So I've not been very active in the past week or so. Not that I was particularly active before that, having started this blog about a month ago. But you catch my drift.
Anyways, I thought I might offer a bit of an explanation. You see, I was busy spending all my waking hours preparing for the UKCAT. Those of you who may have read my 'about me' will know that I'm starting my final year of school - year 13 - on Monday. This is the year where (dun dun dun) we start applying to university through UCAS. The process itself is relatively straight forward, however it is a little bit more complex for medicine, which is my dream.
There are around 30 universities that offer medicine in the UK. They have three choices for admissions tests; the UKCAT (by far the most common - around 20 use this), the BMAT (less popular, places that use this include Imperial College, Oxbridge, BSMS etc), and then no admissions test at all. At the moment, I'm looking to apply to Sheffield, which requires the UKCAT.
The UKCAT is an incredibly time pressured exam - over 200 questions in an hour and a half! There are five areas with the main ones being: verbal reasoning (comprehension style), quantitative reasoning (maths), decision analysis (code cracking) and abstract reasoning (shapes and patterns) - my least favourite section! The final area is 'Situational Judgement', a fairly new part which incorporates medical ethics and applying your views on behaviours to various (medical related) examples. If I'm honest, being a bit of a geek myself, I find it quite enjoyable to do most of these sections as I like the challenge it gives, however the time constraints make it a tremendous ask to finish everything properly!
Having done it several weeks ago, I'm pleased to report back good news. Although I do get my results on the day, I've just been so busy with rehearsals, school work & starting my new job that I've not found time to write at all! But my average across the first four sections (each scored out of 900) was 697.5 - I was pretty chuffed! Different medical schools request different cut off points, and luckily for the ones I am primarily looking at, my score is well above the cut off point. The Situational Judgement test is marked quite differently, with scores being in bands from 1-4, 1 being the highest! Having only seen these style of question a few days before the exam, I was surprised and thrilled to get a band 1 score!
All in all, it was a pretty good day, topped off with a celebratory Nandos with my family - and that can never be a bad thing!
My next post will hopefully be up before the end of the week, although I can't promise anything, and it will probably be open day related (i.e. my experiences, and how to make the most of them!)
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