What if you do badly in the UMAT exam?

Before you go into the UMAT® Exam exam, you have to go in with an open mind. To be competitive in gaining one of those golden tickets into a medicine interview, you should definitely be aiming for a 90+ UMAT® Exam percentile score. However the UMAT® Exam is difficult and although we try our hardest, of course not everyone can be in the top 10%. For the majority of people that are not in this top range of scores, you’re going to have to come up with a plan B. In fact, even if you are in the top scores you too should have a Plan B – because the UMAT® Exam is not the only thing that determines your fate in medicine.

 

Don’t be disheartened by a bad mark in the UCAT. Short term it is difficult to look through the pain of the moment once you realize that you might have to wait an extra year to resit the UMAT® Exam – but if you have already prepared yourself for this scenario, would it be all that hard? A plan B guarantees that if you do badly in the UMAT® Exam, you are not shocked and left wondering what lies ahead.

 

So what is YOUR plan B? If you don’t have one already here are a few things to consider.

 

Have you got support from friends and family?

 

Initially, a bad UMAT® Exam score will affect you quite a lot because UMAT® Exam has such a strong pull on your overall success in getting into medicine. In case you do badly in the UMAT® Exam, you need to have people around you who know that you are doing the UMAT® Exam, that know how important it is to you and that will be there for you if things don’t go right. This will help you get through the first stage and you can then get back to working hard on next years UMAT® Exam

 

What can you see yourself doing for a year before you can resit the UMAT® Exam?

 

1. Start a year in another degree

   1. Medical Science – Applicable to the area you are in and you might get some good experience for the science aspect of the medicine course

   2. Engineering/Business etc. – Perhaps you’re unsure if medicine is right for you and you want to try out another field while you can. You might actually find you like it so much that you don’t want to leave!

   3. Arts – You might have a talent in music, drama or art and want to explore this professionally. You have a year to either develop your skills or work out if you want to stay in that degree

 

2. Work for a year – if you’ve decided you want to move out of home, you will find yourself needing a bit of money behind you. Particularly as a medical student, you have VERY limited time to work and so money can often be a problem for students supporting themselves (Note that work is not impossible though). If you have some money going into the course, this will take an immense amount of stress off your shoulders. Working will also teach you valuable skills like time management and dealing with people that are going to be crucial in your future career choice! You might be able to find yourself a 9-5pm job and use weekends to study for UMAT® Exam.

 

Think about your preparation for the next UMAT® Exam

 

Think about how you prepared and think about how you may have done it differently. If it didn’t work for you this time, its likely you’re doing something wrong, or you didn’t do enough. If you didn’t prepare with a UMAT preparation course, consider signing yourself up for the next enrollment period and really put everything into it. If you did do a preparation course and you still didn’t do as well as you would have liked, maybe you need to re-consider how you used the material provided. Was it that you didn’t ask questions about MCQ’s that you didn’t understand? Or maybe you would benefit from group study rather than studying individually? Group study is a great way of bouncing ideas around and getting multiple perspectives on questions that you might not know the answer to. For more information on effective group study, you can read about its benefits in this blog written by our tutor Sachin!

 

So in the event that you do badly in the UMAT® Exam – stress less! You’ve just started the process of preparing yourself for this event. So give yourself a pat on the back, make yourself a cup of tea and breathe a sigh of relief that a bad UMAT® Exam score is not the end of the world (which your support team will tell you over and over if Plan B is implemented).

 

Like I said people – keep an open mind.