UMAT Life Hacks Things you can do in your day-to-day life

For those of you planning on sitting the UMAT in 2018, hopefully, you have started considering different options on how to prepare yourself for the exam. If so, you will have come across different UMAT preparation courses that can give you UMAT practice questions and live exposure to questions similar to that found in the UMAT examination itself. Most of this content will require a lot of dedication and time, and of course, because you want to do well, you will give 100% to it.

 

What if I were to tell you that not all of your preparation for the UCAT needs to be so hard and time-consuming? On top of all the study that comes with UMAT practice, there are little things that you can do day-to-day that take no time, minimal effort and can help improve your UMAT skills drastically. Consider them little life hacks that if applied right, can make a serious difference come the game day (UMAT day). Whilst I was studying for my UMAT, I found that by including these hacks into my daily life, I was able to improve my mental capacity to understand and excel in all 3 sections.

 

You might find some of these tips more useful than others depending on your individual strengths and weaknesses. In this way, whilst it would require little to no effort to include them all into your routine, you will quickly work out what is working for you. You can also use the practice exams that you get from ACER and UMAT preparation courses to gauge if these are making a difference. There are different things you can do for each section:

 

 

Section 1: Logical Reasoning and Problem-solving

In this section, you are expected to use logical reasoning and problem-solving skills to answer a series of questions that are usually based on stimulus material. Some of these stimulus materials can be long, uninteresting and plain hard to read and understand.

 

Practice speed-reading.

By increasing the rate at which you read the information, not only does it enhance your ability to understand the stimulus but also it gives you more time to consider the options and make a rational decision in the examination. How do you do this? If you don’t already, START READING and if you already read a lot, practice reading faster. Some hints and tips for when you are reading:

-             If you use a pen or your finger to point to the words as you read them, it allows you to focus on what you are reading and better understand the text.

-             Make sure you sit up with a straight back and clear airways. This allows you to breathe better, deliver more oxygen to the brain and remain relaxed while you quickly take in all the information on the page.

 

-             Good Read: ‘The Speed Reading Book’ by Tony Buzan. It won’t take you too long to get through and can give you some really good ideas on how to improve your reading speed and ability to comprehend language.

 

 

Section 2: Understanding People

This section is all about emotional intelligence; how you perceive emotion from the position of a third-person. This one is pretty easy to improve if you just become a little bit more conscious of the world around you.

 

Partake in a bit of ‘people-watching’, a favorite pastime of mine that really helped up my UMAT game.  While you’re out for coffee or grabbing a bite to eat, take notice of the people around you and in particular, pay attention to how they are talking and their facial expressions. It can be hard to pick up emotion in text, but if you become good at understanding emotion in the real world, it will significantly improve your ability to do it on paper.

 

Another thing you can do to get through section 2 is making a vocabulary list of all the emotional words you can think of. Start by thinking of the most basic emotions; generally,  these are happy, excited, tender, scared, angry and sad but you can come up with more if you like. Make a table with these words at the top and using a thesaurus (http://www.thesaurus.com), find as many synonyms as you can for that emotion and start using those words in your normal vocabulary. The more you use it in your daily life, the more likely you are to recognize it in the UMAT exam section 2.

 

• Good Read: Put down your sci-fi novel and pick up ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman.

 

 

For section 3: Non-Verbal Reasoning

This really is the hardest to prepare for in daily life. This is because the best way to study for this section is through repetition and relentless practice, both of which you will get in a good UMAT preparation course. However, a couple of things that you might not have been doing will stimulate your brain to reason in a non-verbal situation.

 

Before your dad goes to throw out today’s paper, pick it up and have a go at the puzzles and crosswords. Sudoku’s, in particular, are fantastic at getting the brain thinking outside the box and thinking in the abstract, whilst still using complete logic and reasoning. If you are one to enjoy a good jigsaw puzzle, then start putting some time into them. They are also a great way to get in the ‘puzzle’ mindset and enhance your ability to put patterns together.

 

These ‘life hacks’ are not designed to replace UMAT study; they are simple ways in which you can build your skills for the UMAT. Don’t forget to keep on top of your usual study as this is what will make the real difference. If you haven’t already, enroll in a UMAT preparation course and access UMAT practice papers to test out what ‘life-hacks’ work best for you.