Preparing for VCE vs. preparing for UMAT

No one is going to deny that year 12 will be one of the most stressful and unrelenting years of your life. Countless times throughout the year, you will be reminded of how this year will affect the direction of your entire life. Of course none of this helps with the stress! Unfortunately, all of it is true and that just makes it a whole lot worse.

Of course for those with aspirations to get into Med and other medicine-related courses, there is the added pressure of the UCAT. This exam has many misconceptions attached to it, adding to its mysteriously stressful aura. Dispelling the current misunderstandings about the UMAT® Exam is not what we will talk about today but be sure that it will come up soon enough.

Now that I have probably sufficiently scared you, let’s talk solutions. How are you supposed to balance the mammoth that is VCE® Exam with the medical mammoth of UMAT® Exam? Of course, taking a high school UMAT® Exam preparation course will help to some extend, and I’m sure everyone you talk to will have a variety of other tips to offer, but here is my take on the situation:

 

VCE® Exam Preparation

Contrary to what you might think VCE® Exam is not a measure of intelligence. It doesn’t matter how “smart” you are or if you are “clever”, all that matters is how well you know the system. As the year passes, your ability to understand how VCAA functions and what it wants to give you marks for is what will make for a good ATAR at the end of the year. SACs are obviously slightly different, but similar principles apply: knowing how to play the system will get you marks. The only way to improve your knowledge of the system and consequently your ATAR is practice. I’ve always found that the common saying of study smart and not hard is not really relevant for VCE® Exam: it really is about studying hard, about doing as many practice questions as possible, as well as writing and correcting as many essays as humanly possible.  The reason being that the more of the questions you do, the more prepared you will be for the questions that VCAA will inevitably give you. Going through past exams, you’ll find that while very good at writing exams, VCAA are not really a creative bunch: they repeat questions. Numbers or essay prompts won’t be exactly the same but similar question structure and essay prompts will come up time and time again (often the same essay will work for many different prompts).

It’s easy to compare yourself to your peers and be disheartened. “I’ve done the same number of exams as X but I’m still terrible at probability! It is a common logic that is always brought up. The truth is, no two people are the same and not everyone will get better at the same rate. While for some it may take 10 questions to improve by 10 marks, others may require 1000 questions for the same improvement. What matters is that you WILL get better. Even if it takes those 1000 questions, you will improve and the only limit to your performance is the amount of work you put in! The onus is completely on you and how far you are willing to go to get those extra marks.

Practice. Practice in bulk. Practice Hard. Improvements may be slow but they will happen..

 

UMAT® Exam Preparation

As I alluded to before, UMAT® Exam is a slightly different beast to VCE® Exam. Unlike VCE® Exam, UMAT® Exam is about studying smart and not necessarily just studying hard. Over the years, there have been many cases of students spending hours and hours studying for UMAT® Exam, only to have no significant improvements. On the other hand other groups of students may have studied only a few hours a week, but have seen tremendous improvements.  What’s the difference? What did the second group do that the first group didn’t? It all comes down to studying smart. In the UMAT® Exam, you will find that there are certain sections that you will have an affinity for, and this changes depending on the type of person you are. Some might be fantastic at logical reasoning while others may be only good at emotional reasoning.  My advice is to primarily hone your strengths and secondarily improve your weaknesses. Confidence is key when dealing with anything UMAT® Exam. You are much more likely to see big improvements in areas you naturally find interesting or are good at, which will provide you with the confidence to improve yourself in the sections which might not come as easily.

The whole scale of improvement still requires hard work, however it’s not just about blindly doing questions: focus and target your questions. Set goals for what you want to improve and don’t give up until you reach your target goals. Find and take confidence where you can and do this first, because without the confidence, it is easy to get overwhelmed.

It’s at times like this that having UMAT® Exam structure and UMAT® Exam preparation courses can help a lot. It will enable you to track your progress and be around like-minded people, people who are most likely dealing with the same fears, struggling with the same questions and wanting to end up in the same places.  The sheer volume of questions available for practice will also aid greatly in improving your individual section abilities.

 

Porque no los dos?

So how do you do both? It’s hard, no question about it. As you can see, they both require different types of study and a different approach. Identifying these key differences is the first step to succeeding in both. Attempting to study the same way for both will either land you in trouble in both of the exams or simply allow you to perform in one at the behest of the other.

The unfortunate thing is you do need to do both, so find ways to help you understand the different ways you can study. Sometimes you’ll find that UMAT® Exam study can be a break for VCE® Exam study and vice versa, simply because of how different they are and also because you may enjoy one more than the other. I know that breaking up one study with different study can sound difficult, but that’s just how the year goes. And remember, it is just a single year in your life and it will go by quickly, so try and get on top of it early and stay on top of it. The last thing you want is to get to the end of the year, look back and think, “I could have done that differently”.

Remember: just reading this blog puts you ahead of most, so your chances are already better than average!

Good Luck! Happy Studying! And remember to take a break from time to time!