Medical School

So I got my grades and I'm off to medical school this month :D - my excitement matched only by my nervousness. Now that I'm back from holiday it all feels very imminent and a bit surreal. I'm sure I'll get used to the idea once I get there though.

Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests: The Medical School Versions #2

This is a sister post to my UKCAT one and is an introduction to/some advice for taking the BMAT. The BioMedical Aptitude Test is used by a few universities in the UK (Cambridge, ICL, Oxford, and UCL  for medicine at the time of writing) as an admissions test to help differentiate between high achieving applicants and show potential for higher education. Basically, it's another hurdle.

Preparing For The BMAT

You will probably be able to take the BMAT at your school and this year it will be on the 7th of November. You will need to register (make sure you do) and pay an entry fee.

The BMAT has 3 sections:

-  Aptitude and Skills (tests problem solving, reasoning, data interpretation etc. multiple choice)

- Scientific Knowledge and Applications (ability to apply knowledge from maths and science (up to Key Stage 4 level), multiple choice)

- Writing Task (select, develop and organise ideas and communicate effectively in writing; one essay from a choice of four titles)

Your raw mark in converted to a score out of 9 for each of the first two sections (to one decimal place). The average candidate is supposed to score 5.0, the best candidates 6.0 and exceptional candidates above 7.0. For the third section, you get a score 0-5 for 'quality of content' and a letter score E-A for 'quality of written English'.

As with the UKCAT, preparation by practicing the question styles is important. For the BMAT, however, there definitely is material to revise (section 2). The material is meant to be up to KS4, but that does not make the questions easy, or GCSE level, the important aspect here is applying knowledge. A further point is that the some of the stuff may not have been on the syllabus of the exam board you took your science and maths GCSEs with. I mainly used 'How To Master The BMAT' to prepare. It was helpful because, as well as having lots of practice questions, it also had a very condensed revision guide to all the science and maths in it, so you could quickly refresh your memory and check if you had missed anything vital at GCSE. Practice papers are also available from the BMAT website. There is a '400 Questions' book (equivalent to the UKCAT I mentioned in my other post), and although I didn't use it, I expect it would be useful (I had a slightly random selection of books based on what my local bookshop had).

Cuteness break - the world's smallest species of chameleon:

The BMAT is a paper exam so it would probably be useful to practice writing the essays under timed conditions. Also: you only get one side of A4 for the essay. That's right - there's a line limit, and no planning space. This is to encourage you to be concise and organised with your thoughts, not a challenge to write illegibly small. Be aware that you have more than enough time to fill this paper, so take the time to make sure that you're filling it with something good. Part of the score for the essay comes from 'quality of written English', so make sure that your spelling and grammar won't let you down!

There are bound to be courses promising to boost your score. I stuck to books and practice papers, so I don't know how useful these are, but it's probably worth getting an independent opinion on them before signing up.

Being Strategic With Your Score

'Aha!' You cry. 'but I won't know my score before applying, you fool, Erin!' And you're right, so if you use 3 of your 4 medicine UCAS choices for BMAT universities then you're taking quite a gamble that your score will be good. I've got a friend who did this, applying to London schools and Oxford,  and it worked for her. If you're confident (hopefully based on having done a few practice papers) and you want to, then do it, but be aware that it is a risk, and if you have a bad day you could blow all your chances of getting an offer at once. The stuff about checking how they use your score still applies (and it can differ between individual Oxbridge colleges as well as between universities), e.g. some may not look at your essay, so if essay-writing isn't a strong point it may not matter, whereas some will discuss your essay at interview. Some also use BMAT cut-offs. 

And Finally...

Prepare well, but most importantly relax so that you can do your best in the exam. If you're reading this because you're taking it, rather than for nostalgia, then good luck! (:

Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests: The Medical School Versions #1

A Silly Introduction

It's too bad that Hermione decided not to be a Healer and we never got to find out what the wizarding equivalent of the UKCAT and BMAT are - then I could have made an actually relevant reference to Harry Potter for my title. Even Snape is disappoint:

Anyways, UKCAT and BMAT. If you want to study medicine in the UK, you will have to take at least one of these if you want much choice in which medical schools you apply to. I'm not going to list which universities do /don't use them, because you'll want the most up-to-date information so you need to go onto the universities own websites, but I am going to dish out a bit of advice as someone who's been there and come out the other side. This was meant to be one post, but to stop it being ridiculously long, I'll start with the UKCAT and put the BMAT one up later next.

Preparing For The UKCAT

Firstly register (and pay the entry fee) in time - you can register for the UKCAT from the 1st May. You don't need to do it then, but be sure to leave plenty of time, because if all the testing appointments get booked and you haven't got one then you won't be able to take it for that application cycle (i.e. year). When booking, remember you can only take the test once each cycle, so you want to give yourself plenty of time to prepare. I took mine during the Summer holidays so I had plenty of free time to both to prepare and to consider my options in light of my result (see next section).

According to the UKCAT website it cannot be revised for. Admittedly you can't learn facts to regurgitate for it, but you definitely can (and should) prepare! It has 4 sections:

- Verbal Reasoning

- Quantitative Reasoning (i.e. maths)

- Abstract Reasoning

- Decision Analysis

Each of these will give you a score scaled to a mark out of 900, and the average candidate is supposed to get 600. There used to be a 'non-cognitive analysis' section, (which was supposed to assess you character and suitability to a career in medicine/dentistry), which you might find mentioned in older books, but your test won't include it. The key here is being able to answer as many of the questions correctly and within the time as possible. This is extremely unlikely to be all of them. If there's a particular section you're weak at, then you can make up for it with the others, as it is your overall average score that counts.

The book I found most helpful for this was 'Get Into Medical School 600 UKCAT Practice Questions' because really you just need to do lots of practice questions and get used to the style and find techniques to help you answer very quickly. A quick warning about this book - I found the actual test (particularly the maths section) quite a lot easier than a lot of the questions in here. However, the questions you get are picked at random from a large database for each section, so you could get all the hard ones. If you've got friends who are also applying then you could always club together to buy books, maximising the number of practice questions available to you all.

There are specimen papers available on the UKCAT website, which have the advantage of being computer-based, like the real test, so they  get you used to using an onscreen calculator. Your testing centre will probably also provide you with a whiteboard (and pen XD!), so get used to writing you workings out neatly (so that you don't need to waste time wiping your board while you're in a timed section), but don't worry, you will be allowed to jot things down!

There are preparation courses available (at a cost). I didn't use any personally (and did well) and I feel that the main benefit would be additional practice which you can get much more cheaply from books or free from the UKCAT website. However, since I didn't use any I can't really comment on how useful I would have found them.

Also, don't let you preparation demoralise you. I was really struggling to get up to the 600 (average) UKCAT mark on the practice tests I did, but did much better on the day.  

Time for a cute kitteh break:

Being Strategic With Your Score

For the UKCAT you know your score before you send off you UCAS form. This means that it would be very stupid indeed to apply to somewhere which uses a particular cut-off, knowing that your score is below it. You have not spent a huge amount of time perfecting you application for some admissions tutor to take one look at your UKCAT score and throw your form away.

However, most medical schools will look at your score in context and you can generally find out from their websites how much weight they give it. So if you have a weak UKCAT, but strong A Level predictions, a good Personal Statement and reference and you interview well, then you probably still have a good shot at most of the UKCAT schools, but pick from ones that don't put a huge emphasis on your score. Likewise, if your score was very high and you know that another area of your application isn't, then use you score to your advantage.

Obviously you should be applying to medical schools that you like and would want to go to, rather than just the ones you think will be easiest to get into, but remember to be realistic. You do have 4 choices to put on the UCAS form, so although this is only 4 and you shouldn't throw any away, it is still 4 and you can spread your bets.

And Finally...

Good luck! And remember to relax on the day! Getting a bad score isn't the end of the world and won't mean that you can't become a doctor, there are medical schools that don't use it at all, don't use it much, or use the BMAT instead.

Also, silver lining here: it caused me to write this blog post which led to Word learning Snape's name.