Going well in UMAT without prep courses (2 Viewers)

[PrettyVacant]

Taking prep courses for UMAT is against the point of the test. It's supposed to test how well you will react to real-life situations, and taking $1000 tutoring is not the point of it.

To answer the thread title, yes you can do well in it. I did my SAT recently, which is another logic/reasoning test. I studied on my own for a whole month and did okay in it, scoring above the 90th percentile for every section. granted I did get shit scores for my expectations.

The moral of the story is, I probably beat some kids in America who pay thousands for similar prep courses.

This is so irrelevant to the OP's question. Who cares if you beat some kids in America who paid thousands for prep courses?! There are always going to be people who beat other people who did more preparation than them for ANYTHING, be it UMAT, HSC, SAT...etc.

Honestly it's up to you if you want to get a prep course. If you're going to be all like "Hell no I don't really need a prep course, it's a waste of money!" then FINE, but I reckon if you don't do as well as you expected, you'll always wonder "What if I did a prep course?"

I understand it is a lot of money but some people benefit majorly from these courses and some people don't feel like they have. It's up to you how you spend your money, honestly, and if you're really really really wanting to get into medicine I don't see why you wouldn't want to improve your chances.

Personally I did Medentry UMAT preparation course and I found their resources really useful except I probably didn't spend enough time/didn't have the self-discipline to go through all the stuff offered to me (I just read the guides and did a few drills and practise tests). The workshop is quite a nice experience because it boosted my confidence levels and the mock test they give you under exam conditions was also quite helpful. HOWEVER, 500 bucks was a bit of a rip...haha. I don't regret it though!

It's up to you. You can take the "high road" and not do any, or you can give in and maybe you'll get something out of it.

 

[arjungamer123]

It did make sense, the moral of my story is that you can still get a good result WITHOUT prep courses, as long as you apply yourself.

 

[artemis268]

isnt reselling Medentry papers a copy right violation...

 

[Bacilli]

ive noticed new members are asking for your materials... think about it

 

[Bacilli]

sharing copyrighted materials could result in them taking you to court, BoS being closed etc etc....
tread carefully when discussing materials...

 

[freq707]

i to stand in a position where i reeeally dont want to have to pay for any prep courses...
i have a few F2F papers that i came across....legally
and have just been going over the same paper to try and get myself in a frame of mind, so i can actually attempt the others under test conditions
but really i have a question, coz me looking into this could be pointless-
im in 2nd yr of Bsc at UNSW and wana do umat this year....but my uai was well below med cutoff, coz i didnt no what focus was back then...
will my uai still actually count toward my entry...say at newcastle?
or just my gpa and umat...please i hope this is so (i met a kid with uai of 84 who got in up there but i think he had done honours and still gone undergrad)

 

[Wooz]

i to stand in a position where i reeeally dont want to have to pay for any prep courses...
i have a few F2F papers that i came across....legally
and have just been going over the same paper to try and get myself in a frame of mind, so i can actually attempt the others under test conditions
but really i have a question, coz me looking into this could be pointless-
im in 2nd yr of Bsc at UNSW and wana do umat this year....but my uai was well below med cutoff, coz i didnt no what focus was back then...
will my uai still actually count toward my entry...say at newcastle?
or just my gpa and umat...please i hope this is so (i met a kid with uai of 84 who got in up there but i think he had done honours and still gone undergrad)

No, your UAI will not contribute towards your entry at UNCLE as they only require that you have a ~credit average grade (GPA) + the required umat score for an interview.

Consider applying for UWS, UNE, JCU (does not look at UMAT, min 5.75 GPA), etc aswell.

 

[freq707]

yer i plan on applying for both uws and uncle
obviously waaay more keen for newcastle purely so i dont have to travel as far...JCU...yer not to keen on moving away to study lol

 

[freq707]

can i just also add
thanks heaps for your help
and lol....
if anyone as any material to help me with umat..like the acer papers (i would love them) or anything they have from like F2F or something, send us a pm or something please...coz i pretty much have planned my life around geting into med so....yer i want this bad haha
thanksss

 

[Dr_Fresh]

well i dont have any materials since mine were all done online. so cant help u there.
i borrowed the acer booklets off a friend and did them. the questions are from past umat papers, but too easy.

 

[freq707]

i heard they were easy to...but really all the prep courses are familiarizing yourself with the types of questions you will get asked, so i figure easy or not its still prep

 

[Charity F]

i heard they were easy to...but really all the prep courses are familiarizing yourself with the types of questions you will get asked, so i figure easy or not its still prep

but a false sense of security won't help, either.

as mentioned previously, the acer booklets were nowhere up to scratch when it came to painting a realistic picture of the actual umat exam. i'd really recommend looking at other forms of preparation.

 

[freq707]

oh yeeeeah
dont get me wrong, i want to look at all the prep i can get my eyes on...but i havnt got the money to afford a prep course at all, hence why im searching so badly for any stuff people can send my way haha

 

[Dr_Fresh]

the practice exam by acer is actually alright from what ive heard. i didnt do it personally.
i guess if u dont have any material atm, u could try improving ur speed reading skills? thats definitely a skill to be had in the umat if you can manage.
dont get me wrong, but dont try going faster than u can handle. i just went at my usual pace for s1. didnt get around to doing the last 10 questions so i put D for all of them. ended up with a decent score for s1 (67, ~97%).
if you can improve ur speed a little and can finish an extra few questions, it could be very beneficial.
for section 2, its recommended that u read "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman is very good. so do that if u dont have any material to go on. i have also heard MENSA books are especially good. i didnt do them personally, but it has been recommended.
cant think of much else atm. histology assignment is annoying me.

 

[freq707]

in the practice paper i just did, from acer, i got like 17/22 in section 1 and 11/15 in section 3...
i left section 2 coz i plan on working on a lot of them one after the other so i can learn to think properly when it comes to them questions
but gosssh its hard trying to get in the right mindset with section 1...i suck at it coz i dont pay enough attention to details, but that will change
i got 10papers from F2F to get through
yaaay lol

 

[freq707]

ok so i know everyone agrees that umat is much harder than acer booklets,
but how wuld they compare to prep course question?
just that im doing F2F practice paper right and want to no...as in a completly rough estimate if need be, what i should be getting in each section

also
i dont fully understand how to read umat marks
like break it down to individual section...S1-44, S2- 36 and S3- 33 questions yer...how many do u need to get right, or as a percentage, in each section to get like raw mark of like 180...

 

[xxstef]

ok so i know everyone agrees that umat is much harder than acer booklets,
but how wuld they compare to prep course question?
just that im doing F2F practice paper right and want to no...as in a completly rough estimate if need be, what i should be getting in each section

also
i dont fully understand how to read umat marks
like break it down to individual section...S1-44, S2- 36 and S3- 33 questions yer...how many do u need to get right, or as a percentage, in each section to get like raw mark of like 180...

no one knows the exact amount of marks needed, and it changes every year anyway according to the difficulty of the paper, calibre of the students taking it, etc.

 

[freq707]

yer ha i understand u cant really know...i mean like an estimate tho
as in-what should i be aiming to get in these that may, even remotely, reflect my mark in actual umat
see a friend of mine did 10 of these and got between 60-70% in each section, then got percentile of 91 in actual umat...so would it be realistic of me to be aiming to get this kind of mark to in practice?

 

[Dr_Fresh]

aim for 100%. the difficulty varies a lot. last years umat for s1 was ridiculously hard. only a very small portion of ppl finished it. i didnt even get to read the last 10. aim as high as possible becuase u cant compare the practice exams with the actual umat. not good to set a goal based on that.

 

[bradpitt]

aim for 100%. the difficulty varies a lot. last years umat for s1 was ridiculously hard. only a very small portion of ppl finished it. i didnt even get to read the last 10. aim as high as possible becuase u cant compare the practice exams with the actual umat. not good to set a goal based on that.

Absolutely right Fresh.... The key to success is not to panic if the q's in the UMAT are totslly different to your prep course in Sec 1 particularly.Then we are fu**ed for sure. I reckon the S 1 this year would be slightly easier than the last year but I expect S 3 to be the stinker this year.