UCAT Guide For Students
UCAT Guide For Students
UCAT Guide For Students
GUIDE
On How To Excel On The
UCAT & Get Into Medicine
Contact information
www.ucatsecrets.com
Dear (and
Students
INTRODUCTION
future doctors),
I’m Shanaka Jayakody, the founder of UCAT Secrets, and I’d like to
personally thank you for purchasing my “Step-By-Step Guide On
How To Excel On The UCAT & Get Into Medicine”.
Just 8 years ago, I was in your position - trying to win a place into
Medicine so I could fulfil my vision of becoming a doctor.
“One of my favourite
stories was from a
student named .” Jack
Jack came to me after having failed the medical admissions
exam the previous year. He came from a rural environment and
didn’t have access to any materials, teaching or support in his
local area making it very difficult to prepare. He had scored in
just the 27th percentile (when you needed to score in over the
90th percentile to have any chance of getting into Medicine).
Over the last few weeks I’ve received hundreds of emails, calls
and messages from students asking me about how the medical
admissions process works and what they can be doing to excel
on the UCAT and get into Medicine - and so that’s why I’ve created
Good Luck!
this book.
Shanaka
I’ve created this book to explain to you everything there is to
know about the medical admissions process (because it can be
quite tricky and complex to understand) - saving you the hassle
of trawling the internet for hours and hours trying to figure it out
for yourself.
Most of all, I have made this book to give you the confidence and
certainty that you’re doing everything you can to excel on the
UCAT and get into Medicine - following in the path of hundreds
But then specifically, I created this book for students who don’t
know anything about the medical admissions process and how it
works and even students who have already done a lot of research
about the medical admissions process and are looking to find a
way to get a real edge to stand out.
THE ATAR
The ATAR is a ranking of Year 12 results that measures your
overall academic achievement in your school subjects compared
with all other final year students in Australia.
The ATAR is not a score out of 100 – it is a rank. This means that
your score between 0 and 99.95 tells you where you ranks in their
state.
E.g. an ATAR score of 70 means that you are in the top 30% of
your state.
The highest rank is 99.95, the next highest 99.90, and so on. The
lowest automatically reported rank is 30.00, with ranks below
30.00 being reported as ‘less than 30’.
• VCE:
• Chemistry UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO
• Biology or Human Biology (Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery)
• English as an Alternate language (study
• Math Applications or above
score of 30+) or English other than EAL HSFY applicants must pass all the papers
• Physics
(study score of 25+) prescribed for HSFY at first attempt, with a
• or HSC: minimum of 70% in each paper
• One of English (Standard), English
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA
(Dental Medicine - direct pathway)
(Advanced) (Band 3), or English as a UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO
Second Language (Band 4) • Must meet the standard English language (Bachelor of Dental Surgery)
competency level; and
HSFY applicants must pass all the papers
LA TROBE UNIVERSITY • The following ATAR or equivalent subjects
prescribed for HSFY at first attempt, with a
(Bachelor of Dental Science - Honours) are recommended, or may be taken as
minimum of 70% and no paper grade less
Level 1 university units:
• English as an Alternate language (study than 65%
• Chemistry
score of 35+) or English other than EAL • Biology or Human Biology
(study score of 30+) • Math Applications or above
• and Biology (study score of 25+) or overall • Physics
grade of at least 60% in Unilearn Biology;
• and Chemistry (study score of 25+)
THEUCAT
The UCAT is an aptitude test designed to find students with the abilities of a successful doctor or dentist. These abilities include: critical
analysis, problem solving, pattern recognition, decision making, medical principles. You will have to sit this test when you are in Year 12 (for
entrance into Medicine next year). You cannot sit the exam until then - but you can prepare for it! You should be aiming to score in at least
the 90th percentile score to be competitive (this means you’re in the top 10% of students sitting the test).
1 2 3 4 5
VERBAL DECISION QUANTITATIVE ABSTRACT SITUATIONAL
REASONING MAKING REASONING REASONING JUDGEMENT
One week after the final UCAT exam, an official UCAT calculator is released for students to enter their aggregate UCAT score and find out
their percentile.
In 2019, the average UCAT score for all students was 2481 (50th percentile).
The average UCAT score required for admission into Medicine was ~2800 (90th percentile).
Our students scored 2803 on average (91st percentile) - which is enough to get accepted into Medicine.
The ATAR is a good indicator of your intelligence and work ethic They don’t want to waste time teaching the UCAT, and focus all
but it’s the UCAT that indicates your ability to become a good their attention and energies on helping everyone with their ATAR.
doctor.
Especially because schools are judged by their ATAR results, not
This is why universities look at both your UCAT and ATAR scores. by the UCAT scores they produce.
It says it on their website: And so this is why schools don’t provide any sort of guidance
whatsoever with the UCAT exam, let alone the structured
“UCAT seeks to identify the characteristics in applicants which curriculum, regular assessments and monitoring, and ongoing
will make them good clinicians and thus to improve the quality support that they provide for your ATAR subjects.
Which makes it very hard for most parents as being such a new
exam to Australia, it’s very hard to find proper guidance for it,
let alone detailed information on how you should structure your
preparation.
After all, students are left totally in the dark about what the UCAT
exam is and how to prepare for it.
A tactic that may work for a subject like Maths where we can
probably just hire a tutor and do thousands of practice questions
in the nights before the exam.
But unlike Maths… (and all their other subjects)... where if they
just do a stack of practice questions with a tutor they’ll get good
marks.
This doesn’t work on the UCAT! This was the trap I fell into!
This time I’d even planned out how I’d prepare for my ATAR
You see, for a lot of my schooling, I was someone who never had
subjects, and then how to balance that with my medical
much trouble with my work. My marks were always good, and so
admissions prep (which is the UCAT for you). So basically I bought
I thought I was one of those kids who could just get away without
10,000 odd practice questions from Medentry and decided to
having to do much work. But all this was changed when I moved
churn them out each day. 4.30pm to 7pm every single day would
schools in Year 9.
be dedicated to this exam, pumping out practice questions and
hoping that one day it’d just click and I’d start getting them all
I was at a new school and all of a sudden, I was up against all
right.
these kids who were actually smarter than me. And I started
failing things. It was weird, but for the first time in my life I didn’t
And so after struggling for months and months and months
feel like I was “smart guy” anymore that could just get good
trying to answer these questions, and going to every single free
marks without doing anything. And I actually started doing pretty
workshop I could find, surfing the forums for secret tips and
poorly.
watching heaps of videos on YT, I thought I was ready for the
exam. I walked in, a little nervous, but confident, even a little bit
I went from being that kid that watched Netflix all day and played
arrogant, knowing that basically no one would have spent as
games constantly in class and then walked out of exams with
much time studying for this exam as me. 4.30-7pm every single
90s, to now I was walking out of the exam hall with the fear and
day. And yet as I walked out of the testing centre in Carlton, I
anxiety cripplying my body as I realised I would have to show my
knew my dream was over.
parents the marks I’d gotten.
I’d failed the medical admissions exam (it’s called UCAT for you),
And so it dawned on me pretty quickly that this whole no
really badly. In fact, I’d scored in just the 31st percentile. I’d
studying thing was fun while it lasted, but I actually had to study
missed out on a place into Medicine, and was left having to take
for a change before my parents noticed my results. My exam
a bus, two trains and an 18 minute walk through bushland and
scores were showing me that I couldn’t just rely on natural talent
scrub to get to the god damn university where I was studying
or being “smart” anymore, I actually had to work hard.
Biomedicine. And the degree was a bit of a joke. I still remember
how red I went when I had to tell the boys at lunchtime what I was
doing. They didn’t even laugh, it was that bad.
And so when I started Year And so when I started this course, it felt like the place to be for
11, I knew I had to become a students that didn’t get into Medicine. I saw a lot of my school
friends heading off with their swanky textbooks and “Med School
workhorse. I knew that just 2012” hoodies to uni and yet I was left with all the deadbeats that
never made it. And I think it was only on the 3rd or 4th day of uni
relying on mynatural talent, that I came across this guy that was 8 years out of school, and
STILL trying to get into Med School.
one on one, versus everyone He’d failed the medical admissions exam in Year 12, tried again in
first year and done thousands of practice questions like me and
else would mean I’d always failed, and then he tried it again, and failed, and so then he tried
the GAMSAT, trying to get into postgrad Med in his 4th year, 5th
get destroyed… year and 6th year, and he never got in, so he took a year off and
failed, did an honours year and failed, took another year off, and
then he finally got into Medicine 8 years after he finished school.
Unlike every other subject like Maths or Chem or English, where It was like getting the answer to what is the meaning of life
we can just do a stack of practice questions and prepare for straight from god. I’d got the answer to how to prepare straight
months and months in advance and see some improvement... from the people who made the exam. I’d literally pulled it straight
this doesn’t work on medical admissions exams like the UCAT. out of their very own documents.
If we just do thousands of practice questions, we won’t see any And so from that point onwards, I said to myself, I’m going to
improvement, just like we wouldn’t if we sat hundreds of IQ tests. blatantly ignore every single person, how my friends are studying,
And so instead, the only way we can improve our UCAT score is how my parents say I should study, and all I’m just going to focus
to understand why the creators of the exam, which is the UCAT on working out exactly what skills I’m being assessed on in each
Consortium right now actually made this exam. question.
Why were they forcing And so I spent virtually all my time figuring out which
characteristics the examiners were assessing me on in each type
19,000students to sit this of question, and this meant I did like 10% of the questions I’d
done the year before.
“UCAT seeks to identify the characteristics in applicants which And so for the next 7 years I tutored for thousands and thousands
will make them good clinicians and thus to improve the quality of hours, helping hundreds of other students who were just like
of those who enter the professions with the ultimate aim of me, wondering how to pass this exam and get into Medicine,
improving patient care” And so basically what this means is that achieve remarkable UMAT scores.
they want to identify the students who have the characteristics,
which is just a fancy way of saying the skills, that will make them 310 of my students won places into Medicine, and I sat this exam
good doctors in the future. every year, scoring in the top 1% 7 years straight.
You probably fell off, graze your knee, stacked it completely, 1. Figure out what skills we’re being assessed on in each question,
ridden slowly with much trepidation, but you kept getting back and then
up on your bike, and each time you did, you got better and better.
2. Learn these skills, so we can prove to our examiners that we
Over the course of a few months, you will eventually become so would make good doctors.
good at riding your bike that you didn’t even have to think about
it. The steering, peddling, keeping balanced, all that, just became Here’s an example of how we can do this for Verbal Reasoning.
natural after months of diligent practice. Did you expect to be
able to just get on the bike and ride off easily straight away?
We’ll be doing this using a method I like to call “idea extraction”
Nope.
which allows you to “draw conclusions from complex written
stimuli” and answer any type of Verbal Reasoning question in
23 to 26 seconds flat, instead of the 5, 6, 7 minutes that most
Learning this skill takes hours of consistent practice for months students take as they slowly read through the entire passage
on end… we can’t just learn it overnight! This is the case with all sitting in front of them, taking up precious time that you can’t
skills - they take time to develop. afford to waste on the UCAT exam.
Especially the skills the UCAT Consortium is assessing you for Not only will they dramatically cut down the amount of time you
on in the UCAT… they take time to develop and so we can’t just
spend answering these questions, from minutes and minutes,
“cram” our way to success... just like we couldn’t cram our way to
but to well under 30 seconds, but you’ll actually find it far easier
learning how to ride a bike!
to answer these questions as this is the exact approach that the
It takes consistent, diligent daily practice for 6-12 months to build UCAT Consortium, these are the people who actually make the
the skills necessary for UCAT success! And so you now know you exam, want you to take. Just imagine going from struggling with
should be preparing consistently over the next 6-12 months to questions, doing question after question after question, only to
build these skills but how can you best prepare from here? see little to no improvement, and your marks fluctuating up and
down, and all of a sudden, with astonishing speed, being able to
answer any UCAT question in a few seconds.
But the interesting thing is, and this is what the UCAT Consortium
has actually documented for is that, that’s not what they’re
testing for. They don’t want to know how well you interpret and
understand the information in the passage. They don’t want you
to read the passage. Yes, sounds crazy. But they don’t want you
to read the passage.
Okay Stop. So lets quickly look at the answers here now, and again, this is
what the other video did wrong, they went through each answer
That’s all I’ve read. And with a fine tooth comb proving why it was correct or incorrect,
whereas it takes a very small amount of common sense to realise
context as to what the Answer (b), ‘it reduces the setup cost’. So it has the word cost
in there, so we’ll put an asterisk next to this one, but it has the
passage is about. words ‘set-up’ in there, which I’m not sure about.
Answer (c) says it’s ‘publicly known to be better than coal’. But
I know that they’re talking about the importance of solar panels again, even after just reading the first sentence, we know it’s not
because of rising energy costs. That’s all I’ve done, and now I’m about what’s better or worse, but it’s about rising energy costs.
going to the question over here, and it says ‘Solar energy is now And so I’m sure you’d agree, but it’s not C either.
useful because…’
And so (d) says ‘it costs less to produce energy’. Okay, so do you
And so now having read the question, the question is telling us see how similar that sounds to the first sentence of the passage
exactly what we need to find. It wants us to figure out why solar that said ‘solar panels are important because of rising energy
You must believe that you can get a 99+ ATAR score, you must For some students, you might feel like you’ve learnt enough to
believe you can score in the 91st percentile on UCAT like my past go and prepare for the medical admissions process on your own.
students have, and you must start acting like the student that If this is you and you feel confident enough to take what you’ve
would get these kind of results. learnt today and go at it alone… please do!
But you can’t just blindly believe you’re going to do well - you But I will leave you with a question…
have to start thinking, behaving and acting like a student that will.
Think about the students you’ve seen get amazing results and get How do you know if you are doing the right things now to get into
into Medicine. I want you to think about the way these students Medicine?
act and what do they do differently.
Do you have the right study skills? Are you organised enough?
Find one of the students at your school who you think will get into Disciplined enough? Focused on the right parts of your UCAT and
Medicine and start copying how they approach each day. ATAR preparation? What if you get stuck?
What time do they wake up? When do they study? How do they These are all the kinds of things you might be wondering.
study? Look at what they’re doing and copy these how they think,
act and behave. This is how you become a 99+ ATAR student Well over the last 7 years we’ve helped 100s of students get into
overnight - you copy their key habits, the way they think, act and Medicine and eventually become doctors via our best-selling
behave. program called the “UCAT Crash Course”.
One of the top students in Australia last year - Kusal - picked a role This program books out months before it launches every year
model from his school that had got 99.5 and copied everything he because it is Australia’s #1 UCAT preparation program by results.
did. Kusal ended up with a 99.5 ATAR and got into Medicine.
Last year, whilst the average UCAT score in Australia was 2481
Before you finish this book, decide on who your role model will (50th percentile), the average UCAT score from students in this
be and how you will copy their thoughts, actions and beliefs to set program was a remarkable 2803 (91st percentile). This is enough
yourself up to become a 99+ ATAR student overnight. to get accepted into any medical school in Austalia.
Places in this training are limited, and even if you don’t think
you’re interested in the UCAT Crash Course at this time, make
sure you register to watch the training as it gives you behind-the-
scenes access to the exact hack that my students and I use to get
such incredible results!
https://www.ucatsecrets.com.au/ucatmasterclass-v1