 What is up guys? KarmaMedic here and welcome back to another video on the UCAT exam. So last week on my Instagram page at KarmaMedic, I asked you guys if you had any questions about the UCAT exam because I'm getting a lot a lot a lot of Instagram DMs and messages and comments on YouTube asking me different kinds of things about the UCAT exam. So I thought I would do a frequently asked questions video and address the most important questions once they get asked all the time. So I actually got quite a few responses. So thank you guys for sending those in if you did and I'm going to go through a couple of them now and let you know my best answers. Probably one of the questions that I get on Instagram the most is can I have your UCAT notes? And yes, yes, you can have my UCAT notes. Just send me a DM on Instagram and I'll send you the link to them through the phone. Just try not to send me an email because I check those way less often and I'm less likely to get back to you on time. So the second most common question that I get asked is something along the lines of how long did you study for the UCAT exam? How long should I study for the UCAT exam or is four weeks enough to do well? Is five weeks enough to do well? Something like that. And so what I always say for this type of question is that when I studied for the UCAT exam, I was personally under a lot of time pressure because I was also studying for the Canadian medical school entrance exam and I was also applying to medical schools in both the UK and Canada. And so I only had a four week period to study for the UCAT exam. I managed to study for it and do quite well within four weeks. So definitely is possible. But I would also recommend that you study for longer than that if you can. You don't want to start studying too early because then you might get burnt out over time. You want to study sort of somewhere around the six week range. If I had to guess a general number to say to everyone around six weeks should be good. But also, you know yourself's best. If you think that you need more time to study, then just give yourself more time to study. If you know that you can cram all the content for this exam in a couple of weeks and that's your preferred style, then go with that style. So at the end of the day, you guys will know yourself's best, but it's always better to give yourself more time to study and be safe rather than give yourself just a week or two and then be sorry. So in addition to all the questions that I get in my Instagram DMs about the UCAT exam, I also get a bunch of questions about the medical school admissions process and how to write the personal statement. Ask me for tips and tricks and things like that. And so in very exciting news next week on July 18th from 530 to 8th British Standard Time, Kaplan Test Prep have sponsored me to talk at one of their live online webinars. This is going to be a session talking about the medical school admissions process and also about the personal statement. It'll be a really fun event and you'll also have the chance to chat with me directly in the questions and answers period. So I'm really excited about this and I hope you are too. If you guys are interested at all in improving your medical school application, I'm going to leave links in the description down below where you guys can go sign up to the live online webinar. It's totally free. It doesn't cost anything and I will see you guys there. Okay, so another quite common question that I get is how to do well on the abstract reasoning section or how to improve my score on the abstract reasoning section. And for abstract reasoning, because it's a type of question or a type of test that you will likely have never seen before, it's not similar to any kind of test that you will have done at high school. It's mostly the need to get exposed to different kinds of shapes, different kinds of patterns, different kinds of tricks that you will see on the UCAT exam and being exposed to as many different questions as possible is what's going to help you improve on the upcoming questions in the future. When you see the 101st question, the pattern that you're going to see is likely going to be somewhat similar to a pattern that you've already seen before. That allows you to quickly identify the pattern instead of spending time trying to figure it out. For verbal reasoning, I always get asked whether you should be reading the paragraph first or the question first. And again, this can come down to personal preference, but I think that the most time efficient technique is to read the question first and focus on the keywords in the question and then go back to the paragraph and search for the keywords from the question in the paragraph. And when you guys are doing that, usually when you find those keywords, the answer will be somewhere one sentence above and one sentence below of where you find it. But for some questions, they do try and trick you or they do make it more difficult. So you might want to have a scan of the other paragraphs to see if you can find those keywords somewhere else too. Okay, one of the most common questions that I get asked that I have absolutely no answer for, this is probably one in every four questions I get asked about the UCAT exam. And that is what score is good enough to get me accepted to X University or what score do I need in order to get accepted to medical school, etc, etc. These are questions that I simply can't answer. Medical schools are changing their cutoffs for the different sections or their cutoffs for the overall UCAT score each and every single year, what is considered a competitive score in one year might be higher or lower than what is considered a competitive score in the next year. But the best thing that you can do to figure out sort of your target score, the score that you're aiming for is to go to the university websites that you want to apply to, and they will usually say what the average scores were of the students that they accepted into their medical schools in previous years. Do international students need to take the UCAT exam? Yes, if you are an international student applying to medical schools in the UK, you do need to take the UCAT exam. It's a standardized exam that all students have to take when they apply to medical school. Okay, another good question that I get is talking about sort of how do you study for the UCAT exam? How do you start studying for the UCAT exam? And is there a progression as you move through time when studying for the UCAT exam? So this is what I like to say for that question. Basically, when you start, you likely won't have done these types of questions before, especially for abstract reasoning and situational judgment. So the first thing that you have to do when preparing for the UCAT exam is to understand the theory that underlies each of the different sections. Understand how the questions are made, what their goal is, and the different ways and strategies that you can use to answer them. Once you feel like you've understood the theory well enough, you want to move on to doing practice questions. And this is where the bulk of your practice, the bulk of your studying is going to happen. You just want to do question after question after question for each and every single section until you feel confident in that section. So for example, in abstract reasoning, you'll start to identify a list of 10 different rules that just seem to come up more often than other types of rules. For quantitative reasoning, you'll start to realize that fractions, percentages, ratios is something that's very important. For decision making, you'll start to realize that Venn diagrams are very important. And then for situational judgment, you'll also start to accumulate a list of different things that seem to come up over and over again. And then once you've done many, many practice questions and you feel confident to tackle a real test, this is also a very, very important step. So past tests are absolutely very, very, very important because that's where you're going to learn the timing of the UCAT exam. When you do your first mock, you're probably not going to do that well. In fact, I get many, many messages that say, hey, Nasser, like I just did my first mock and I did very poorly. I'm feeling very demotivated. I'm feeling very upset. What should I do? And the answer is that that's totally normal. And that's because you haven't gotten used to the timing structure of the UCAT. And you basically figure out the pace and the speed at which you need to go out in order to complete all the questions for that section. So that's sort of the progression that I would recommend when studying for the UCAT exam, sort of related to one of the first questions that I asked was how many hours did you study a day? And again, this is very personalized to the person who's writing the test. At the time when I wrote it, I could only dedicate about two to three hours a day to study for the test, which I think you should do more if you have the time. But again, it depends how long you're studying for it depends on you, how easily you get burnt out during the day, how long you can have your study sessions for, etc. So make sure you find something that works for you that you can do for a period of time. So another question that I get asked quite frequently is when should I book my UCAT exam for? You guys can book your UCAT exam for whenever you want. It really doesn't matter if it's early summer or late summer or mid summer. Just make sure that you give yourself enough time before your UCAT test day in order to study for the exam. You don't want to book it too early and then not have enough time to study. So a very, very common question that I get asked is how do I manage my time during the UCAT exam? And specifically, the questions are usually related to the quantitative reasoning section time management in the UCAT exam is something that's very, very important. And in fact, I think I'm going to make an entire video just dedicated to this subject because there really is a lot to say. But very quickly, for time management, you have to actually do a mock test in order to realize how short the time periods are for each of the different sections. Next time you do practice questions, next time you do a test, you're going to be trying to work much, much, much faster in order to arrive at your answer in order to be able to complete more questions in the time period. So the time management is really something that you have to learn through experience of doing past tests that are time doing mock tests under time conditions. And it's something that you sort of gain the ability to do over time. It's not something you learn overnight. And that's why I really, really recommend doing lots of past tests as many mock tests as you possibly can in order to be able to get that experience that you naturally have a feeling for what's taking too long or if you're good for time. Of course, also, you can use the clock that's in the top left or I forget where it is, but there is a clock on the screen somewhere when you're writing your UCAT test. And of course, you can use that clock to see how you are doing for that section and how many minutes you have left, how many questions you've already gone through, etc. But you want to reach the point in your practice where you feel confident in the pace that you have so that you're not wasting too much time looking at the clock and getting anxiety about that, etc. But anyways, like I said, I will make a full video on this. So stay tuned and subscribe to the channel. Another very, very important topic, which I will again cover in my video on time management in the UCAT exam is learning to triage questions. And if you don't know what that means, that basically means learning to choose which questions you want to guess, move on from and then come back to if you have enough time and learning to see which questions you should tackle right then and there. So in the UCAT exam, each question is worth one mark, no question is worth more than another one. And so you want to do all the easy questions that you can get for sure and accumulate that one mark, as opposed to questions that might take you a very, very long time that you're not going to have enough time to do or that are very difficult and you know that you're less likely to get correct. So for example, in QR, this happens to me all the time, I will look at a question and immediately I'll be able to identify that this is going to be at least a five step question, maybe even a six step question. As in, I'm going to have to type in six different equations or calculations into my calculator. And of course, that's going to take a very, very long time. And if I realize that it's going to take a very long time, then that's a question that I want to guess, I want to skip, and I will come back to later to try and see if I can answer it properly. Okay, and then one last question that I'm going to do here is your one ultimate tip for the UCAT. So my one tip for the UCAT exam would be to get in as much practice as possible. This is very much an exam that you can improve on through practice through getting more and more exposure to different types of questions. And within each section, you will start to realize and you will start to accumulate a list of things that seem to come up more and more often. And those are the things that you want to focus on and make sure that you know very, very well, because when it comes time to write the exam, you want to be able to fly through those questions. Just with exposure and with doing many different questions, you're going to be able to link the question that is right in front of you to something that you've done in the past. And that's going to help you very much in tackling the exam and doing well. All right, guys. And I think that's all the questions that I have for today about the UCAT exam. Hopefully I've answered a bunch of questions that you guys will find useful. Hope you guys are having a good time preparing for UCAT exam. And I hope you do really, really well. Let me know in the comments down below how your practice is going, how everything is going. And of course, if you have any questions that I haven't answered as well. If you guys like this video, do leave a like on it. And of course, subscribe to my channel if you want to see more medical school related content from me in the future. If you guys want to follow me on Instagram, feel free at KarmaMedic. But anyways, that is it for me now. And I will see you in the next one. Peace.