Article Sneak Peak
- Official UCAT Mock Exams (practice tests) are written by individuals who design and format the actual UCAT questions.
- The question bank and practice tests replicate the difficulty of the live test.
- The presentation of individual sections and the unpredictability of question-styles is identical to the real UCAT exam, which is unlike ACER’s preparation material for GAMSAT.
- The official UCAT mock exams ONLY provide whether your response to a question was ‘right or wrong’. They neither provide detailed solutions to incorrect answers nor a final score, unlike in Fraser’s UCAT mocks.
- The official UCAT sample questions are developed in real-time simulation which could be a slight disadvantage for a UCAT first-time sitter, who isn’t aware of the time-pressured nature of the UCAT.
- Within the UCAT courses offered at Fraser’s, there are ‘20’ mini-mocks accessible to each student as opposed to just 4 offered on the official UCAT website.
Continue reading the article to find out more about the official UCAT mocks, their importance in your UCAT prep, and how it differs from the mocks offered at Fraser’s.
____________________________________________________________________________
UCAT ANZ was first familiarised in 2018 to undergraduate medical universities in Australia & New Zealand as a fair and transparent assessment to help select for future doctors. Although the UCAT is widely popular amongst Australian medical schools, it has been extensively used as a reliable testing process in the UK for the past 12 years.
The UCAT Consortium as a whole (both UCAT ANZ and UKCAT combined) has taken responsibility to offer quality UCAT preparation materials to everyone free of cost. Besides, past high-scorers and their UCAT test experiences are also readily accessible on the website to give you the crux of UCAT preparation.
How many Official UCAT Mocks are there?
The official UCAT website provides 1 question bank for each subsection and a total of 4 UCAT ANZ practice tests with a built-in clock, identical to the real UCAT exam. The UCAT Consortium intends to give students a taste of the actual UCAT difficulty through these mock exams.
It would be an absolute misstep to not do the official mock exams, considering the fact that these questions are drafted by individuals who style the real UCAT exam. Now let’s dive deeper into the features of the official UCAT mock exam and gauge its usefulness during your UCAT study!
UCAT Official Mocks vs Real Exam
Are Mocks Harder than the Real Exam?
The practice materials available on the official UCAT website are compiled from previous year test questions. This gives you an essence of the variations possible within a question type and helps you identify the changing ‘dominant’ question themes across individual sections each year.
One of the primary parameters to judge a UCAT preparation material is the level of difficulty that you are put up against. Undeniably, the official UCAT question bank and practice tests are challenging only to be closely aligned with the real test format. In other words, the UCAT Consortium has ensured that the practice materials represent the breadth and depth of UCAT question types, so each student prepares themselves to a question calibre that accurately translates to a good performance on the UCAT test day.
The next factor to take into consideration is UCAT preparation materials and their layout. You need to begin by asking the right questions like, ‘Does the official UCAT mocks replicate the design, chronological order of attempting the subsections and the exam instructions?’ To put it plainly, it certainly does.
In fact, even the inclusion of options to ‘Flag a question’ and the ‘on-screen calculator’ makes the overall presentation uncanny! On this basis, an individual who is in the dark about the UCAT’s testing procedure is also fully acquainted with formalities on the test day, from the 1-minute allocated to reading instructions on the screen to the breakdown of single subsections.
Official UCAT Mocks: Disadvantages of this Practice Test
Official UCAT Question Bank
When evaluating the quality of UCAT preparation materials, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of their effectiveness in your UCAT study. Considering the notion that the official UCAT mock exams match the standard and credibility of the UCAT exam you will tackle. In reality, it still seems insufficient due to the limitation on the number of practice tests accessible online.
Basically, each student can get one’s hands on 5 question banks, each devoted to a single UCAT subsection.
If you take notice of the UCAT subsection question banks, they are sharply outlined with the intent to bring you up to scratch with the question types you will likely encounter during the test. Despite the fact that each question bank gives you access to a broad spectrum of question types, the total number of questions as you can witness from the table above is quite less.
Besides, once you begin attempting a question bank, it is imperative that you manually remember the last-attempted question as your progress is not retained for your next visit.
Number of Official UCAT Mock Exams on the Website
As mentioned earlier, there are only 4 UCAT mocks at one’s disposal on the official UCAT platform. These practice tests are designed with a built-in clock for you to supervise the accuracy and speed at which you complete the 2-hour computerised test.
Now the real disadvantage, as you can guess, is the limitation on the number of mocks. In our expertise, preparing for the UCAT is a continuous drill and alongside feeling challenged through the question bank. Timed mock exams are the ultimate test to gauge your readiness for sitting the UCAT. So as you approach the UCAT test date, you will be more inclined to undertake numerous mock exams just to feel assured of your acquired skills up until the night before the test day.
For these reasons, it is good if you can get access to many and a large variety of mock exams under timed conditions, quite similar to the UCAT mini mocks at Fraser’s.
Finally, relying on the UCAT official mock test and question banks alone for your UCAT prep is not a smart move as you skip the most important phase in your UCAT study timeline - the transition from un-timed to timed practice test!
By directly stepping into the trenches of the official UCAT mocks, you lack a basic understanding of:
- The nature of question styles you will encounter. As you only have a handful of questions you can attempt from the question bank, it is insufficient to give you a deeper understanding of how to approach it under a timed simulation.
- The reality of the UCAT’s difficulty. On the official UCAT Consortium, you undertake the practice test but continue to remain clueless about why you got a response incorrect. There is no substantial reasoning provided to you in order to rectify this error when you re-take the practice test in the future. In plain words, you only get the final outcome - whether the response is ‘right or wrong’, which will keep your UCAT progress quite stagnant.
- Last but not least, the final score you achieved. Attempting the original UCAT mocks is a great way to prepare yourself for the UCAT as you are tested against an updated list of questions each year. However, on the flip side, the official UCAT mocks do not give you a final score breakdown which often leaves very little room to track your areas of strengths and weaknesses.
Frasers UCAT Mocks and Question Bank
Fraser's faculty is one of the most well-versed and experienced when it comes to the pre-medical admissions game. Starting from guiding different students through the ropes of the GAMSAT, UCAT and medical interviews, our staff continue to help make the medical dream of many students a reality!
Besides theoretical knowledge in the aforementioned spectrum, our experienced mentors have taken an important role in teaching students the practical frameworks needed to succeed in the UCAT, shaping the content for our courses.
Speaking of UCAT courses, in particular, the concentrated and comprehensive UCAT courses (our detailed course packaging) have a wide range of inclusions and importantly - access to 20 mini-mocks and 10 mocks in both.
Not just that, to help bring your UCAT study to its full fruition, our UCAT experts have carefully analysed and addressed the drawbacks from the official UCAT mocks to give you a wholesome learning curve through our courses. Students registered to our comp and conc course packages also gain exclusive access to over 2000+ practice questions as opposed to the minimal number of questions in the official UCAT question bank.
Benefits of Using the Fraser’s UCAT Mock Exams
- Our mock exams mimic the real UCAT’s difficulty level. Most of our UCAT mentors are current medical students who have tackled the time-pressured element of the UCAT. These mentors have adopted the role of teachers and as primary drafters who ensure the most up-to-date question styles make it to the mock exams. The questions are often taken from the previous year UCAT exams alongside variations added by our mentors, making it 100% credible.
- If you get a wrong answer, you can get an in-depth explanation of the solution. We have installed a live interaction software within our mocks to provide you with detailed solutions to questions that you particularly struggle with. The purpose of this inclusion is to make certain that you take an appropriate pause when you get an incorrect answer, analyse and review the strategy provided in the explanation before moving on to the next question. On this basis, you are familiar with the cause for deriving the wrong answer and simultaneously get the equation for the correct response.
- Our UCAT mocks give you a final score. The first question you need to be asking is, ‘Do UCAT practice tests give you a score?’ The simple answer is yes, our UCAT practice tests give you the final score. Receiving the final marks after any examination is the key to genuinely estimating the headway you have made in your preparation. Similarly, for an aptitude test like the UCAT, the cognitive skills you acquire are critical compared to the theoretical understanding of it. Hence, we made certain that our UCAT mocks give you a final score that can help to gauge your progress from one test to another!
- Saving the best for the last. Our courses help you make a confident shift from an untimed to a timed mock exam. This was a crucial step that could not be fully achieved in the official UCAT mock exams. By enrolling into our UCAT courses, you are exposed to our PBL classroom teaching in combination with over 2000+ practice questions which will significantly boost your basic foundational knowledge of the UCAT.
Furthermore, through our practice tests, you patiently get a hang of the techniques you need to demonstrate during the UCAT. Hence, when you finally transition to performing under a real-time simulation, you become confident at implementing your many tried and tested techniques.
In conclusion, enrolling on a concentrated or comprehensive course is not the only way to get access to our mocks and UCAT question banks. Our 3-day strategy weekend program gives you full access to our UCAT preparation material, practice tests and is an ideal starting point to strengthen your UCAT basics.
We hope our article on the differences between the official UCAT example questions and the Fraser’s mock exams has been insightful. If you have more questions regarding the UCAT or the undergraduate medical pathway, book a 30-minute FREE consultation with a senior UCAT mentor to get your concerns addressed so you are clear-headed when you begin your medical journey.
