How did I prepare for the UMAT?

When I was in year 11, preparing for the UMAT, I was living in a rural town called Wycheproof. There were only ten other students in the grade I was in and none of them were interested in a career in health. So there I was, fairly removed from the machinations of the health system—though we did have a doctor in town—and more importantly the educational resources that could best prepare me for the UMAT Exam. So what could I do? Surely I was at a disadvantage to other students who could study together or even access tuition targeted specifically at students preparing to sit the UMAT ( GradReady was not available then—even if it were I only had dial-up internet access). Indeed, it was the teacher that I had for year 12 Psychology that taught me preparation is as much about psychology as it is about knowledge (and access to educational resources, including tuition).

You might be wondering what role psychology has in preparing for the UMAT—there is of course no section for it on the exam so where does it fit in? There are two key dimensions where the psychology of the UMAT comes to bear and both have a significant impact on performance in the exam, and I’ll analyse them later on in this article.

 

Common Student Mistakes

Firstly though, it is very easy to think of the UMAT (and the GAMSAT if you to do it later in your education journey) as a test of your knowledge and in part it is. However this does not mean that you need to know everything about chemistry, biology or the humanities in order to do well in the UMAT. It is as much a test of your ability to reason and use logic under stress as it is about your knowledge of chemical reactions or ability to interpret a piece of text. Now this might seem trivial but there are two common mistakes students make in their preparation for the UMAT (and indeed the GAMSAT).

 

1. Firstly, students expect of themselves to know everything about the topic areas used in the test. When this is inevitably impossible to achieve it can be a cause of disbelief in your ability to perform well in the UMAT—so an important thing to focus on in preparation for the UMAT is your attitude to your own knowledge.

 

2. The second mistake students often make is to underestimate the importance of preparing for the stress of the examination and the unfamiliarity with the location of the exam.

 

When I was in year 12 I wasn’t regarded as the ‘brightest’ student in our cohort. Certainly I was regarded as intelligent, but I wasn’t the ‘naturally gifted’ student. Because I was in a small school in rural Victoria, I was in classes with the students in the grade above me. In that grade was one such naturally gifted student—people admired this student for their breadth of knowledge and ease of recall of facts, ability to solve mathematical problems, to explain concepts in chemistry, and to even write an insightful and delightful essay! They were what some people call a polymath—a person of wide-ranging knowledge.

When the final year 12 exams came around though the student buckled under the pressure of the examination conditions. The student was visibly upset upon leaving the English exam and was also disappointed with the ATAR (then ENTER) that they received. It was in the mid-90s but it wasn’t in the high-90s as people had expected. The student had all the knowledge they needed to do well in the exams but had neglected to focus properly on preparing for handling their own expectations of themselves and the stress of the exam—in short, their attitude and stress were there own undoing in their exams.

In a similar way, attitude and stress can be the great enemies of even the most knowledgeable student sitting the UMAT. Having tutored students in the UMAT and GAMSAT for a time now it is something I see often. These psychological elements are the neglected aspects of preparation for the UMAT. Despite the limited access I had as a rural student to resources aimed at improving my knowledge for the UMAT, I had an advantage over other students because the psychology teacher I had explained to me the importance of preparing in these two ways—which I could do easily no matter where I was.

So what did I do to galvanise each of these aspects of performing well in the UMAT?

 

The Right Approach - Deductive Reasoning

The first relates to the attitude I had toward my own knowledge. As I have said above the UMAT is not merely a test of knowledge but of reason, logic and performance under stress too. Fortunately at GradReady we help you prepare for all of these through things such as the Mock Exam Day which aims to simulate the exam-day conditions, an extensive knowledge base consisting of lectures, practice questions and the like, as well as tutors who have sat both the UMAT and GAMSAT. We know then what it means to have lofty expectations of yourself and also to feel the pressure of performing on the day!

It can be really unnerving when you read a question that you feel as if you cannot solve it using purely your own knowledge. Because often when we read a question we can be compelled to want to solve the question outright and then choose the answer from the list of options that matches the solution we derived. It can be a whole lot more unnerving when what you believe is the answer does not appear in the list of options to choose from! Am I wrong? Where did I go wrong? Or is it possible that the option ‘none of the above’ is correct? Or is that option a trap too? The doubts about your own knowledge start to spark furiously in little time! Even if you manage to curtail it on this question the heightened state of stress it generates derails your concentration for all of the subsequent questions. Quickly students wind themselves up, no matter how brilliant they are, into a nervous wreck. This might be somewhat extreme but the effect is nevertheless experienced by many students—so what to do?

The issue regards the initial expectation that one should know everything themselves and so be able to solve all of the questions from their own knowledge. There is another way of approaching many such questions and what is wonderful is it is often faster than solving the question outright from your own knowledge! It is the much-underestimated strategy of ‘elimination’ or deductive reasoning’. This essentially entails looking at each of the available answers and ruling them in (or out) as plausible answers to the problem based on readily accessible information given in the question or grounded in your own knowledge.

For many questions it is at least possible to rule out one or two of the options relatively quickly with some quick calculations or basic knowledge. What this does then is ensure that there are only two options one has to analyse for their correctness—and if it is a mathematical based question then the two options might be able to be tested for their suitability in an equation or if it is verbal then their suitability for capturing the mood of a passage.

Now this approach is not suitable for all questions—often the questions asking students to pick the next shape in a series of shapes requires a student to ‘solve’ the question outright—but it can be particularly effective for those questions that you feel your knowledge is somewhat lacking or that to determine the answer on your own (without deductive reasoning) would take too long.

It can be tempting to want and expect of yourself to solve each question from your own knowledge but when you are unable to do this it can be very stressful, particularly if you have no other strategy for solving a question. So because the UMAT questions have a finite number of answers available to choose from it is often much quicker (and less frustrating) when you rule-out some of the options first and analyse the plausibility of those that remain. What this means in essence, is to learn to expect less of your own knowledge and practice solving some questions by deductive reasoning! Over time you will realise that many questions can be solved by a combination of these approaches and then you will start to move through questions more efficiently.

 

Preparing for Stress

The other aspect of performing well is preparing yourself for handling the stress—it is inevitable so you may as well do some things to reduce your susceptibility to it! This is where the real genius of my psychology teacher came in when I was preparing for the UMAT; she taught me some basic ideas regarding familiarity. What she said to me was, ‘Matt, most students go into an exam, such as for the UMAT, and find themselves surrounded by things that they do not know—including people! Now the unfamiliarity of the exam conditions contributes to their anxiety, so if you want to do well you need to ensure that on exam day the surroundings will feel as familiar as possible.’ It seems simple but here is what she had in mind:

 

1. Set your desk up at home or at school (wherever you study for the UMAT) with only the items you will have with you in the exam—the intent is that the items on your desk will become things you are familiar with, so becoming familiar with only those things you will have in the exam will help you feel ‘at home’ in the exam;

2. Practice trying to study in environments where there are many other people you do not know also studying, such as in libraries, or even a café or train station—the intent is to help you to cultivate the ability to concentrate despite other people's presence and movement being distracting;

3. If the opportunity is available then visit the place where the UMAT exam will be held—familiarise yourself with the outside and inside of the building, where the toilets are, where you can get something to eat and drink etc. The intent is to ensure that on exam day you are familiarised with the architectural setting of the exam;

4. Practice the exam questions under exam conditions—the intent is to replicate the stress of the exam in your practice sessions for it because the more you experience this stress the more familiar you will be with it (so the more comfortable you will be and more likely your natural brilliance will not be derailed). Some great ways of doing this is being involved in the GradReady Mock Exam Day! You can also simply set the relevant time limits on writing an essay or responding to a group of section 1 and 2 questions.

 

There are several other things I use to do (like playing the same music on exam day as that I use to play when I was studying and even using the same stationary on exam day as that I studied with) but as you play with the effect of familiarity you will become attuned to what is important for you and what is not.

The important thing to remember in preparing for the UMAT is that knowledge is but one aspect—preparing different ways of solving problems and in a related manner for the stress of the exam is as important. The attitude you have about your own knowledge and the way you handle stress can ‘make or break’ you in the UMAT, fortunately there are tangible ways of preparing oneself for them!