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2020 UCAT
PLANNER
THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SCORING IN THE TOP 1%

BY MEDICHUT.

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This planner is intended as a supporting document for planning your UCAT

studies. If used correctly, this guide will serve as the ultimate planning tool to
score in the top 1% of the UCAT. If this is not your goal, it can still be used to
maximise your score. Whether you’ve already started, or are still thinking about
starting, this will be a useful tool to help keep you organised, track your progress,
and provide valuable advice on how to manage your revision time.

We’ll divide revision into four stages:

Stage 1: Planning
Stage 2: Strategies
Stage 3: Practice
Stage 4: Intense Practice and Official Mocks

Stage 1 - Planning

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started”

The first stage is fairly straight-forward. You need to start planning ahead. On the
following two pages, you will find a calendar of the upcoming months. Please
complete the following tasks.

1. Circle the date you will start revising for the UCAT.
2. Circle the date you intend to sit the UCAT. You will be able to book a date
on 1st July, so prior to this, you should estimate a date. This will allow you to
set a goal for when you want to complete the exam by.

(MedicHut. Tip: We recommend sitting the UCAT before going back to school in
September, as this will allow you to study with complete focus and attention. However,
regardless of when you decide to sit the exam, our top 1% scorers advise that you have
at least 6-7 weeks of revision to ensure an optimal outcome.)

3. Calculate how many days and weeks of revision you will have and fill out
the subsequent blanks. This will later be important for filling out your
timetable towards the end of this planner.

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JUN2020
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JUL2020
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AUG2020
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SEP2020
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I will have _____ days to study for my exam.

I will have _____ weeks to study for my exam.

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Stage 2 – Strategies

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude”

Once you’ve made a rough timetable, you can plan in further detail. This stage
should take approximately 2 weeks.

Stage 2 consists of learning the knowledge that is necessary for the UCAT. Some
people get a rough idea of each section, then jump straight to practice
questions and assume that they will get better with time. The UCAT is definitely a
test that you can do great on with practice, but it is much more of a strategy
test than an aptitude test. Someone with a lower aptitude can learn the
techniques necessary to answer the different question types, practice for weeks,
and gain a much higher score than someone with a higher aptitude who has
not learnt the necessary strategies.

So, before you start practicing, you need to dedicate Stage 2 of your planner to
learning and solidifying the necessary strategies. There are various resources for
this. Amongst our awesome blog posts and other resources we have, you can
check out our 250-page eBook that has been written by students who scored in
the top 1% of the UCAT. This can be found at www.medichut.com/online-ucat-
masterclass or alternatively, scan the QR code below. This explains everything
you need to know about each section and is available for pre-order for only
£7.99. There are also bursaries available for students who may not be able to
afford the cost.

Once you have found a resource you want to use, you can plan out stage 2. If
you only have about an hour a day, you can use a timetable similar to this:

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Day Task
1,2 Introduce yourself to Verbal Reasoning and learn all relevant
strategies

3 Practice questions using Verbal Reasoning strategies

4,5 Introduce yourself to Decision Making and learn all relevant

strategies

6 Practice questions using Decision Making strategies

7 Break
9,10 Introduce yourself to Quantitative Reasoning and learn all relevant
strategies

11 Practice questions using Quantitative Reasoning strategies

12,13 Introduce yourself to Abstract Reasoning and learn all relevant
strategies

14,15 Practice questions using Abstract Reasoning strategies

16 Introduce yourself to Situational Judgement and learn all relevant
strategies

17 Practice questions using Situational Judgement strategies

18 Break

MedicHut. Tip: Whenever you get a question wrong, take a moment to evaluate why
you got it wrong. Reflect on what you did wrong – did you misuse a technique? Did you
misunderstand the question? What exactly led to you getting it wrong? And do you
now understand why a different answer is correct? These brief moments of reflection will
go a long way, as you can never improve until you understand what you’re doing
wrong.

If you have at least 2 hours to spend each day, you can reduce the number of
days spent on introducing yourself to the topic as well as learning the relevant
strategies. This would look like this:

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Day Task
1 Introduce yourself to Verbal Reasoning and learn all relevant
strategies

2 Practice questions using Verbal Reasoning strategies

3 Introduce yourself to Decision Making and learn all relevant
strategies

4 Practice questions using Decision Making strategies

5 Break
6 Introduce yourself to Quantitative Reasoning and learn all relevant
strategies

7 Practice questions using Quantitative Reasoning strategies

8 Introduce yourself to Abstract Reasoning and learn all relevant
strategies

9 Practice questions using Abstract Reasoning strategies

10 Introduce yourself to Situational Judgement and learn all relevant
strategies

11 Practice questions using Situational Judgement strategies

12 Break

Please ensure you factor in breaks as often as necessary, as you don’t want to
burn out.

Whether you decide to use one of the above timetables or have your own
timetable in mind that better suits you, please fill out the start and end dates of
Stage 2 in the calendars. Please also fill out all of the breaks you will be taking,
whether for relaxation, or for important events.

At the end of this planner, you will find a blank template to fill out each
individual day. You can now fill out each day of stage 2 in the template. We
created the above timetable examples to allow you to learn each section in
the order that the UCAT questions will appear on the day, but you can learn the
sections in any order that suits you.

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Stage 3 – Practice

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going”

By now you should have:

A) A good idea of each section of the UCAT
B) Learnt all of the relevant strategies
C) Had a go at practice questions for each section

You are now ready to put your head down! Time to do LOTS of practice
questions! We asked some of the students who scored in the top 1% how many
practice questions they did – they replied with “thousands”. So, if you don’t
want your UCAT score to prevent you from getting a place in medicine or
dentistry, you need to spend many weeks on stage 3 and do thousands of
questions. We are each capable of achieving a high score in the UCAT. What
differentiates the top-scoring candidates from others is the sheer amount of
work they put into revision.

[MedicHut. Tip: If you truly want to be a doctor or a dentist, you need to work hard.
There is no easy route to success. Don't give up, don't shy away due to doubts you may
have, and ignore doubts that others may have. If you stay dedicated, stay on top of
your work, and really put in the hours - you're on the way to reaching your goals!]

Over the next 3+ weeks, we’d recommend spending at least 2 hours a day
doing practice questions, with at least 1 day off a week. Again, this is to prevent
yourself from burning out. Ensure that you go back over strategies for each
section if you’re unclear how to answer questions, especially for a section you
may be struggling with. If you haven’t been reflecting on each question you get
wrong, now is the time to start! Reflection is an essential component of growth.

You can fill in the start and end dates of Stage 3 on the calendar, and fill in the
details of each date in the timetable towards the end of this planner. There is
also a table to fill out the scores you achieve on each mock exam you do. This
will help you keep track of your progress.

An example timetable is as follows:

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Day Task

13 Mock exam
14 Practice Verbal Reasoning questions

15 Practice Decision Making questions

16 Practice Quantitative Reasoning questions

17 Practice Abstract Reasoning questions

18 Practice Situational Judgement questions

19 Mock exam

20 Break

21 Practice Verbal Reasoning questions

22 Practice Decision Making questions

23 Practice Quantitative Reasoning questions
24 Practice Abstract Reasoning questions

25 Practice Situational Judgement questions

26 Mock exam

27 Break

28 Practice questions on the section you struggle most with

29 Practice questions on the section you struggle most with

30 Practice questions on a section you find okay

31 Practice questions on a section you find okay

32 Practice questions on a section you find okay

33 Practice questions on the section you find easiest

34 Break

35 Practice questions on the section you score the lowest on

36 Mock exam

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Stage 4 – Intense Practice and Official Mocks

“Push yourself – no one else is going to do it for you”

At this stage, you should have a good idea of which sections you’re doing well
in, and which sections you struggle more with. Over the next 1 to 2 weeks, you
will need to spend more time each day. This is the intense revision stage, just
prior to your UCAT. Here, you will spend at least 10 days revising for at least 2 to 3
hours a day. You can target your revision to focusing mainly on the section(s)
that you struggle with, and spend less time on the section(s) you find easy. You
still need to practice the easy ones at this stage, but can allocate an
appropriate amount of time.

An example timetable is as follows:

Day Task

37 30 minutes on the easiest section

1 hour on an “okay” section
1.5 hours on the most difficult section
38 1 hour on an “okay” section
1 hour on another “okay” section
1 hour on the most difficult section
39 30 minutes on each of the 5 sections

40 UCAT Official Mock Exam 1

41 30 minutes on each of the 5 sections

An extra hour on the most difficult section
42 UCAT Official Mock Exam 3
43 Break

44 UCAT Official Mock Exam 2

45 3 hours of general revision

46 UCAT Official Mock Exam 4

47 1 hour of general revision – just going over any important last-minute

details. DO NOT spend the whole day revising before the exam.
48 Exam day

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You can now fill out the start and end dates of stage 4 in the calendar, and fill
out details of each individual day in the timetable at the end of this planner.
There is also a table to fill out the scores you achieve on each mock exam to do.
This will help you keep track of your progress.

Last, but not least, look after yourself throughout the whole process. It will be
long and it will be tiring, but it will be worth it. If you plan early, you only need to
spend 1-3 hours each day revising. This gives you up to 23 free hours in every
single day! From a group of medical students to each aspiring medical student
out there – you got this! Hope to see you on the other side.

Top Tips

Here are some quick and easy tips to get you started.

1. Each question, whether long or short, whether easy or insanely difficult, is

worth the same number of marks. In your exam, flag the difficult questions,
move on, and answer all of the easy ones before coming back. Often,
they like to put difficult questions at the beginning of the section so you
waste time and run out of time for the easy ones!
2. Familiarise yourself with shortcuts to save time:
a. Alt+N will pull up the next question
b. Alt+P will take you back to the previous question
c. Alt+F will flag or unflag the question
d. Alt+C will bring up the on-screen calculator
3. Know the exact timings of each section:
a. Verbal Reasoning – 22 minutes and 44 questions (30 seconds per
question)
b. Decision Making – 32 minutes and 29 questions (1 minute and 6
seconds per question)
c. Quantitative Reasoning – 25 minutes and 36 questions (42 seconds
per question)
d. Abstract Reasoning (14 minutes and 55 questions (15 seconds per
question)
e. Situational Judgement Test – 27 minutes and 68 questions (24
seconds per question)
4. Practice, practice, practice. But also reflect, reflect and reflect on what
you get wrong.

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Planner

MY UCAT MOCK EXAM SCORES

Mock VR DM QR AR Average SJT

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“Plan your work and work your plan”

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MY PERSONAL PLANNER

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♥ Thank you to Uzair Sarfaraz for inspiring the creation of this planner

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