How much do you need to prepare for the UMAT?

[spectroscopy]

Hey guys, i want to do med but am still tossing up between undergrad or post grad, im doing chem just to keep the option for undergrad open, but i know the umat is a big hurdle to get in, and i was wondering, how much do you need to do, to do well? in terms of preparation

some kids get really good percentiles and say that no preparation was necessary but others say that without medentry/other tutoring, they wouldntve had a hope !
basically what im asking is - if you could go back to the end of year 11, what would be the best preparation for the umat

Cheers 

[Dayman]

Study Umat consistently and strategically developing your strategy to deal with timing and also if your vocabulary is limited like mine it can be difficult without exposure to lots of words +++ it helps a lot with English.

You seem enthusiastic hence why you're going for med so studying at least 3 hours a week should not be a problem however keep increasing this as you approach the umat.

BUT ALWAYS MEET THE QUOTA YOU SET YOURSELF. idiots like me decide to study the week before the exam and got demolished by  both timing, vocab and i had absolute not strategy.

Finally undergraduate would make life a lot easier but you know graduate is just as good i mean you still get to go to uni and you might have a change in heart and do sewerage engineering (made that up) .

[SocialRhubarb]

I'd recommend just doing a few questions, just to see if you're particularly good at sections 1, 2 or 3. Some people are just naturals, and usually people good at maths and logical analysis will do well at sections 1 and 3, while generally people with two X chromosomes in each somatic cell do well at section 2. I kid.

I think it's good to have a knowledge of your strengths, and the areas you need to improve, as a starting point. Where you take it from there really depends on how much you want to do undergraduate medicine, and how much time and effort you're willing to put in. Generally, I wouldn't recommend doing too much work as doing preparation for the UMAT definitely doesn't guarantee a good UMAT, and your time would probably best be spent elsewhere. I personally did find MedEntry quite useful, if only for the sheer amount of exercises they have, but it is quite pricey, so I guess it's your own decision to make there.

[Patches]

I did all the atarnotes questions and was doing consistently well, then got only a reasonably good score on the actual paper which probably won't quite be enough to get in. A few people I know got much better scores than they and everyone else was expecting (a few 97s and 98s) and all did medentry or one of the similar expensive courses.
Make of that what you will - most of us thought we wouldn't need much preparation, but evidently ACER is wrong and the intensive tutoring programs help some people a lot. If you really want to do undergrad they do seem worthwhile, if you're not sure then they're probably a waste of money.

[Stick]

Hey guys, i want to do med but am still tossing up between undergrad or post grad, im doing chem just to keep the option for undergrad open, but i know the umat is a big hurdle to get in, and i was wondering, how much do you need to do, to do well? in terms of preparation

some kids get really good percentiles and say that no preparation was necessary but others say that without medentry/other tutoring, they wouldntve had a hope !
basically what im asking is - if you could go back to the end of year 11, what would be the best preparation for the umat

Cheers 

It really depends on how committed you are to undergraduate medicine.

I'm still not sure what I really want to do as a career, so I registered and sat the UMAT to keep all my options open in case I changed my mind. I'm also not allowed to move out of home to attend university because of my parents, so I was literally sitting the UMAT for just one course - Monash undergraduate MBBS. Because it wasn't the be-all and end-all for me, I didn't dedicate a lot of time to it at all - I only did two practice papers several months before the actual test itself. My philosophy was that I didn't want to waste time studying for the UMAT - a test that I still don't think can truly be studied for - when that time could be dedicated to studying my VCE subjects, something which can be studied for - and we know that generally the more time one invests in their VCE studies, the better that they will do. That same correlation doesn't necessarily exist for the UMAT. Nonetheless, I got 75th percentile and over 50 in every section, meaning that I still met Monash's MBBS course requirements (although it's not a very competitive result at all, and I'm definitely not counting on getting in). There are enough people that get 90+ percentile employing a similar strategy to me.

On the other hand, I had a good friend who was absolutely sure he wanted to do medicine and was committed to moving anywhere in the country in order to get his foot in the door. He is really smart, studied for the UMAT for a whole year and paid heaps for Medentry resources, and yet got a very similar result to myself. Needless to say, he was shattered at the time. This is a consequence that you have to be prepared for, in addition to the fact that you could sacrifice your VCE results a little bit. On the flip side though, there is every chance that by wholly investing yourself that you will achieve your goal.

I always say that those who put in the most effort are most likely to succeed, but unfortunately this rule doesn't apply to the UMAT. I can't decide on your behalf, but I wish you the best of luck nonetheless.

[spectroscopy]

thanks for the input thus far guys !!

[Edward21]

thanks for the input thus far guys !!

Personal anecdote right here. So I did Medentry, I studied every single night on top of trying to maintain A+ grades across 5 subjects (ok screw you methods haha) and I did quite well in the days leading up to the umat, on the practice acer I even got 113/134. The real thing two days later? 73rd percentile  I was so shattered, I actually walked out of the umat feeling confident with how I had gone, put into countless hours, developed my skills to perfection and it all fell apart. To be honest, the exam did NOT reflect Medentry section 1 or 2. 3 definitely! For 1 and 2, I'd recommend (please don't kill me for saying this) but do past GATs from the VCAA website, I legit feel like the exam was so similar to the GAT, just harder and with a lot less time (ie. about 1min per question). So perhaps try to do all the MC for the GAT in like 1.5hrs or less to simulate the real thing? I'd look into Section Zero on atarnotes for sure, now that I remember the exam, I remember the strange style being so similar to that of Section Zero's package. I had both SZ and Medentry, but having paid so much for the latter I used it way more often, and I totally regret not balancing my ratio to cater for much more SZ. I trusted Medentry SO much and went through the solutions and exam religiously, from one hard working student to another, worst mistake ever. I so should've done more SZ. The UMAT on the day was startling in that it was SO much more like SZ than medentry. So all in all buy the cheaper one at $99 and work consistently throughout the year, consider AN's tutoring package too, I found the classes quite helpful too, sometimes having guidance from people that smashed an exam that you want to do well in is inspiring!

Where being studious will work is for section 3. I'm a predominantly english-minded person, so section 3 patterns and puzzles actually made me want to break down into tears and cry when I saw them. BUT, once I went to AN's classes and did the Section Zero and Medentry patterns, I got so much better in that I scored in the top 80-90% of the UMAT cohort on the actual exam!! For section 2 which I thought was my bitch, I got in the top 50%, my lowest individual score on the real UMAT. So there you have it, the UMAT is one messed up exam, it's a combination of skill and random luck on the day.

Everyone's papers have different questions in different orders, you just have to do the best you can and be aware that the top companies like Medentry may not accurately represent the paper on the day I wish you all the best, I just can't help but feel sick thinking about how much time I wasted trying to do well in the UMAT and how it all fell apart  hopefully with my advice you can do much better being informed of a past students' experience.  And use free resources like the GAT too!! I think I tried so much, that I became accustomed to Medentry's questions, and got sort of overwhelmed just by how crazy and strange the actual UMAT was on the day. I hope I didn't depress you, I just think you deserve to know exactly HOW messed up this exam can turn out. You have no way of estimating your percentile on the day it's just that unpredictable.

[SocialRhubarb]

I think you're being a bit overly critical of MedEntry.

I didn't think there was a huge difference between MedEntry and the actual UMAT. It's a bit hazy by now, but having done around 10 practice exams from MedEntry, nowhere in the actual UMAT did I look at a question entirely unfamiliar to me. I thought that the MedEntry course mirrored Section 1 and 3 of the actual UMAT quite well, and that there was a difference in Section 2, with the UMAT being more ambiguous than MedEntry, the questions and passages were still all in the same style. Don't expect MedEntry or really any other UMAT training program to automatically learn the precise method of how to do every question - instead it helps with the logical and analytical skills required to do well on the UMAT.

I think Edward21's anecdote speaks more about the unpredictability of the UMAT more than the calibre of MedEntry. As almost everyone has said, people's results from exam to exam vary greatly, and oftentimes your final result is not an accurate indicator of the work or preparation you've done. I know quite a few of my friends who also did the MedEntry preparation course and did quite well.

Of course, you'll probably also have to consider the pricetag of MedEntry, as it is quite hefty, but I would be putting MedEntry under the 'not completely useless' heading.  I personally used MedEntry and did one (free) exam on Section Zero, but the decision is really yours as to whether you do buy preparation material for the UMAT, and which company you choose.

[Edward21]

I think you're being a bit overly critical of MedEntry.

I didn't think there was a huge difference between MedEntry and the actual UMAT. It's a bit hazy by now, but having done around 10 practice exams from MedEntry, nowhere in the actual UMAT did I look at a question entirely unfamiliar to me. I thought that the MedEntry course mirrored Section 1 and 3 of the actual UMAT quite well, and that there was a difference in Section 2, with the UMAT being more ambiguous than MedEntry, the questions and passages were still all in the same style. Don't expect MedEntry or really any other UMAT training program to automatically learn the precise method of how to do every question - instead it helps with the logical and analytical skills required to do well on the UMAT.

I think Edward21's anecdote speaks more about the unpredictability of the UMAT more than the calibre of MedEntry. As almost everyone has said, people's results from exam to exam vary greatly, and oftentimes your final result is not an accurate indicator of the work or preparation you've done. I know quite a few of my friends who also did the MedEntry preparation course and did quite well.

Of course, you'll probably also have to consider the pricetag of MedEntry, as it is quite hefty, but I would be putting MedEntry under the 'not completely useless' heading.  I personally used MedEntry and did one (free) exam on Section Zero, but the decision is really yours as to whether you do buy preparation material for the UMAT, and which company you choose.

I understand you, but I'm just telling what I believe the truth is in this situation. I mean of course genji can make their own decision; it's just nice to have an anecdote from someone who isn't on the commercial website saying it was great. I say this because 4 other people I met at the Medentry workshop feel the exact same as me and I felt as if my own experience wasn't in fact unique, but rather something that should be heard. The differing experience also probably comes from the randomised books; I compared all my questions that I could remember with my friend after the exam, and we had at least 10 different questions from section 1! And remembering the passages, we had 7 different ones which each would have at least 2-3 associated questions.

[pi]

basically what im asking is - if you could go back to the end of year 11, what would be the best preparation for the umat

Relevant: http://www.monash.edu.au/study/options/schools/careerseminar/presentations/value-umat-preparation.pdf, or if you have a uni proxy access the full study http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/0142159X.2012.746451

Such research has shown that it's mainly Section 3 that's "coachable" and only for individuals of higher ability (as determined by ATAR).

•Coaching typically had NO effect on Logical Reasoning (problem solving) scores, but for some students is was actually a disadvantage
•Coaching had NO effect on Understanding People scores
•Coaching appeared to increase performance on non verbal reasoning items, BUT ONLY for those in selective schools or for those with VERY high ATARs

Food for thought.

[Edward21]

Relevant: http://www.monash.edu.au/study/options/schools/careerseminar/presentations/value-umat-preparation.pdf, or if you have a uni proxy access the full study http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/0142159X.2012.746451

Such research has shown that it's mainly Section 3 that's "coachable" and only for individuals of higher ability (as determined by ATAR).
Food for thought.

Wow, interesting results.    I really had a major improvement on Section 3 myself

[spectroscopy]

Relevant: http://www.monash.edu.au/study/options/schools/careerseminar/presentations/value-umat-preparation.pdf, or if you have a uni proxy access the full study http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/0142159X.2012.746451

Such research has shown that it's mainly Section 3 that's "coachable" and only for individuals of higher ability (as determined by ATAR).
Food for thought.

wow thanks !

i guess i should get section 3 coaching then as i go to a selective entry
thanks for all the help guys !

[psyxwar]

Relevant: http://www.monash.edu.au/study/options/schools/careerseminar/presentations/value-umat-preparation.pdf, or if you have a uni proxy access the full study http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/0142159X.2012.746451

Such research has shown that it's mainly Section 3 that's "coachable" and only for individuals of higher ability (as determined by ATAR).
Food for thought.

Good as, nonverbal reasoning can be improved upon.

[neonperson]

I completely bludged it and took it as a huge joke because I wasn't planning to do med whatever happens anyway. The only prep I did was the free one they gave out. I got 91 percentile, though I think I would have gotten higher on Section 3 if I actually did some practice, as the patterns are actually really repetitive.

For Section 2 I think it is impossible to learn. It was my best section, and maybe it was because I'm very empathetic (lol) but mostly I thought I did well because I used to read a lot so I could understand the subtle differences behind the words they gave as options.

I thought Medentry is a huge waste (luckily I didn't do it...) because I watched lots of my friends agonising over those drills or whatever, and I didn't feel those questions were similar to the actual UMAT whatsoever...

I know lots of people say the ACER UMAT practices are really easy but I feel like they are the actual standard for it, and the real thing is pretty similar so I would say go with those (though I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me)

[ECheong]

Just some more personal experience here, I didn't do any tutoring for it myself but I can definitely see the benefit of tutoring in Section 3, you can learn some very useful ways of tackling some of the questions which might improve speed a bit. On the other hand, with respect for Section 2 and 1, it's a lot harder to prepare for. Section 1 is a component that heavily relies on your ability to logically reason and I think reading critically (in my case primarily from my Global Politics subject) was what helped me out a lot in that section.

If you're intent on trying tutoring, I've heard good things about AN's own Section Zero though. Even though I didn't do it myself I have several friends who did and the feedback was generally pretty good. (-whisper- and it's a bit cheaper than medentry LOOL)

In the end though, I think UMAT's 'it's an aptitude test and hence difficult to study for' mantra stands, that's what they're testing for and on the whole I think they do that quite effectively.