Revision, as you may know, is one of the best opportunities to reflect and rethink difficult concepts to feel more confident about your performance in any type of examination.
It should come as no surprise that revision is key to a strong performance in the UCAT.
The importance of keeping UCAT revision notes or revising in general, has a major role to play in ones’ UCAT study as it will improve your ability to perform more confidently on exam day. In fact, each UCAT subsection measures a range of skills and your degree of acquisition, which can only be reinforced if you deploy proper revision techniques during your study timetable.
Additionally, a UCAT revision guide has incremental effects on your UCAT knowledge and performance, that is if you spent the past months maximising on the UCAT study resources in a productive way.
But, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself before starting revision. Like, ‘What is the best way to revise for the UCAT?’ and ‘Can you deploy the same revision strategies you used in high school for an aptitude test like the UCAT?’
Here are some top revision tips that can boost your test day performance and ensure you are on the right track when it comes to revising for the UCAT.
How to Revise for the UCAT?
Maintain a UCAT Question Log
While working through different UCAT practice questions, there will be moments where you may notice that a specific question-type that was generally tricky is now comparatively easier to solve. So, how can you ensure that you don’t forget the applied strategy? Simple, by maintaining a question log.
This UCAT question log is your go-to recipe for a good performance. From recording the type of questions you encounter, correct and incorrect responses to reflecting upon your mistakes, the Q-log permits you to keep a track record of your skill-specific exam performance.
The Q-log developed by our UCAT experts can help you keep track of your strategies and gives you an opportunity to reflect upon the reasons for a failed strategy. In fact, Fraser's Question-log allows you to colour code your correct and incorrect answers as ‘Green’ and ‘Red’ for each question-type under the specific UCAT subsections.
In doing so, you can not only review your performance during practice tests or mock exams, but simultaneously develop an ‘evidence-based’ learning method that points out exactly where you are misinterpreting a given question.
Famliarise Yourself with Keyboard Shortcuts and Formulas
One of the aspects that is a constant in the UCAT is its testing format. Known to be a computerised test, your UCAT preparation should actively involve techniques and hacks that cater to a smooth integration of keyboard mechanics with your exam performance.
For starters, UCAT keyboard shortcuts are easy-to-use, memorisable functions that can save you time on the test day. On the flip side though, these shortcuts can give you a hard time, provided you are rote-learning them a few days before the exam and not proactively implementing them throughout your practice sessions. The idea is to be fully aware and comfortable using appropriate shortcuts where intended, be it while attempting mock exams or an UCAT question bank, so you can commit them to your muscle memory.
Towards the end of your preparation session, say, a few weeks before the exam, you can even ask a friend or a family member to quiz you on the different shortcuts to revise efficiently.
Top Keyboard Shortcuts Required for the UCAT
UCAT Tips and Tricks to Remember Formulas
If it weren’t for UCAT Quantitative Reasoning questions, you probably may not have had the pressure to memorise key arithmetic formulas to perform faster calculations during the test. However, QR is an important inclusion in the UCAT to assess your numerical evaluation skills, and to a large extent, how you would best utilise this skill as a doctor in the long run.
Although QR questions include and are not limited to tax bracket questions, convoluted graphs and other mathematical conversion questions, this subtest provides significant scope for students to make the grade compared to its counterparts. The key to a good performance, ultimately boils down to your meticulous approach and memorisation techniques in solving the questions.
The pyramid-image technique can be applied to different types of mathematical formulas to improve your speed and test timings.
Here’s an example of how you can revise key formulas without getting confused or having to write it down as a list of formulas to memorise before the test.
Setting Realistic, Mini UCAT Study Goals
This UCAT tip has been reiterated numerous times in other UCAT-oriented articles on our website and we’ll just say it one more time. Only set achievable, relevant goals that can add value and direction to your UCAT study.
In order to build an effective UCAT revision timetable, you need to factor in the hours of UCAT study in a week as well as your time to fulfil other commitments, both social and extracurricular. Only by building a proper study schedule from the very start can you ensure that your revision time will follow a similar, disciplined pattern.
In an ideal UCAT study plan, you will have weekly targets, which includes how many hours you will assign to doing UCAT practice tests and mock exams, but most importantly, your leisure time. As you invest more time to practise and improve, you will notice that the components that require revision are mostly the ones you cannot figure out on your own.
We have a simple solution to address this problem - finding useful preparation materials to assist you in your revision.
Undertake Credible UCAT Revision Resources
If you are wondering as to how you can determine the quantity of UCAT practice questions you need to answer week after week, it is highly recommended that you jump onto our UCAT course pages. Particularly, our Concentrated and Comprehensive courses have different stages of UCAT development, from skills workshops to attune your critical thinking and problem solving abilities, to giving you access to over 2000+ practice questions with detailed instructions on ‘when’ to tackle then in your study timeline.
Moreover, if you are at a stage of UCAT prep where you require little guidance and more practice material, our UCAT Blueprint course package is the ideal course for you. In this package, you are given the opportunity to undertake upto 20 x mini-mocks and 10 x mocks to really make those final weeks of UCAT prep count.
Avoid Overdoing Practice Questions
‘Practice makes perfect’. This is a common saying that you may have heard countless times during your UCAT study. However, most students, for the sake of practising and revising, overburden themselves by attempting a mammoth of practice questions, committing to finish more than 100 questions on a daily basis with little to no break time allocation. Although this seems like a genuine effort, it adds no improvement to your UCAT development whatsoever. In fact, in the case of the UCAT, acquisition of skills is more important than mindlessly working through hundreds of questions.
After all, your demonstration of cognitive skills is what is being assessed, not whether you have managed to cover 2000 questions in a week!
Instead, execute a smart work strategy that allows you to work through UCAT sections and question-types based on difficulty level, and gives you the ability to transition from one section to another.
Practice Under Simulated Conditions
In order to succeed in the UCAT, your cognitive skills are certainly important, however, all your efforts go to waste if you are not aware of the testing environment.
The UCAT is conducted as a computer exam for a duration of two hours, with zero time allocated for break. In simple words, you have to overcome the time pressure, exhibit key skills tested in the UCAT as well as achieve a score in the top decile. This is much more challenging if you have not previously practised under a similar test conditions.
Our UCAT mentors have trained hundreds of students to undertake the UCAT, often having first-hand experience undertaking the exam. From personal experience, they often advise students to replicate the official UCAT testing ambience while sitting a mock exam at home. This is undeniably, one of the most important factors of UCAT revision. Mimicking the real UCAT exam to know exactly what you need to expect come test day.
If you wish to get your hands on the best UCAT mock exams available in the Australian market, you ought to try the Fraser’s developed mocks. They are up-to-date and have question variations, nearly identical to the difficulty standard of the actual UCAT.
Implement the ‘ART’ Technique - Assess, Reflect and Train
Before concluding the piece, UCAT revision guide, here’s a popular revision acronym you cannot miss!
ART - Assess, Reflect, and Train.
A - ASSESS
In the UCAT, your preparation starts with assessing your skills, knowledge, and time management abilities. Without constantly testing your skills and your growth in the UCAT, you cannot dream of achieving your required UCAT score.
R - REFLECT
The majority of students, when they sit a mock exam forget to reflect upon their performance after completing the sets of questions. Reflection is an important study technique to accurately gauge your performance, track and omit errors, and build strategies on how to improve further, even if you are already getting a high score.
Remember, when it comes to the UCAT exam, there is always scope for improvement.
T - TRAIN
Training, or attuning your skills for the UCAT should not be confused with merely sitting and passing the test. In this context, training refers to how you refine your concentration, focus and mental stamina to be at your cognitive peak for the real UCAT exam.
On that note, we would like to wish you the best of luck.
