Are You Sitting the 2017 UMAT Exam? Start Doing These Things NOW!

The UMAT® Exam is not for another couple of months, so it is tempting to leave your study and preparation for the school term. However, when Year 12 starts, things will quickly become overwhelming and it is easy to forget about the UMAT® Exam until it is too late. Here are some things you can do now to start preparing for the UMAT® Exam in July.

 

Familiarise yourself with the UMAT® Exam

The ACER website has quite a good summary of the exam, detailing things such as timing, format, and descriptions of the three overarching types of questions in the UMAT® Exam – logical reasoning, understanding people, and non-verbal reasoning. It is important to have some idea of what they are testing in each. Go through them, and look for examples on the internet of the different sorts of questions and attempt to do them. This should give you an indication on what may be your strengths/weaknesses.

 

Organise your resources and study materials for the year

Decide on what resources you will be using to study for the UMAT® Exam. A lot of people decide to purchase online UMAT® Exam preparatory materials which can be an amazing resource. However, they often purchase these materials later on in the year- resulting in less time to actually use the materials. If you get your study resources early, you can start practicing for the UMAT® Exam earlier too.

Another possible resource is actually your school. Some schools buy practice exams from various companies, so it would be worth having a chat to the careers counsellor to see if your school can provide you with materials, or even assist you in purchasing these materials.

 

Create a study plan

Creating a study plan and deciding how much time you want to allocate to studying/practicing for the UMAT® Exam is an effective strategy. It is very easy to forget about the UMAT® Exam during the year; consistent practice is the key to improving the skills required to do well on the UMAT® Exam. I personally had the following schedule:

• Every Friday – 3 hours to do a practice exam, 30 mins to mark it

• Every Saturday – review of the questions I found difficult when doing the exam, or the questions that I had no idea how to do

• Every other day - ~20 mins doing random questions from different sections

Make sure to create a study plan that is not too exhausting and that can be maintained while also studying for school assessments. It’s easy to say you will do 2 hours of UMAT® Exam study per night, but in reality that is not very likely.

 

Organise a study group

There will usually be a couple students from your school or amongst your friends sitting the UMAT® Exam.  You can form a study group with them to discuss answers, share resources, and support each other while studying. If you are the only one, you can always engage with Facebook communities and create your own/join an existing online study group (feel free to post on our Facebook page if you're looking for study-buddies!).

 

Read newspaper articles

Try to read the newspaper every day – I personally took out a paper subscription for The Age, but electronic versions are just as good. When reading articles, try to evaluate them critically – look at any statistics they mention and try to figure out what they imply in the context (e.g. if something affects 35% of Australians living in Victoria, how many people exactly is it referring to). Take note of any unfamiliar words, and if you need to do so look them up! The UMAT® Exam is a very text-heavy exam, so it is a good idea to get used to reading long passages of text.

Another thing you can do is to try evaluate your reading speed. See how long it takes you to read a block of text. Would you consider yourself a fast or slow reader? If you find that you read very slowly, it might be worth learning how to speed read.

 

Practice mental maths and basic arithmetic

UMAT® Exam problems will not require “advanced” calculations such as calculus, but they will require you to be able to manipulate large numbers, fractions, decimals in fairly long equations. Make sure you are very comfortable doing this.

A way to improve your basic arithmetic is to attempt to do your normal maths problems by hand as much as possible – try to work out as much as you can by hand first before reaching for the calculator.

Another thing to do is to work at making your working out neat and decipherable. This is important as in the UMAT® Exam there is often not much space given to work questions out (you aren’t provided working out paper either). This means that if you make a mistake, you need to be able to pinpoint where the mistake occurred in the overall problem, and continue working from that point on, rather than restarting the entire problem.

Thanks for reading! - Michael