Thursday 27 June 2013

Uni Exams Over - SUMMER TIME!!

So after slaving away in the library for hours and hours and hours, exams are now all done and I've finished my second year of uni! (Now the med school work begins!)

Note about grade requirements: All the med schools I am applying to all ask for a 2:1 or higher, so this is what I am aiming for. I achieved a first in my January exams, so I've just got to maintain that for the next year! 

I spent the first day or two or holidays doing naff all and catching up on sleep and food (as you do), but now its time to CRACK ON!

Task 1 to Crack On With = EXAMS!!

This summer I am sitting 2 medical school exams, these are the GAMSAT and the UKCAT.

GAMSAT - Is a graduate medical school admissions test set out by the Australian Council for Educational Research. It aims to test the abilities and skills you have gained through your degree, and tests your understanding of basic science concepts as well as problem solving, critical thinking and writing.
The exam is split into 3 sections, Humanities and Social Stuff, Written Communication and a Science Section.
Humanities-MCQ questions, based around anything ranging from a poem, quotes, cartoons, pictures, with an underlying social theme.
Writing - Asks you to write 2 30 minute essays (or 2 essays in 1 hour if it makes it sound better) and these essays will be based on quotes that will be provided. The quotes will have an underlying theme like love, friendship, humour, courage etc, and its up to you to write an imaginative essay that may argue for your against the theme.
Science-MCQ questions, split into 40% Biology, 40 % Chemistry and 20% Physics. The questions may use tables and graphs that you have to understand and extract information from.
The exam costs £228 this year (HOLY MOLEY) and the everyone in the country takes the exam in a few test centers on the same day, and the process is from 8am-4pm. It will be a long day! My closest test center is Bristol so I will be heading there!
http://www.gamsat-ie.org/

UKCAT - Is the UK Clinical Aptitude Test, on the UKCAT website they say that the exam cannot be revised for....(good one) and tests the "cognitive powers of candidates"
It is split into 5 sections, Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning, Decision Analysis and Situational Judgment. The exam costs £65 to take and you can book when you take your test and the nearest test center to you.
http://www.ukcat.ac.uk/

There is a LOT of advice on their official websites as well as elsewhere on the internet about how to prepare for these exams, so I will do another section on that because this is the part that I'm pretty worried about.
I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed at how much revision and preparation I have to do for the GAMSAT, in particular the written and humanities section as they could have political and historical underlying themes which I know NOTHING about.

Wish me luck on my road to revision...
Gunna have to make time fo that!

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