Ben is a 2019 Ace the UCAT student who will be studying medicine at the University of Warwick from September 2020. You can follow him at @ben_r27 on Instagram.
Hi everyone! I’m Ben and I sat the UCAT in 2019, achieving a 690 average with band 1 in situational judgement.
I spent 5-6 weeks preparing for the exam and used three resources: The Ace the UCAT Course e-book, Medify and the official practice tests.
The e-book is a great way to start familiarising yourself with the exam; you’ll see what each section involves, the time constraints and what methods to use when answering the questions. Then it really is all about practice.
The nature of the exam means you can’t hit the ground running with strong results early in your preparation. It will be difficult to start with, but you will make progress and achieve a competitive score if you keep at it.
My three top tips are:
1. Be consistent - doing hundred of questions on days here and there will not work, you’d be better off doing a few questions every single day.
2. Identify your weakest sections - don’t be tempted to rely on the sections you perform well in. People are often good at QR and struggle with VR - do not neglect those where you’re scoring badly. Focus on those you struggle with and you’ll see your average score progress quicker than if you solely focus on making your strong sections stronger.
3. Quality > Quantity - motoring through loads of questions each day, whilst better than nothing, isn’t efficient. You have to do a few questions at a time and understand the rationale for each correct answer. Even read the explanations for those you got right as you may have got the right answer with working that would not work in a different question. If you take time to understand how the right answers are found, you’ll develop methods that you can apply to each question type and you’ll train your brain to recognise things much quicker - something that’s really important.
One final suggestion is to not attempt the official practice tests until later in your preparation. They are much more difficult than Medify and perhaps the real exam too. Do them once you’ve established your own methods for each question type and don’t be disheartened if you do badly in them because they are very difficult.
Good luck with application process!
Click here to view the Ace the UCAT Course e-book which Ben used as part of his preparation.