAT this year or in the future, I hope some of these tips will be helpful for you. Of course, everyone is different and prefers different methods but this is just based from my personal experience!
1. When should I book the test for? I’m pretty sure the test dates are between the start of July and October, so that’s a pretty big window that you have to take the exam. I did mine at the beginning of September, just before going back to sixth form and I found that this worked really well. I wanted to enjoy my summer without having to think about the UCAT, but I also didn’t want to have to be preparing, and worrying, about the exam when I was beginning year 13. I gave myself about 3 weeks to prepare for the exam beforehand, just doing a bit each day, and that worked quite well. 2. How much preparation do I need? This is such a difficult question – I remember being so unsure if I was doing enough work, and if the work that I was doing was actually going to pay off. As I said earlier, I gave myself about 3 weeks before the exam and aimed to do a bit each day – some days I would do totally nothing, and other days I’d do a few hours. I think the most important thing is to get used to the format – doing online quizzes helped me understand the timings and the types of questions, which really helped in the real thing. The aim of the UCAT is to assess different skills that are vital in the world of medicine, but I think it's more of a case of strengthening skills you already have, rather than learning them from scratch. 3. Which resources should I use? My 2 favourite resources to prepare for the UKCAT were The Medic Portal (free) and Medify (paid- I think it was £30 last year). I did also buy the ISC Medical book but I only really used this for situational judgement questions. The other questions were quite useful but I found the online tests a lot more helpful as the real exam will be on a computer. The Medic Portal had a bank of free questions, and also had different pages on situational judgement scenarios. Medify was very similar but (as far as I remember!) you could do the exams in exam conditions. There were mock papers that you could do in a set amount of time and get a specific score. 4. How do I prepare for situational judgement? Situational judgement was probably my favourite section of the test and I found it the best to prepare for. I found both The Medic Portal and Medify really useful for situational judgement – the question types were very similar to the real exam and similar scenarios would pop up multiple times. Many of the scenarios involve yourself as a medical student or a foundation doctor, so you can relate to the situation more. I found the ISC Medical Book quite useful for this too. Also, YouTube videos aimed at university interview preparation can help with the SJT! It’s basically assessing decision making and good morals, which are skills that will also be assessed at interviews. 5. How do I know if my score is good? I don’t think the UCAT averages come out until after you have to have applied to universities, which can make it a bit tricky to compare your score. However, the averages are often similar from year to year, which means you can have a rough estimate of how well you performed. Looking at The Medic Portal website, last years average score was 2485 (average 621) and in 2017 it was 2540 (average 635). Each year, you would also be placed in one of 9 ‘deciles’ – some universities will look at these, whereas others won’t. A ‘good score’ is really determined by the universities you are applying to – for some universities, anything around or above average will be great, whereas others are a lot more competitive. The scoring systems of universities have probably changed for 2019 entry compared to 2018, when I applied, so it is definitely worth having a look on the websites to check what their requirements are. Some universities may have also published their statistics from last year, so you can see how the successful applicants scored in their UKCAT. Best of luck to anyone sitting the UCAT this summer, I know how stressful it is and it feels like so much is riding on it! It is important but it is not the end of the world if you don’t score as highly as you were aiming. Most universities will consider your score alongside GCSE grades, personal statement, predicted grades etc so a bad score really doesn’t have to hold you back. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me on Instagram! If anyone was wondering, I scored an average of 660 last year, and Band 1 in Situational Judgement. From the top of my head, I think it scored 790 in quantitative reasoning (I actually found this to be a lot easier than the mocks!), 570 on verbal reasoning (I really struggled with this- and I feel I panicked as it was the first section so try and stay calm!), and around 600 on the other 2 sections. ​ Best of luck, Jasmine x