Medical School Application - UCAT exam and preparation

My son sat the UCAT exam last summer- initially the whole UCAT exam was a little daunting. I'm hoping the following overview of my son's experience in 2022 helps parents/students in a similar position moving forward.

For context, my son sat the UCAT exam in the summer of 2022. He managed to get a score of 3130 and with 3 A*s in Maths, Physics and Chemistry achieved in the summer of 2023 is starting medical school in September.
 

UCAT Overview:

There are two types of entrance exams for entry into UK medical schools- a small group of universities  (including Oxford and Cambridge) require you to sit the BMAT, whilst the rest  require you to sit the UCAT. My son only sat the UCAT (and I have no idea of how hard the BMAT is).

 
The UCAT exam is tough and is made up of 4 sections: 

• Verbal reasoning
• Decision making
• Quantative Reasoning (QR - maths)
• Abstract reasoning

 Each section is standardised to a mark out of 900 – with the highest mark overall mark being 3600
 
There is a 5^th section in the exam called Situational Judgement. This is less important for most universities- and you are given a mark of between 1 and 4 for this.
 
The official statistics can be found at the following UCAT link. This includes an overview of the overall standardised grade required for each percentile of students taking the exam in previous years
UCAT Test Statistics
 
Whilst the questions are hard, what makes the entire test tricky is that you are time limited to 2 hours for all the questions. Each section has a certain time limit- for example the AR part is something like 40 questions in 12 minutes! These make all sections quite tough- especially the verbal reasoning and QR. The former requires you to read a lengthy text and then answer questions on it (around 45 seconds per question).
 
UCAT Exam Preparation:
The UCAT preparation approach taken by my son was to use the following site to practice question after question.
MedEntry WebSite

This site was great. It contains a large number of full examinations that mirror the UCAT test itself, which means that you are able to familiarise yourself with both the types of questions and also the timing required to complete the exam. In addition to this it contains a large number of questions of all types that you can practise for each section, and a dashboard allowing you to track progress. One other strength of the site is that for each test undertaken a review is provided which compares you to the site average scores and a breakdown of each area within each subsection. The image below is feedback from the VR part of Practice Test 18. 

The site is professionally made, and I really can’t fault it. 

Towards the end of the summer he also used the following site:

Medify WebSite

Each has a subscription cost and they are both excellent resources. I suspect that you will only need one- and which one is best for you will come down to individual preferences.

The official UCAT site has 4 full practise tests, and I would use these sparingly given that they are from the official body.
Official UCAT Website

Both MedEntry and Medify, among other things, allow you to:

1. Practise questions from each section – with thousands of questions
2. Practise full 2hour tests. These are tiring to take, but really provide you with good experience

The following table shows the  full practise tests that my son took over the summer of 2022- he started his “revision” six weeks prior to the test (giving up large chunks of his summer holiday). The official UCAT mock tests (esp A and B) were tough- so don't get too dispirited if these are the first ones you take.

However, you can see the progression over time and whether co-incidence or not, the final MedEntry and Medify standardised scores started to mirror the final UCAT standardised score of 3130 that he achieved.

In terms of advice for the exam itself:

1) The best advice I can give for the UCAT exam is to practice. My son personally found the aforementioned websites above the best way to achieve this.

2) On most evenings during the summer, my son would do 30-50 AR questions. This helped to adapt to these type of questions, which for many will be unlike anything you've seen before (unless you sat the 11+). 
3) It really is key to sit full exams on MedEntry/Medify. Concentrating for 2+ hours is tough, and the exams on these sites allow you to familiarise yourself with the UI of the computer based UCAT exam.

4)  Given the quick short amount of time assigned to each question, there will always be tricky questions (especially in the QR and AR)- for those guess the answer, flag them and move on. If you have time at the end, you can then review your flagged answers.

The following site provides a rough mapping of the % mark to the  standardised grade for each section- with 900 being the highest mark for each section.

The table below is not the official conversion (which differs year on year)- but will give you a rough idea.

UCAT Conversion Table - Medic Mind

Other good links:

Link 1:

The StudentRoom was a great source of advice and information. The following is a link to the 2022 UCAT entry discussion group- each year will have its own distinct discussion thread.

This site also has some great advice on the types of university to apply to.

The Student Room

Link 2:

The following is the official Freedom of Information website. This will enable you to view all FOI requests made. This proved useful when deciding which medical school to go to- usually search "A100" and other search strings to find the relevant requests.

FOI requests

The following is an example relating to a admissions request at Bristol university.

Bristol Admissions Query

Link 3:

This is a useful site both on the UCAT itself and general application process.

The Medic Portal

My Kent Test Preparation (11+) Approach

With the 2016 Kent Test just over a month away, the following posting is a quick summary of the approach that I took in the run up to the Kent Test for my two children- who took the 2014 and 2015 tests respectively.

Whilst many go the tutor route, I personally helped prep my own children for the exam. Whilst I introduced them to some NVR concepts in the six months preceding the Kent Test (consisting of some of the Bond NVR books), I didn't make them do much specific Kent Test exam preparation. The reasoning for this is that the NVR are of such an alien concept when first viewed, that normalising them in your children's eyes is half the battle!

However, there was always an encouragement in getting them to read. I think the key here is to find a series that hooks them- and the rest takes care of itself. So, for example, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Laura Marlin Mysteries, the Scream Street series, Tolkien, Joesph Delaney's Spooks books and (my personal favourite kids book) the Lockwood and Co series-  have all captivated my children at some point over the years. It is great to see them find a quiet corner in the house/garden and delve into the magic of a well crafted book. I believe their reading was also helped by the brilliant  Accelerated Reading Scheme at their primary school that really  incentivised them to read more.

Reading aside, I've always helped them with their maths, pushing them a little further than the work they carried out in their class in preparation for their KS2 exams- a positive side-effect being that it also helped with the Kent Test too.

The Summer Holiday Before the Kent Test (the final 6 weeks):

During the summer holiday before the Kent Test, I made them sit (under exam conditions) various GL Assessment sample papers. I've put the summer schedule for both my children at the end of this posting.
The aim of getting them to sit these sample papers under test conditions was threefold:
1) To get them comfortable with test conditions- so that the final Kent Test didn't come as a total shock to them

2) Build their confidence that the Kent Test wasn't the monster that they may have heard it was from the school playground.

3) Provide a guide to the areas that they were weak on. After each test, we would spend time going through those areas that they struggled with- and reinforcing those areas that they felt comfortable with. This post test debrief was a useful exercise- and was probably the most valuable part of the exercise.

On some of the days they didn't do a sample paper, I would prepare a quick 15-20 minute session where we would go through quick questions, or general exam techniques. But once finished, that was it for the day.

To help make some of the sample papers (especially the NVR ) a little more "fun" (if that is a word you can ever use for exam practise), I sat the some of the papers with them. Not only did this show my own inadequacies (!!), but it also showed my children that they weren't alone. Coupled with this, it made me fully understand some of the trickier questions within the papers. Indeed, on the NVR questions, their younger and more agile minds often ran circles round me- something that they enjoyed (and which in turn made it seem less of a chore)!

Lessons I have learnt:

1) From my experiences, before sitting down to do work/exam practise with them,  it is important to clearly timebox the amount of time that you are expecting them to do. I always felt an urge to "do one more question". However, by clearly setting out the time period that they would have to do stopped this natural urge to make them do more. This also made my children more relaxed- as once finished that was it for the day.

2) More is not always best. I suspect that there is a limit to how much practise that you can do with your child, especially during the summer holiday. Having breaks of up to a week, helps them recharge their batteries for the more intensive periods. I suspect with my youngest child I probably did too many sample tests at the end of the summer holiday- with the sample paper results reflecting the fact that a limit had been met.

3) Hide the stresses of the test. I personally felt I was getting a lot more stressed about the Kent Test than my children. It is key to ensure that any concerns and stresses that you have as a parent are not visible to your kids (who are only 10 years old!). Getting them stressed will not help them. Once the exam practise was over the words "11+ and Kent Test" were banned from any conversation for the rest of the day. The key is to make them confident and relaxed.

4) It is important not to take the scores from individual sample papers to heart. As the results from the sample papers in the 2 schedules below show- not all the papers are of the same complexity. So scoring lower on one paper than on one previously- does not mean that they are getting worse- it probably means the paper was trickier. For example, I didn't make them do the GL NVR paper 1 as it was simply too hard in my opinion- and would have adversely impacted their confidence.

5) Remember that the pass marks are not impossibly high- indeed in 2015 the Maths and Reasoning paper pass mark (of raw scores) was below 50%. The English pass mark was fractionally higher than 50% (see earlier posting for more details). Obviously it was higher for the Kent super-selectives.

Summer holiday schedule:

The following is the schedule of Kent Test sample papers that my children sat before the 2014 and 2015 tests respectively. Each area- VR, NVR, Maths and English is colour coordinated.

Schedule 1- 2014 Summer:
The following is for my eldest child during the summer of 2014, with it being a mix of GL and Bond papers.

Schedule 2- 2015 Summer:

The following is for my youngest child during the summer of 2015. If the paper is not stated as a Bond or CGP paper then it is a GL Assessment sample paper. My hunch is that the spurt  at the end of August and start of September was, with hindsight, unnecessary.

Finally:

I have started to answer some questions directly in the 11+ Kent discussion forums that can be found at the following url under the user name NorthKentParent- and these may provide more information that is not detailed here.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/viewforum.php?f=19

11+ scores and GL practice paper scores - anecdotal evidence

Comparing the 11+ papers to the GL Assessment Papers

 In my previous posting I dispelled the myth that a candidate needs to get a really high percentage score to pass the Kent Test - 11+. I now want to dip into the comparison between the Kent 11+ and the GL Assessment practice papers in 2014-15.

As noted previously, the experience and feedback from my two children in 2014 and 2015 is that the Kent Test closely mirrored the type of questions that are found within the GL Assessment Papers (found here at Amazon). I guess this shouldn't be too surprising-  as GL Assessment are also behind the creation of the Kent Test 11+ papers too.

I didn't use a tutor in my children's 11+ preparation, preferring to help them myself. Whilst I will spend a future posting going through the approach that I adopted for both children, the central element was to get them to sit GL Assessment practice papers under timed conditions- effectively mirroring the 11+ exam conditions itself. The rationale behind this was two-fold.

1. Get them used to the format of a multiple choice paper
2. Get them used to the time constraints of the exam- so that the exam itself didn't throw up any surprises.

For each GL practice paper they took I noted the marks- and I've included these below, together with the percentage that they scored within the Kent 11+ itself. This provides a couple of comparison points to note:

1. Not all test papers are equal in complexity. If there is one piece of advice that I can give, that is just because your child scores lower than in a previously taken paper doesn't mean that they have regressed- it maybe just a little trickier! Indeed, there were a few papers (and I'm primarily thinking of Paper 1 of the NVR) that I judged as too hard- and for the sake of my children's confidence I didn't make them sit those papers.
2. How, from my own children's experiences, the average % marks across the GL practice papers areas mapped to the 11+ results themselves. Obviously, I only have two sets of samples here, so any conclusions should be taken with caution.

Now, this is purely my own conjecture, but the 2014 11+ test was the first test under the current "tutor-proof" approach. I suspect that lessons were learnt from this test and applied to the 2015 paper. So, for example, the English test seemed a little too easy in 2015. In my eldest child's case,  getting 92% in 2014 only achieved a standardised score of 127. The English exam, from the results alone, seemed to have been toughened up in 2015. Conversely, the Maths paper was very tricky in 2014, with loads of children not getting the chance to complete the paper. It would seem that changes were made in 2015 to rectify this (for example: reducing the number of questions). Hence, I have placed the 2015 comparison first- as I suspect that they may be more pertinent.

Unless things have changed recently, GL Assessment produce 2 sets of practice papers for the following subjects: English, Maths, Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Each set contains 4 test papers- meaning that there are 8 papers per subject. The tables below detail which GL test paper was taken enabling you to compare in the future.

2015 GL Assessment Practice Paper scores and 11+ results - Results from youngest child

Reasoning Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
Non Verbal	Paper 2	24 June 2015	30	87%	60	30
Non Verbal	Paper 6	27 June 2015	36	68%	72	30
Non Verbal	Paper 7	23 August 2015	36	82%	72	30
Non Verbal	Paper 3	03 September 2015	30	73%	60	30
Non Verbal	Paper 4	04 September 2015	30	87%	60	30

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
Verbal	Paper 1	16 March 2015	50	72.0%	80	37.5
Verbal	Paper 3	1 April 2015	48	82.0%	80	36.0
Verbal	Paper 4	13 March 2015	42	88.0%	80	31.5
Verbal	Paper 5	3 June 2015	47	87.5%	80	35.3
Verbal	Paper 6	20 July 2015	38	75.0%	80	28.5
Verbal	Paper 2	14 August 2015	47	79.0%	85	33.2
Verbal	Paper 7	1 Sept 2015	50	81.0%	80	37.5

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Reasoning	67/80	138	83.75%	81%
				Verbal = 82%
				NVR = 80%

  

Summary: In terms of overall percentages the 11+ exam scores were very close to the GL paper scores. However, I would temper this with the fact that the 11+ Reasoning papers in 2014 and 2015 contained a spatial section- which were not covered in the GL practice papers. In 2015 the feedback from a lot of kids was that one of these sections (related to shape nets) was very hard and may have been behind the slight drop in the reasoning pass grade in 2015 (when compared to 2014).

English Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
English	Paper 1	11 July 2015	32	65.0%	49	39.2
English	Paper 4	12 July 2015	33	78.0%	49	40.4
English	Paper 3	15 July 2015	35	82.0%	49	42.9
English	Paper 2	17 August 2015	35	76.0%	49	42.9
English	Paper 6	21 August 2015	36	80.0%	50	43.2
English	Paper 7	29 August 2015	35	82.0%	50	42.0
English	Paper 8	30 August 2015	35	90.0%	50	42.0

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
English	19/24	121	79%	79%

 Summary: Here the scores between the exam and the practice papers exactly matches. However, there was a reasonable divergence in the results across all the GL Assessment papers. How much this is due to my child getting better at the paper, or whether some papers are harder than others can only be speculated. It should be noted that, to my children at least, the toughest section within the English practice papers was the "capital letters and punctuation" section. From feedback, neither the 2014 or 2015 papers contained this section.

Maths Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Time to complete	Score	Total Questions	seconds per question
Maths	Paper 8	29 April 2015	44	70.0%	50	52.8
Maths	Paper 1	6 May 2015	37	78.0%	50	44.4
Maths	Paper 5	1 July 2015	35	66.0%	50	42.0
Maths	Paper 6	4 July 2015	42	82.0%	50	50.4
Maths	Paper 7	23 August 2015	40	88.0%	50	48.0
Maths	Paper 8	25 August 2015	40	78.0%	50	48.0
Maths	Paper 4	26 August 2015	41	82.0%	49	50.2

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Maths	24/25	141	96%	78%

 Summary: The results here would suggest that the GL practice papers were tougher than the 11+ maths paper. I would temper this conclusion with the fact that the paper in 2014 was a lot tougher (see results below)- perhaps too hard (more questions in the same time)- and whether they have gone too far in the other way is open to debate.

2014 GL Assessment Practice Paper scores and 11+ results - Results from my eldest child

Reasoning Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
Verbal	Paper 5	04-Aug	77%
Verbal	Paper 6	05-Aug	81%
Verbal	Paper 7	06-Aug	83%
Verbal	Paper 8	31-Aug	93%

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
NVR	Paper 5	08-Aug	68%
NVR	Paper 6	09-Aug	65%
NVR	Paper 7	10-Aug	71%
NVR	Paper 8	14-Aug	67%
NVR	Paper 3	01-Sep	80%

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Reasoning	75/80	141	94.00%
				Verbal = 84%
				NVR = 70%

English Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
English	Paper 1	11-Aug	84%
English	Paper 2	26-Aug	76%
English	Paper 4	30-Aug	86%
English	Paper 5	31-Aug	82%

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
English	22/24	127	92%	82%

Maths Papers:

Type	Paper #	Date	Score
Maths	Paper 5	25 July 2016	70%
Maths	Paper 6	26 July 2016	84%
Maths	Paper 7	03 August 2016	82%
Maths	Paper 2	16 August 2016	90%
Maths	Paper 3	25 August 2016	86%
Maths	Paper 1	05 September 2016	90%

 The following contains the scores achieved in the 11+ exam itself, with the GL practice averages.

Paper	Raw Score in 11+ Exam	Standardised Score in 11+ exam	% Raw score in 11+ Exam	Average GL Paper Score
Maths	23/30	132	77%	84%