UMAT TRAINING: THE SPEED GAME

Say you are new to the UCAT and start perusing UMAT material to find out what it is all about. Chances are, once you stop being utterly confused by Section 3 questions and catch on to the trick to solving them, you will start feeling pretty good about your chances: none of the questions seem unduly hard and you are getting the correct answer more often than not. Why is everyone making such a big deal of this exam? UMAT prep might not actually be as much of a drag as you thought it’d be.

That wonderful feeling of confidence usually only lasts as long as you don’t attempt a full UMAT practice test in real time. As you first look through the test booklet, you might start feeling slightly uneasy at the number of questions that you have to go through, but surely all you need to do is stay focused and work quickly, right?

Right… Except that after a few questions, it quickly appears that your confidence was unwarranted; suddenly that clock is racing and the pages aren’t turning nearly fast enough... What seemed to be only a couple of extra seconds per question builds up faster than your credit card debt at an end of year sale and with each new page, you find yourself dropping more and more behind in your timing. You attempt to pick up the pace, but start being increasingly stuck for answers or needing to re-read the same sentence 3 times before it sinks in. The questions that initially appeared easy now seem unsolvable and before you know it, anxiety has morphed into full-blown panic: this is just impossible! Forget medicine, maybe you’re meant to be stuck in a boring office doing pointless office things for the rest of your life…  

Welcome to the UMAT, where ordinary humans are expected to perform at extraordinary speed.

So, assuming the boring office job just won’t fly for you, how do you get through this?

1. Practice, practice and practice some more

The key to increasing your speed in your UMAT prep is to drill yourself relentlessly on genuine UMAT material. This is because even though you may be able to answer most of the questions without much training, every time you are confronted with unfamiliar material, your brain has to play catch up, which costs you time you simply don’t have in this exam. No one can ever really play a tricky piano piece at full speed upon first reading and there’s a reason why martial artists start practicing katas slowly until the move is second-nature. Have you ever tried singing a fast-paced song on karaoke for the first time? You may be fairly good at singing and fairly good at reading, but when you have to do it all at once at full-speed, your first try is rarely worthy of a GRAMMY…

UMAT questions never repeat themselves from one year to the next, however the style of questions is fairly consistent. This is why it is so important to have access to a large bank of quality UMAT practice questions. Although limited numbers of UMAT material free downloads can be found online, it’s impossible to obtain a large enough supply of good quality questions without forking out for a UMAT preparation course. Unfortunately this is something that you really can’t compromise on. Most quality UMAT prep courses fall within similar price brackets, so beware of cheap deals sold by dodgy overseas companies: you don’t want to waste your time and money on questions that are either not genuinely in theUMAT-style or come laden with mistakes and spelling errors…

2. Practice in real-time and on full-length tests, as often as possible

Practicing in real-time on a full-length UMAT practice exam is the only way you can really assess your timing. Some questions are harder than others and you probably won’t answer all questions at the same rate but it will average out over the length of a full test. Answering only a small number of easy UMAT practice questions can give you a warped estimation of how fast you are and as lost seconds quickly build into minutes or hours over a whole test, the full extent of your timing problem only really emerges over a large number of questions. Break the exam down into 10 or 20 min slots and check your pace so you are aware of how you are doing. Don’t be discouraged if your starting point appears to fall impossibly far from your goals and your progress is slow: the learning curve takes a while to get off the ground but it shoots up exponentially as your exposure to test questions increases.

3. Identify your bottlenecks

Find out what part of question-solving takes you too long. Whether your reading speed is not up to scratch or it takes you too long to read a graph or do basic maths, fix it! Quality UMAT courses will usually include material aimed at improving these basic exam skills, so don’t put it off and address your issues as early as possible.

4. Learn to let go

If you find yourself stuck on one difficult question for more time than is reasonable, move on. After spending a full minute on a question, it may seem like a waste to just give up, but if you are no closer to finding the answer at this point, it is not worth persisting. You may get back to it if you have time left at the end, but try to grab all the low-hanging fruits first. This may seem obvious, but for some people, it is something that’s incredibly hard to do. This is especially true for the perfectionist, high-achieving, hard-working types who are ironically often drawn to medical studies. If you are that type of person, giving up on a question goes against every instinct and it might take you too long to admit defeat. This is why you have to develop uncompromising discipline with regards to timing in UMAT training: only after having completed all questions in the real time-frame should you start reviewing the one question you couldn’t crack. If you have to give up on a question, take a deep breath and let it go, don’t let it affect your confidence or nag you as you start on the next question.

5. Be confident

You may be used to double or triple checking your answers, but there is no time for that in the UMAT. An assertive approach is essential if you want to keep your timing under control; you will lose more marks than you will save by being overcautious. This approach may be different from what you have always done for VCE or IB and habits of a lifetime can be hard to break, but it is important that you practice moving on to the next question without being 100% sure that you have made no mistakes. It’s the calculated risk to benefit ratio: in UMAT-style questions, the benefit of going faster generally outweighs the risk of making a mistake. Again, this is ironically where perfectionists often struggle while students who had a lifetime of getting scolded for their careless attitude excel. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on your accuracy, this is what exam review at the end of a test is for: once your UMAT practice test is finished, review your errors, identify the trends in the type of mistakes you made and learn from them. This approach is a lot more effective than spending ages on each question in order to avoid making mistakes but never really addressing your weaknesses.

6. Be positive

Success is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s all about attitude and self-belief. Performance anxiety is not your friend here. If you assume a question is hard, you will unfailingly miss the obvious answer. Don’t let yourself be intimidated by a complicated-looking graph or a large chunk of text: a negative attitude will either blind you to the answer or cost you time as your mind stalls while anticipating difficulty. Try to convince yourself that this is easy- that you are having fun even- and your timing and score will definitely improve. I know it can be hard to brainwash yourself into enjoying the experience of taking a test, but little tricks like associating UMAT training with your favourite spot in the house, a delicious snack or a good playlist can go a long way towards turning practice into a positive experience.

Good luck and happy studying!

For UMAT Blog Articles:

 

Be sure to follow UMAT Prep GradReady, GAMSAT Prep GradReady, VCE Prep GradReady and HSC Prep GradReady on Facebook to stay up to date on the latest free seminars, sample material, and tips.

 

We are a technology company that makes learning more engaging and efficient through Adaptive Learning technologies. Established in 2010 by medical students at the University of Melbourne, we have grown to help over 1,000 students each year. To view the number of students at your local University preparing with GradReady software, click here.

 

In 2014 - 2015, students using our technologies increased their scores by 25 percentile points on average.

In April 2016 we released a completely new site built with the latest software frameworks, meaning that the site now operates at lightning speed and the foundations have been laid for even more advanced technologies that we will release to UMAT, GAMSAT, VCE and HSC students throughout the year. Stay tuned through our Facebook pages - UMAT Prep GradReady, GAMSAT Prep GradReady, VCE Prep GradReady, and HSC Prep GradReady.