How To Deal With Disappointing UCAT Mock Scores

Remember: this is not your real and final score

During the early stages of UCAT preparation, your mock exam scores can help accurately pinpoint your weaknesses. They help you to plan your revision and focus your efforts going forward.

If you're at an advanced stage of your UCAT preparation, there may be additional reasons as to why you've achieved a poor UCAT score in some of your mocks. You may have had a suboptimal test environment, been in a poor condition, or made mistakes that you normally don't make.

Don't worry. It’s better to be making mistakes during UCAT practice mocks, rather than in the actual exam. Make all the mistakes now, and learn from them, so you can succeed in your real UCAT exam.

Use appropriate resources

Avoid becoming unnecessarily disheartened by using accurate mock exams, rather than challenging and unrealistic mocks that don’t reflect the real UCAT exam. 

There is no advantage to using harder mock exams during your UCAT preparation. In fact, unrepresentative mocks can be detrimental to your progress because they can provide you with a wrong impression of the exam and lead to you feeling demoralised.

To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail

Remember, failure is part of the journey to success. Alexander Graham Bell failed a countless amount of times before successfully inventing the telephone. He did not quit, instead he learned from his mistakes and built upon them by researching, experimenting and using the trial and error method.

Yes, it may feel uncomfortable at first. You may feel deflated, and like you want to give up before you’ve even properly begun your UCAT preparation. But here’s the thing: you need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Think about what you want to achieve and why. You could even write this down on a piece of paper and place it somewhere visible to keep you motivated throughout your revision period. Allow the hunger of achieving your dream of going to medical or dental school to drive you until you reach the scores and outcome you desire.

In moments of doubt, or when you may be feeling the pressure of doing well, remind yourself of your goals and why they’re so important to you. If you don’t already, now could be the perfect time to practise mindfulness to reduce stress levels leading up to the UCAT exam. We also recommend exploring other strategies to help you get into the best mindset ahead of test day.

View this as an opportunity to better yourself

Reflection is key. It’s critical that you take the time to understand why you’re getting certain questions wrong. Can you identify a pattern? What are your weaknesses? Use this insight to address areas that you need to work on. Dedicate time to mastering these areas to give yourself the best shot at UCAT success.

For instance, in the Medify mock score report below, you can see that the test taker has excelled in Decision Making and Verbal Reasoning, but has not performed well in Abstract Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Situational Judgement: 

Armed with this knowledge, they can narrow the focus of their revision to address these weaker sections. More specifically, they can dig deeper into specific question types within each of these sections to pinpoint exactly where they need to improve.

How can Medify help you?

Medify removes any guesswork by providing data-driven insights. Our UCAT Online Course utilises performance feedback to easily uncover your strengths and weaknesses. You’ll also be able to access UCAT mock insights so you can compare your UCAT test mock scores with other Medify users.

In addition, our mock exams are continuously updated by our expert team to ensure they mirror the real UCAT exam experience as closely as possible. 

If you’ve gone through lots of UCAT practice questions but not seen a huge difference in your mock scores, you may find our extensive video tutorials helpful, which are included in the UCAT course.

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