The UCAT exam is part of the selection process for some medical and dental schools in the UK. Evaluating candidates' skills such as mental abilities, attitudes, critical thinking and logical deductions, this exam includes four online reasoning tests and a situation analysis test.
The exam takes place at your local test center and is a test for each sub-subject. Although past questions are not available, sample questions are provided on UCAT's website. Candidates applying to the following universities can take the UCAT exam:
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Because the demand for medicine, dentistry, and some other health sciences courses is so significant, the 12th year grade required to enter such courses has become extremely high. Universities therefore needed another method of selecting students for medicine.
The UCAT was developed to assess desirable qualities in health professions, including problem solving, empathy, and abstract reasoning skills. Many universities also use an interview to select students for medicine and dentistry.
Whether you agree that UCAT effectively assesses the qualifications required to be a successful medical student and doctor, the reality is that you must take UCAT to get into many health science courses.
The UCAT consortium states that UCAT has replaced UMAT for a variety of reasons, including:
As a result, the Australian School-Leaving Entry Universities Consortium decided that UCAT was a more appropriate test for evaluating candidates for entry into medical and dental courses.
The UCAT ANZ 2021 test was conducted from 1 July to 11 August 2021. In 2022, the date range is estimated as such.
You will need to take your UCAT exam if you are interested in any of the following courses:
In UCAT, there are a total of 233 questions, divided into subtests as follows:
About 10% of the questions will be essay questions that do not contribute to your score. All questions will be presented in multiple choice format on a computer platform. UCAT takes approximately 2 hours in total. In addition, there is a 5-minute training period 1 minute before each subtest.
Once registrations open, you will be able to register for UCAT by visiting the Pearson VUE website.
To enroll and then apply for a test, you must complete a two-step process using the Pearson VUE online registration system.
The UCAT residency fee is $305 (Australia and New Zealand). The late registration fee is $85. If you are eligible for the concession, the fee is $199 (Australia only).
If you live outside of Australia or New Zealand on UCAT, the registration fee is $380. You can take UCAT in your senior year of high school and any year thereafter. Anyone can apply to UCAT.
In general, the more time you spend preparing for UCAT, the higher your score will be. For this reason, students entering an interim year tend to score higher than the previous year because they have had more time to prepare.
However, the relationship between preparation time and expected UCAT scores is not linear. This means that after a certain amount of preparation time (about 200 hours for example), more preparation time still increases the score, but not significantly.
It is worth noting that the increase in scores in preparation for UCAT is higher for a number of reasons than its predecessor, UMAT.
Remember that quality preparation for UCAT also helps increase your ATAR/GPA due to the thinking skills and exam taking skills you develop.