6) The UKCAT and the BMAT

The UKCAT (United Kingdom Clinical Aptitude Test) and BMAT (BioMedical Admissions Test) are two standardised tests that are common requirements for United Kingdom institutions' entry criteria onto a medical qualification. 

Medicine is ultra-competitive and amongst the various admission demands are the UKCAT and BMAT tests. These are by far the most popular choices of admission test amongst medical schools across the UK and are designed to test various areas of your thinking skills, medical knowledge and clinical aptitude. It doesn’t end there, though, as many universities now have their own admissions tests. It all seems very daunting and many students really fear these 2-hour exams that will take place in addition to their A-Levels.

There has been much debate over how useful these tests are, but they simply serve as another means of screening the vast number of applications made to med schools up and down the country. One challenge applicants do face is knowing the requirements of each university. Some will accept either, others just one and not the other, for this reason many students take both examinations so they have a greater choice of universities to apply to. 

Both exams take different forms, with the UKCAT being a digital test that focuses on candidates answering questions of varying difficulty in short spaces of time over topics ranging from Verbal Reasoning, to Quantitative Reasoning, to Abstract Reasoning, to Situational Judgement and so on. The BMAT, however, is a written examination with an emphasis on mathematics, science and logical thinking.

The onus is on students to book their examinations of their own accord prior to university. The tests can only be taken once, and are only valid for one registration period, meaning that you couldn't sit a UKCAT exam in the summer of 2018 and use it to enrol into medical school starting in 2020 for example. 

These tests come at a price too. With UKCAT setting students back £65, for tests taken before September 2018, £87 for tests taken after September 2018 and for international students the cost is £115, while the BMAT's costs start at £46 to sit for UK and EU nationals. However, both examining bodies offer a bursary that allows individuals to take the test for free depending on their household income situation.

If the prospect of a pre-enrolment exam feels a little bit frightening, fear not - there are plenty of websites online that offer free trial runs of the tests to help you gain an idea of what to expect. Practice.ukcat.ac.uk and Cambridge University's portal, admissionstesting.org, both provide excellent samples to help you prepare for UKCAT and BMAT respectively.

UKCAT

The UK Clinical Aptitude Test has gained some notoriety for being hard, very fast and rather gruelling. It’s the kind of test which just doesn’t gel with some people and finding out if you’re one of them is important to determine how much revision you need to do (or whether you want to apply to BMAT universities). It isn’t free to sit and you can only make one application per year so passing first time is all the more important. If you don’t pass then you’ll have to take a gap year and try again. If this does happen then don’t despair - it gives you so much extra time to brush up on everything and gain more work experience before your degree - the same applies for the BMAT.

The UKCAT is composed of five test categories: Abstract Reasoning, a Situational Judgement Test, Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Decision Making.

• The Verbal Reasoning section tests your ability to quickly sift through information logically. It will present you with a series of passages and then will quiz you on various elements of their contents.
• The Decision Making Test will survey how well you can apply logic to arrive at a useful and accurate conclusion. It will present you with charts, data and written/visual information and then ask you interpret what you've seen.
• The Quantitative Reasoning Test section checks how you can arrive at logical conclusions that are drawn from numerical information.
• The Abstract Reasoning Subtest checks your ability to extract and determine patterns from shapes and other graphical information.
• The Situational Judgement test assesses how good you are at noticing important factors in practical real-world situations. It checks how well your values and working ethics align to the General Medical Council’s guidelines.

BMAT

The BioMedical Admissions Test ascertains your critical and logical thinking skills alongside knowledge you should have retained from school. Some consider it the harder of the two tests but this is very subjective - it just depends on your skills and knowledge. The BMAT is required by Oxbridge and amongst some of the UK’s other top med-schools. Whilst it does present plenty of the more abstract or ‘IQ-like’ questions, it has been designed to rigorously test intellect, skills and knowledge and does so via 3 test areas:

Aptitude and Skills: This area tests your ability to problem solve, analyse data and generate conclusions from complex or abstract information. It’s 60 minutes long and is comprised of multiple choice questions. Many might think “ooh, multiple choice… that’s easy” but unfortunately, it isn’t! These questions often take the form of hypothetical situations and ask you to deduce an answer based on logic and critical thinking.

Scientific Knowledge and Applications: This section is designed to reaffirm your knowledge from school, particularly knowledge acquired before the age of 16. That makes it sound easy but these questions are designed to make you transfer your understanding of basic principles and reinterpret them onto more complex questions.

Writing Task: This section requires you to produce a written essay-like answer to one of 3 questions. It evaluates your ability to communicate written information neatly and in an organised, intellectually stimulative and detailed manner.

The best advice we can offer for the UKCAT and the BMAT is practice, practice and practice again. There's no magic formula for success for these, simply a case of knowing what to expect on the day and being well prepared. They are designed to test an applicants core strengths in various areas and so there's nothing you can really learn from a textbook that will give you an edge on the day. The whole point of them is that they are designed to level the playing field so you can't just memorise facts and answer questions you've revised, think of them like IQ tests, an intelligence screening process. The biggest problem students usually encounter is not practicing and being unprepared for the type of questions that will come up. If you make good use of the available resources, no question should come as a surprise. Yes, the question itself will differ from what you have practiced but the general layout and formula of the questions should be very familiar.