First of all, I should mention that this blog isn't about how to answer individual
UCAT questions but rather how to approach doing practice UMAT® Exam questions in general. You will not find any section-specific tips here but hopefully you might come across some ideas to help structure your own preparation better.
It is a universally accepted theory that practice makes perfect. This is certainly true in UMAT® Exam preparation. The more practice you do the better prepared you will be for the exam itself. Step one here is to first find access to as many practice questions as you can and the best way to do this is usually to up for some kind of UMAT® Exam prep course. But then how do you go about your practice? Let’s have a look at some different methods that can be used.
MCQs in a Group
Doing MCQs in a group of you peers is a great way to develop different approaches to questions. Learning new methods from your peers and even sharing resources can also be a great way to initially ease into UMAT® Exam prep. The issue with group studies is that as you get further and further into your study, the benefits to learning many different approaches to answering a question decrease while honing your own preferred technique to perfection becomes more advantageous. It is useful to be exposed to a variety of ideas at the start in order to find your own way, but once you’ve found developped your personal style, run with it- solo!
Timed MCQs
Probably one of the best methods of doing MCQs from the initial stages of your preparation all the way to the end. Timing yourself from the onset of doing questions means you will quickly develop an internal clock, and you are less likely to get stuck stagnating on a question. The UMAT
® Exam is an exam where you shouldn't expect to be able to answer every question but rather learn to move on from questions which are taking too much time. Timed MCQs also allows you to track improvement by seeing how much less time it takes you to tackle questions.
Full Exam MCQs
This is a method of doing MCQs best left until close to the exam date. Doing full exams from the onset can often be quite demoralizing, as decent performance requires both exposure to a lot of questions and speed practice. That being said, in late stage preparation doing Full Exams is
vital and should not be ignored under any circumstances. Obviously nothing can completely replicate the actual UMAT
® Exam, but doing full exams(under real, timed conditions) is the best way of practicing.
Bulk
This goes without saying. Always do as many questions in as many different ways as possible. There should be no limit in the number of questions you feel is "enough". If you think you have done "enough", then find some more difficult questions and start again.
Development Based
This is not something most people think to do but the UMAT® Exam questions do have distinct sections and subsections that require distinct sets of skills. There are usually individual skills that you may struggle with more than others. Therefore it can be beneficial to do extra questions that focus on that particular skill- don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by only focusing on your strong points! Some prep courses will actually help you do this by tagging MCQ by skills- make sure you use this feature!
Good practice and Happy Studying!
