Rainbows.

What was it Dolly Parton said? "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow you gotta put up with the rain." Well I'm not so sure how the rain's benifitted me, but two years of hard work and revision certainly has paid off; last Thursday was A Level results day.

I was extremely pleased to receive four and a half A grades in Biology, Chemistry, Maths, Psychology and my Extended Project (this is the half!). Being such a clever clogs I was asked for a picture/few words for the New College website, BBC Wiltshire and the Swindon Adver. Thankfully, I haven't seen the two latter. However, I was also asked to be interviewed on BBC Points West via Skype Thursday evening; so I'll be sending out autographs on request.

Apart from the standard 'so how do you feel?' chat my gap year was also mentioned. Really, nothing should detract from the pride of receiving such well-deserved grades after working so hard all year but there was always going to be a sense of yet it still wasn't good enough. 

Honestly, I'm not bitter at all; I'm very pleased for everybody who's going to University, whichever course they're going to do. I hope those who didn't quite meet their offers find a clearing place, or have an otherwise excellent gap year. But I'm still gutted that I'm not going as well; a little bit sad whenever someone updates their Facebook to 'University of XYZ'.

But, despite not going next month and despite the potential £100, 000 debt I'll end up with, I'm sure it'll work itself out. Hopefully, I'll have an excellent, insightful year out and then secure a place next year. I've already admitted that the Uni's I applied to in 2010 weren't really that suitable for me and now I can make more informed choices, have more to cram into my statement and have a proven record of academic acheivement. I'll do fine.

And if you are going to Freshers' next month; have one for me.

King Rat.

Morning! Unusual for me to post a quick, little blog but I'm really trying very hard to keep myself busy before Thursday (I find it holds back the worry a little easier...) I'm also waiting to go to work. Found two Psychology articles that you might find interesting this morning.

Firstly, a report on the prevalence of autism (which provokes an interesting discussion on how careful parents should be when considering a second child).

And also a very interesting study on evolution complete with a lovely picture of a killer rat.

Enjoy.

Nightmares.

Both of my latest blogs have began with words to the effect of 'I'm really sorry for my lack of updates...', and again, I am really sorry.

It's a very odd time for this blog (and me), mostly because my days are so unstructured right now. Although I'm not going to university in September, these 'summer holidays' are still a nerve-wracking 'make or break' time for me; the outcomes of my UKCAT and exam results will be really pivotal to how smoothly this next year runs.

Despite the lack of structure, I try to keep busy from day to day. I've had a few days training at the Ridgeway School and I've had training for my summer job with the Council. But it's hardly enough to write a blog about. I've completed one of four scheduled shifts at the Chalet School. I promise to write something witty and anecdotal at the end of the summer.

August is a very odd in-between month for me/most college leavers and personally I can't wait for September. It's also pretty stressful, with three really key events going on.

Firstly, my UKCAT. I blogged and blogged about it last month and I finally sat it on August 3rd. 'How did you do?' was the obvious response. Well, better and worse. Which is a politicians answer to something as discriminative as a test. If you don't remember, the UKCAT is scored out of four sections. My overall score was lower than last year (2820 down from last year's 2890) and therefore my average was lower at 705, compared to 722.5. Although I was disappointed, an average of over 700 is still respectable. Predictably, in three out of four sections I scored more poorly (Verbal, Quanititative and Decision Analysis).

Although this sounds negative, my scores this year were more even compared to last year's 'spiky cognitive profile'. After Tom's advice in an earlier blog, I've looked more closely at how different universities use the UKCAT score. Some, like Hull and York Medical School look at the overall score, whereas other such as Edinburgh (or the old system at Leicester) focus on the lowest sectional score. Therefore, a more even cognitive profile is beneficial as my 'lowest' has improved from 600 to 670. Essentially, although I would've liked to better my score, I'm still pleased as it's still a respectable result.

Secondly, I've been cracking on with my Personal Statement; the bane of most applicants' life. I struggled enough to fit everything into 4000 characters last year, so this year (with an extra years' worth of experiences, insights and achievements) it's extra hard, plus I have to describe my  gap year plans before I've even started my job. Currently, I'm on around 4,500 characters, with no description of any 'personal achievements' e.g. Student Union, this blog, peer mentoring, Villiers Park, my Extended Project, signalong training, part-time work, MedSim/MedLink/ATOM, volunteering at college, nominations for awards...

Thirdly, I have had my second 'Results Day' nightmare in two days. In last night's, I receive A*AAC and the admissions officers tell me it isn't enough to be accepted. (However, in the dream I receive the C in Maths; which is impossible due to the way my previous marks average out, which cheered me up a bit this morning). There's not a great deal more to say on the matter; I think I'll get AAAA, I would love A*AAA (unlikely) and AAAB would lead to tears, but I think I could scrape by.

Box-checking.

I’ve diagnosed myself with an acute spate of restlessness. Symptoms include boredom eating, desperate urge to revise, mid-afternoon naps and uncontrollable excitement at prospect of work. Treatment: 1 month excessive planning and university preparation.

Seriously, I thought I’d enjoy a break from college. In reality it’s dull; all my friends have full time jobs/taking as many hours as humanly possible whilst my own trusty part-time employer has had a cull on overtime. So, I’ve been busying myself with university ‘stuff’. The first task: passing my UKCAT.

AKA the 'are you doctor material?' test. Because it isn't hard enough to get in, as it is... Currently I'm preparing for my second UKCAT test, to be taken next month, as a test is required for each application cycle.

Introduced in 2006, the UKCAT was designed to be another measure used to decide between equally highly-qualified medicine applicants. As I've said multiple times, Medicine now is ridiculously competitive and over-subscribed; it seems every applicant has an exemplary academic record, numerous work experience placements as well as examples of over-achievement since childhood in excess. So how would you go about choosing which 300 students you want out of 5000+ applicants?

The official line from UKCAT goes as follows: "UKCAT is committed to achieving greater fairness in selection to Medicine and Dentistry and to the widening participation in medical and dental training of under-represented social groups".

I think, what they mean is that by setting another test (that cannot be revised for) it puts everybody to a 'level playing field', which shouldn't be affected by what education you've had.

The UKCAT is 'un-revisable' because it has a very similar format to IQ tests; the questions aren't based on any previous knowledge and rely on four key skills:

• Verbal reasoning - assesses candidates' ability to think logically about written information and to arrive at a reasoned conclusion.
• Quantitative reasoning - assesses candidates' ability to solve numerical problems.
• Abstract reasoning - assesses candidates' ability to infer relationships from information by convergent and divergent thinking.
• Decision analysis - assesses candidates' ability to deal with various forms of information, to infer relationships, to make informed judgements, and to decide on an appropriate response, in situations of complexity and ambiguity.

These descriptions offer a persuasive argument for the use of the UKCAT; surely the use of logic, judgement making and convergent/divergent thinking are useful skills for a doctor to possess, and not ones tested by standard exams (A Levels, GCSEs etc) which also should mean that because these skills are seen as innate, it doesn’t matter if you went to Eton or Nova Hreod Community College (as I did, the latter not the former!). I partly agree, but would be very interested to know your own opinion when I show you some examples in a second.

Another point before I move on; last year I took the UKCAT statement of being 'un-revisable' to the extreme and used just the two practice tests recommended on the UKCAT website, in order to become familiar with the format.

Since then I have realised the majority of students prepare heavily for the test (which can be sat any time between Spring and September). Whilst nothing is endorsed by the UKCAT itself, many books are available to purchase on the internet as well as 'UKCAT courses'. An overnight, 2 day course in London costs around £259; 10 hours private tutoring costs £1250. Personally, I think this is extremely unnecessary; when you take a look at my score for last year you'll see why.

This year I'm using more common sense and practising using a book and some past papers lent to me by the lovely Navid.

The first section under test is Verbal Reasoning: "The Verbal Reasoning subtest assesses a candidate's ability to read and think carefully about information presented in passages".

A typical question would go as follows:

Example Passage: aiming for excellence

For 2004-05, the Council has to report to the Audit Commission results against 56 Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs). In summary our performance against these indicators was: targets were set for 44 BVPIs and the Council reached or exceeded target for 35 BVPIs; 80 percent of targets were reached or exceeded; 45 BVPIs were measured in both 2003-04 and 2004-05 and for these the Council's performance improved, or remained unchanged at the best possible performance; 62 percent of indicators showed improvementor were unchanged at best performance possible; there are 34 BVPIs for which comparative data against all other similar councils is available and of these the Council achieved top-quartile performance against 18, i.e. for 53 percent of our indicators the Council was among the top 25 percent best performing councils in the country; we reached top-tier performance in 53 percent of indicators.

Source: 'Aiming for excellence' (South Shropshire Money Matters, Spring 2006)

Question 1.

In reality, the Council have only achieved top-quartile performance in just under a third of the Best Value Performance Indicators.

A. True

B. False

C. Can't Tell

So what do you reckon? Go on, have a go.... Okay, so the answer is True. Well done, if you got it right! In the actual UKCAT the candidate is presented with 11 passages (like this), which are each associated with four questions. So that's 44 questions altogether, and you have 22 minutes to complete it.

After 22 minutes of reading that lot, candidates then complete the quantitative reasoning section which is essentially maths; mostly 'practical' maths, associated with graphs, tables and reams of data. Have a go at this.

The following question relates to the following table that shows a list of videos and their running times, in minutes:

Disney Films	Running Time	Other films	Running Time
Flubber	90	Chitty Chitty Bang Bang	144
Toy Story	77	South Park	78
A Bug’s Life	93	The Mask	97
Hercules	89	Small Soldiers	106
Lady and the Tramp	73	The Lost World	123
The Aristocats	77	The Rugrats Movie	77
Bambi	67	James and the Giant Peach	76
Cinderella	70	Men in Black	94
Peter Pan	74	Mouse Hunt	94
Lion King	84	Star Wars 1 – The Phantom Menace	127

Question 1

What is the mean running time of the Disney films?

A. 10

B. 79.4

C. 93

D. 158.8

E. 794

Hopefully you'll agree with me that this seems the slightly easier section of those seen so far; only a basic degree of maths knowledge is required to answer the questions. However, they require rapid calculations without the use of a calculator. The 36 questions (relating to 9 different sources) are to be completed 23 minutes. The answer to this is, of course, B.

“The Abstract Reasoning subtest assesses a candidate's ability to identify patterns amongst abstract shapes... The test therefore measures both an ability to change track, critically evaluate and generate hypotheses which can be relevant in the development of new ideas and systems.”

I still fail to see the relevance of matching shapes, although I may be biased; last year I found the abstract reasoning subtest really challenging and confusing. This year, I’ve realised that actually they are fairly simple once a general rule can be derived.

Take the above, although not a brilliant scan you can see two sets of eight shapes (Set A and Set B). The candidate’s task is to choose whether the ‘test shapes’ belong to either Set A, Set B or Neither Set. And I’ll give you a clue: these types of questions are solved by generating one single defining rule, which could relate to number, colour, size, angles, lines or any other characteristic. So, once you’ve found your rule, off you go!

Excellent, you spotted that the shapes in Set A contain at least one white shape, whilst Set B contains at least one black shape in each square? Meaning that your answers are 1, Set A. 2, Set B. 3, Neither Set. 4, Neither Set. 5, Set A. In the real test you’d have 16 minutes to complete 65 items, that’s 13 sequences each related to 5 test shapes.

And your final section is Decision Analysis, used to assess a candidates ability to decipher and make sense of coded information. There is a detailed, fancy explanation of why it’s such a useful tool, but personally I think it’s a bit of fun.

Questions typically look like this

Operating codes	Routine codes
α = delayb = previous γ = cancel δ = negative ε = increase ζ = hot η = opposite θ = include	01 = explosive 02 = today 03 = sun 04 = rain 05 = agent 06 = public 07 = smoke 08 = safe 09 = building 10 = drop 11 = tonight 12 = dark 13 = weapon 14 = abort 15 = secret 16 = operation

Question 1

Examine the following coded message:
α, 16, 03, 04

Determine which is the most likely interpretation of the code:

A. The operation is delayed due to sun and rain
B. The operation is delayed due to sun
C. The operation is delayed due to rain
D. Delay the operation until it is dry
E. Delay operation rainbow.

Hopefully you’ve figured the answer out to be E, and didn’t find that too tricky; as the real test progresses more codes and added, forming more complex sentence structures. Candidates are required to answer 26 questions in 32 minutes, probably the least time-pressured section of the exam.

The UKCAT also used to include a ‘personality assessment’ deduced from asking question based around hypothetical situations. This is no longer carried out, I suspect because partly, universities carry out their own character assassinations during interviews, and partly because some students felt they were unfairly represented. A friend at college received a statement along the lines of ‘you are devious, to the point of being manipulative, and determined to get your own way’. Whilst not quite so damning, I’d be interested to see how well people think my own statement is congruent with the truth.

“Compared to the responses of other people, your responses suggest a tendancy towards being a bit more self-confident, outgoing and comfortable with people, without being dominating or demanding attention. This may make you more able to be aware of the emotional needs of others without being dependant on their reactions to you.”

And then

“Compared to the responses of other people, your responses suggest that you place a higher value on the needs, well-being and rights of individuals. This approach may cause you a dilemma when they appear to conflict with the expectations of society. In such circumstances you may be more likely than most to support the rights and beliefs of the individual over those of society or community.”

Make of that what you will!

Results

Obviously there is no point of taking a test unless you receive some kind of mark or grade! For the UKCAT the final score for each subsection is scaled, and has a range from 300 to 900 (goodness knows why!). The average is generally quoted as 600 with scores between 500 and 700 often seen as ‘normal’, with scores lower than 300 as poor, and over 700 being ‘exceptional’.

My results from last year were

Verbal                     740
Quantitative            790
Abstract                  600
Decision Analysis   760

Understandably, I was pleased.

However, a good UKCAT score is by no means a guarantee into University, as different establishment use the scores differently. Indeed, some Universities using another test (the BMAT* at Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and UCL) and Bristol and Birmingham Universities choosing to use no admissions tests**.

*The BMAT is slightly different in structure as it aims to test different skills via a science paper and extended writing task. I sat the BMAT last year and it was very difficult

**Many students therefore use this to be tactical by applying for Unis that don’t want the UKCAT when they receive a low score in it, however both Birmingham and Bristol are highly competitive and place more emphasis on other factors. You win some, you lose some.

I’ve chosen three Universities at random, who each utilise the UKCAT differently in their admissions process. Once you’ve read how different each approach is, you may decide to place less emphasis on deciding which University to apply to based on your score, and instead focus on simply performing as well as you can.

Brighton and Sussex Medical School “All applicants to BSMS are required to take the UKCAT the summer prior to applying to us. However, there is currently no threshold. We only use the UKCAT once you have been interviewed, either if you are on borderline with other candidates to being offered a place here, or if you are already on our waiting list and a space has become available . A low UKCAT score does not mean that your application will automatically be made unsuccessful if you meet our other entry requirements.”

The University of Edinburgh

“Once all the scores are received we rank them into four quartiles. Those applicants whose UKCAT scores come in the top quartile are allocated three points, second quartile are allocated two points, third quartile are allocated one point and the fourth quartile are not allocated any points.

The points are then added to your total score to contribute towards your final ranking. Test results are worth 8% of the overall score of an application.

The score an applicant actually achieved is looked at when final decisions are being made and there is a number of applicants with the same ranked score and limited places left to offer.”

University of Leicester

 “The UKCAT will be scored according to your lowest score of the 4 elements as follows …

10 > or = 700

9 > or = 650

8 > or = 600

7 > or = 550

6 > or = 500

5 > or = 450

4 > or = 400

3 > or = 350

2 > or = 300

1 > or = 250

0 < 250”

Following assessment of all applications, applicants will be ranked and approximately 950 will be invited for interview. We cannot say what score will be required in order to be invited for interview at this stage because the scoring system has been changed from previous years.

If applicants are tied the academic and UKCAT scores will be used as a tie breaker”

As a side note, Leicester publishes their scoring system here, which can be used by applicants to judge their likelihood of acceptance.

Hopefully you now have a deeper understanding of just one of the hurdles encountered by medicine applicants and may have even discovered a new-found proficiency for medical entrance exams! If you do have any comments or questions on the UKCAT, or would just like some more of the example questions let me know!