So, what I'm going to do this year for UKAT prep is actually give you more of an approach and [music] really it's going to serve as a guide to your to help you strategy and I'll point you towards some resources. But really, when it comes to changes for the UKAT this year, the biggest change that has happened [music] is people's behavior towards it. And what you find is that it leaves people in one [music] of two camps. either the person who kind of gets it and does quite well and goes through the whole thing quite smoothly versus and gets a [music] good result because of that and gets their pick of their med schools or or dental schools.

But then you get the other person who doesn't get what I'm about to show you. And that leaves them finding it really difficult, struggling, being overwhelmed, and eventually probably having to compromise on what universities they can go [music] to and maybe even risking not getting in at all. So these are the people who get fooled by the Tik Tok videos. you know, you see a 30-cond hack on how to do this and you think that, oh, you're wiser than everybody else who hasn't seen those [music] things that somehow going to help you get a better score and ignore that it's actually something that deserves a [music] lot of respect.

It deserves your time. Getting into medicine, getting into dentistry, these are still some of the most difficult professions. Why do you think that it's not going to attract some of the smartest [music] people and therefore the process itself is going to be quite hard? People underestimate it and they get smacked in the face with the reality when they come to sit down and actually do that exam and realize, [music] "Oh god, it's actually a lot more difficult than Tik Tok videos might suggest." And you may or may not know this, but last year was a record high for the number of people taking UKAT. Not only that, the rate of increase is increasing as well.

So, it's not just going like that each year, it's actually going more like that. [music] So, it's really important and that's why people need to give it the respect it deserves. It is a tricky profession to get into. smart people apply to it and [music] it's a difficult application process to distinguish amongst those people. Anyone who tells you different is [music] just being naive.

But not only that, when the numbers go up, not only does it drive up the average, which is due to the competition, and you can see the average [music] UKAT score going up steadily over the last several years, it also means that in the decile, so how the UKAT scoring works, which I [music] can describe in this video here, um you can see that it's divided into desile. So in every 10% of people [music] now if you had 30,000 people divided amongst deciles that means in each decile you've got 3,000 people [music] where it's 41,000 plus like it was last year that means you've now got 4,100 in each decol.

So, not only is it important to get a high score, but once you even get into those higher ranges, [music] you're still amongst a bigger pool of people competing, which is why everything that I'm going to say here today is [music] to help you understand that you need to give it the respect and the attention that it deserves if you really want to get into a competitive medical school, competitive [music] dental school, or just to get a place at all these days. Now, enough about me berating you why it's important. Let's talk about our approach for how we're going to do well. Now, the biggest thing that people [music] misunderstand or don't appreciate at this time until it's too late, when they get to the summer and [music] they're in it, is that it's not just about the UKAT when it comes to your medical or dental school application.

It's also about preparing and cocooning time for the UKAT amongst everything else that you've got going on. So, as you'll have heard me say in an ideal world, people who are preparing for medical or dental school applications should be doing it as they enter year 12 or as they kind of enter their penultimate year of university because that gives you the time to do everything that you [music] need to and f and cordon off some time to dedicate to the UKAT. So, when you think about say between January and September [music] when you go to submit your application, you're going to have things like you need to build work [music] experience, you need to build experience in general in your CV for applying to university.

You're also going to have some exams [music] during that time and then also there's everything about the UKAT but all the rest of the application stuff that will be happening [music] like um personal statements and you know putting all of that application together choosing universities these are all big factors that need attention in themselves and what people do is that they kind of think oh it's fine I'll do it later and when [music] they get to the reality of it this is what I mean about these two camps of people there are those who prepare but then there are those who get the shock of when they have all [music] of this to do they get overwhelmed.

They can't give each thing the attention that that it deserves and that it needs to do well in. And then all of a sudden, they're [music] kind of backpedaling and they're on the back foot trying to play catchup. Whereas those [music] who listened to this story and started paying attention, started working on things now are kind of quietly smiling to [music] themselves because it's been a much easier journey for them. And because it's been an easier journey, they can put more attention and effort into each [music] single stage and that means they'll do better. That's why I'll quickly mention the future programmer.

You can get more information up here. But what I would say is the two things that we'll do is make sure that you stay on track and stay focused on the things that you need to at the right time to kind of maintain that calm as you go through it. But also, you'll maximize and make sure that you nail every single aspect of it so that you're confident in the knowledge that you've [music] done everything right and you don't have to be worrying about like, oh, did I make a mistake here? Is this really the best it could be? That is [music] one thing that we can guarantee that you will have absolutely nailed each aspect if you come and get our help because preparing is a sprint and the UKAT is a sprint in itself and you'll hear a lot about [music] UKAT burnout and it's very true but what they don't tell you is that there are basically two halves of UKAT prep and the ones that get this right are the [music] people who start early you know and they're the people that when it comes to summer that places like your Oxfords, your King's College Londons are a possibility [music] because they've got it right and they've done well and they've got a score that gives them a chance of getting in.

But the people who don't understand this, they essentially throw away that opportunity because they put themselves in a bit of a desperate position and they're panicked and then [music] they kind of end up in that stage where they go, "God, I'll just be happy if I can get a place anywhere at this stage." [music] So the two lessons that I want you to take forward are start early. It's so incredibly important and not just on the UK, but on everything around it to either get it out of the way or nail it so that you've got [music] space to really focus on it. And then the second thing and this is the main principle.

There's [music] a difference between learning mode and exam mode. You'll see in the video where I talk about the plan for how to [music] the best preparation plan for UKAT. You'll see that I do it in three phases. [music] But really you can categorize it into two halves. The first is what you call learning mode.

And what I'd like you to imagine is if you've ever heard of the show uh the 1% club or something like that or you know think of when you do an IQ test, think of that as like the game, right? That's the thing that you have to nail that you have to perform and do well on on the day. But what do people do to prepare for that? They don't do highintensity [music] IQ tests or they won't be doing, you know, the 1% club every single day. What they'll be [music] doing is things like a sudoku, for example.

Not necessarily that, but that's an example. It's the kind of thing like a cross word where people [music] do it to sit down at slow pace and relax. And when you're thinking about the UKAP, the first thing that you need to do is that [music] slowpaced relaxed understanding the questions and kind of refining the techniques and [music] understanding the best way to do it. That is the learning phase. That is almost like getting the reps in, understanding the [music] kind of muscle memory for when you see questions, how to go about them and what to do for that.

Now, I can recommend a good resource for that, which is a video. Well, I've done a whole playlist in fact, of me going through different question types and [music] me talking through how I answer them, which is a really valuable thing. But again, this is just understanding [music] the basics and knowing what's coming up and having that kind of really well drilled in before you move on to the second phase, which is exam mode. And that's all about speed. So that is the game day IQ test 1% club type thing that you need to be ready for and kind of ready to perform on demand.

But the most sustainable long-term tactic is to like [music] I say get that base level of understanding in and then up the ante when you get close to your exam. Like I say that's why the context of everything else is so important because you need to have nailed you need to have done this stuff before your exam so that you're [music] kind of in the mode of thinking about it. then you can switch gears and move to your exams, get your work experience done, get [music] all of that stuff done, then refocus on the UKAT just so that you are kind of fully in that mode.

But that's why the context is so important. Now, if you want a really good free resource, go to the future do website and go to the resources [music] page and we have a kind of step-by-step UKAT guide for how to get a really top score. But remember, the most important thing, start early and remember, you have learning mode and exam [music] mode. The sooner you start and kind of get the reps in with learning mode, the easier the next [music] thing will be. So, if you want some more videos on UKAT and how to really nail it, check this video out here.

Otherwise, if you want our help and you want some one-on-one support to get into your [music] chosen medical or dental school, check out the future dop program here and we would love to help you and help you write your own story.

As you know, the UCAT has changed this year, which means that we need to start rethinking the way that we approach it if we want a competitive advantage. We're going to share some secrets here for how we at Future Doc have changed and adapted the way that we teach it to match the new format, and at the end, we're going to give you some secrets as to how we do that, but also we're going to share with you a free gift that is going to supercharge the way that you train, and it's going to help you along the way. So this is going to form part of a series where we're going to update you on each section and how I would approach it.

So look out for the subsequent videos that are going to be in this playlist that's going to show up here. However, what I'm not going to do is update you with all the details that have come with the new UCAT. I'll just put them quickly on the screen here, and then there's a video that I did recently where I talk exactly about all of that, all the changes, all the things that you can expect. So I won't go over those again. But what I'm going to do is go very quickly over each of the sections.

So here are all the bits that you can expect for the verbal reasoning. Then for the quantitative reasoning, here are the changes. Then here are the DM, decision-making changes. And then finally, the SJT, the situational judgment. Because really now the difference between people doing okay and people doing really well is the tactics that they use within the exam to help them improve.

So you'll see, like when it comes down to the techniques and knowing how to employ all of those and how to apply them, you'll understand how to do that. And if you don't, there's a whole series that I did here on basically me walking you through questions and how I think about it and how to approach them, what techniques to use. That's kind of a given now. You need to understand that sort of stuff. What we need to do if we're aiming for a new high score, which I would say to be in the top 3% to 5%, and what we're training our students at FutureDoc to do is to get around a 2,150 and above.

That will really help you take control of the application and just have your pick of the universities if you really want to aim for one of the high-ranking competitive universities. So like I say, the techniques and the specific how-tos, for the next weeks, I'm going to release a verbal reasoning, a quantitative reasoning, all of them, an individual one on exactly how to go about tackling them. But what I want to talk about now is the broader tactics and what is going to separate you with this new UCAT format. Because what we're now teaching at FutureDoc and the way that we've adapted is that we are being incredibly data-driven about how we approach this.

This means that you have to take a forensic look at your data, whether you're using Medify, MedEntry, whatever the format is that you're using to practice and do your practice questions. You have to be surgical with precision about how you're performing and understanding what pace you're going at and how many you're getting right to help get the score that you want. What I mean by that is that you can go too fast. And if you go too fast, you might actually fumble questions that you would have normally got right. And actually, it's a bit like the Yerkes-Dodson equation.

There's like a certain level of stress makes you so good, but if you're too stressed, then you go, basically, you're overstimulated and you don't perform as well. So we want to get that spot just right. And it's understanding how if I, because maybe I have 11 questions in a section, and if I try and attempt all 11, I'll probably only get maybe six right. However, if I only attempt eight and get and put all of my focus into those eight questions, I might actually get seven right. So you can see how, although you're actually going slower, you're doing better in that circumstance.

Equally, if you're only taking the time to attempt five and you get five right, that's not as good as the other two. So it's about finding that sweet spot. Now, ultimately, one of the best ways to get a handle on your scores and track them and know where you're at is to keep a record of them. So as a gift to you at FutureDoc, we've created a free UCAT tracking app. So you can download that by clicking on the link below.

So that helps you with everything, how to track your scores, tips to do on the day, ways to stay calm, which are really important. So you'll find that really useful. So check it out. And I'd love to hear some feedback from it in the comments for how you found it. And if you have any feedback or recommended changes, we'd love to hear them.

Ultimately, the most important thing is that we have changed how we teach the UCAT at FutureDoc. We've actually dropped our online course because a lot of people thought that that was how we taught the UCAT. And that was just a very small section of it. And people were getting confused and thinking that, you know, is that all there is? The reason that we get such high scores at FutureDoc, and like I say, we're trying to get in the top 3% to 5% of test takers so that you can take control of the application, is that we do all of the steps.

Getting the techniques right, working with students one-on-one to make sure that they're going through it and approaching it in the right way, and also doing this data-driven approach where we get really forensic and scientific about how we approach it. It's a really important whole continuum. But the thing to remember is that although the UCAT is really important and probably more important now than it was in previous years, it's still not the be-all and end-all of the application. It is one element of probably five important things that must be right to submit a good medical or dental school application. important that although you focus on it and give it your best, there are other elements that make up a really important part of it as well.

So if you would like our help with your medical or your dental school application and be part of the FutureDoc alumni who many, many people who've gotten into their chosen university, feel free to check out the FutureDoc program here or submit an application on the website. And we would love to help you on that journey to getting into your chosen medical or dental school. Otherwise, thank you for watching. Be on the lookout in the next weeks for all of the subsequent videos in this series of the UCAT that are coming out for this year. But otherwise, thank you and I'll see you in the next video.

The UCAT has changed again this year. When will it end? But there is a lot of important stuff and this year has been a really big one. So I'm going to tell you exactly what's happened, the changes that are made and how it's going to impact your preparation and your chances of getting into medical or dental school. So this week UCAT dropped that they're changing the exam.

The most important thing that you need to know about it is that they are dropping abstract reasoning. Now abstract reasoning is the one with the shapes and all the patterns and you're supposed to recognize it. Now they've given two reasons for dropping this. The first is that they think as that part of the test doesn't really distinguish whether people go on to make good medical or dental students. So they're saying it's not a very predictive one.

Now probably the most significant thing and the second reason they've given is that they say that it is the most coachable. This is what I've been saying all along with the entire UCAT. Anything, any exam, if it is reproducible, i.e. there are some rules and questions appear and they're similar each time, if it's reproducible then it's learnable. Because a human has to write it, a human has to obey a set of rules that they write questions for and have criteria for what makes a correct or incorrect answer.

So that means that you can learn those rules and learn to be good at it. And although the abstract reasoning is the one that people got the grasp of the most, the same still applies to the rest of the exam. So that's why it's so important and on the FutureDoc program we always get really high scores because we have been showing people how to learn those rules. But obviously they felt that people were getting the hang of this one too much and that is fair in the data. You'll see me every year give a breakdown of the results and previously the abstract reasoning wasn't the highest scoring but over the years it has crept up and now it's getting higher every single year and has overtaken the quantitative reasoning which was usually the highest one before that.

And it's just continuing to go higher. So I think now it's becoming one of those things where it can't really differentiate between the students because everybody's kind of generally doing well on it. Now I'm going to talk about what that means and what you can do in terms of your preparation in a moment but let's round off by looking at the other changes that they've made. Now the abstract reasoning was only a small amount of the exam in terms of time, it was about 15 minutes. So with those 15 minutes the only thing that they've done to compensate for it is that the verbal reasoning and the quantitative reasoning, they've made no changes to the number of questions but they've just given you an extra minute.

Thank you UCAT, so kind of you. Now the other thing is that the decision making has gone up by 6 questions but also has gone up by 6 minutes. So just some small changes really. The only real thing is that the decision making has gone up by 6 minutes and 6 questions. The SJT remains completely the same.

So again, like I say, if you only had a 15 minute reduction from removing the abstract reasoning and you've got those 8 extra minutes, it's still basically a 2 hour exam. Now what does this mean for your prep? Well there have been a lot of changes to particularly the medical school application in the last few years, especially since the BMAT was dropped and the UCAT became the sole focus. Now we're getting a lot of people this year who didn't pay attention to the things I've been saying, which is to really make sure you're doing your prep right, get support if you need it, don't leave it till the last minute because so many people do that, realise how difficult it is when they get down to having to do it at speed and realise the realities of the timings and how difficult they are.

So get help early, that's the best thing I can suggest. You can check out our FutureDoc programme because we always deliver really good results and get people into their first choice medical school, that's partly by helping with the UCAT. You'll have heard me say that it's not just about the UCAT, there are so many other important elements. So it's about getting all of it right. But what do I think this actually means?

Well, like I say, remember, the whole thing is teachable, even the verbal reasoning, which is usually the trickiest and the one people perform worst on, they're all teachable. So people are going to spread those efforts from learning the AR across those other things. So you might see a mild increase in each of those. However, it will be the same. The verbal reasoning will always remain the worst performing one unless they make a drastic change to how they ask the questions.

The quantitative reasoning will now be the best one for most people on average. And then the decision making one will be, I think, the thing that decides it. That will be the battleground that people play on that will give them the swing as to whether they do well. Because the decision making historically is always the most variable and the one that people are generally a bit Marmite at. They're either really good or really bad.

So it's important to bear that in mind and think about how you're going to allocate your prep accordingly. Now, the other thing to bear in mind is that the universities are going to have to rethink how they use the UCAT score for how they then choose students to invite to interview and give an offer. Because it's not as simple as, let's say, Newcastle who had a threshold of around 2850-ish sometimes. You can't just simply take a quarter away from that because the abstract reasoning was the highest performing one. Her thing to bear in mind is that the universities are going to have to rethink how they use the UCAT score for how they then choose students to invite to interview and give an offer.

Because it's not as simple as, let's say, Newcastle, who had a threshold of around 2,850-ish sometimes. You can't just simply take a quarter away from that because the abstract reasoning was the highest performing one. It's going to be more than a quarter relative to the scores that people are getting in other aspects or other elements of the UCAT. So, really important for universities to rethink. Now, sometimes in the confusion, as we've had this year, that does present an opportunity.

But, like I always say, it's not just about the UCAT. It's about all the other elements. So, doing really well in the other five elements, or the other four of the five elements of the medical and dental school application, is going to be really important. And this is a really good year to capitalize on that, to make sure if you're performing well in every area, it will compensate for what is maybe a bit of a muddle for this year while we're figuring out what the UCAT score is. So, if you want to know what those five areas of the medical and dental school application are that you need to nail, and find out how you can get support to be in that top 5%, top 3% of applicants so that you can get into your dream university, check out this video here where I show you exactly what you need to nail and exactly how you can get some help to do that.

Thanks for watching and best of luck with the UCAT. Hope this hasn't fried your brain too much and you can carry on preparing as usual. Best of luck.

In this video, we're going to discuss some important changes that have occurred to the UCAT this year. So this year, the UCATs have announced some important changes to how they're going to do the exam. Funnily enough, there's actually nothing about this on the UCAT website itself. So you can consider this an exclusive by Future Doc. Future Doc exclusive!

Firstly, the dates for the UCATs have been announced this year. So it will run from the 11th of July to the 29th of September, so a longer running window than usual. However, the first major change is in the abstract reasoning. That is in the number of questions which has gone down from 55 to 50. So as you may know from my UCAT course, the abstract reasoning questions are grouped into sets and they are normally in sets of five.

So that means that essentially what they've done is just taken one set off. And actually, they've also taken a minute off the abstract reasoning. So if you want to learn how to be really fast and kind of keep up with the timings, I recommend that you check out this playlist here, where I go through the abstract reasoning and all the best methods to speed up and be accurate with the questions here. The second change comes in the quantitative reasoning. Now, all they've done here, they've not changed any questions at all, but they've just added that one minute that they've taken away from the abstract reasoning to the quantitative reasoning.

And that simply means that you have the same number of questions as last year, except for you just have one more minute to complete them. If you want to know a bit more about the quantitative reasoning, I have a playlist for that as well, which you can check out here. And it tells you all the details of how many questions, how they work, and again, the best techniques to answer them speedily and accurately. Those are the two most important things you need to consider for the UCAT. And finally, the last change is that of the situational judgment test, or the SJT as it's known.

They have decreased the number of questions in the SJT this year from 69 to 66. However, the time limit remains the same at 26 minutes, which means that you can actually take that tiny little bit longer to mull over the ethical and kind of what would Jesus do questions that come up in the SJT. And surprise, surprise, we have a playlist for the SJT here as well. Actually, that's taken from my online course. And a few students emailed me last year that the night before taking the SJT, they went through my SJT module of my UCAT course, and they said that that was the difference between them getting a band two and a band one.

So well worth checking out that course as well. Lately, I've been getting a lot of messages from students asking how they can adapt to this new UCAT test. So I've made this video here where I show how you can maximize your performance, how you can prepare well and get the score required to get into some of the high ranking medical schools. Thanks for watching and I'll see you over in that video.

Okay, today I'm going to show you how to attempt an abstract reasoning question. At the end I'm going to show you the foolproof method that's always going to get the pattern. Then I'm going to show you the fast way and the super fast way at the very end, just that's going to help you be accurate and speedy every time. So let's first have a go at the question so I can illustrate the points I'm trying to make. I'll give you a minute now to work out what pattern's going on and then with the test shape get set A, B or neither.

So one minute on the clock, make sure you have a go at the question, see if you can guess the pattern and I'll see you in a hot minute. Okay, so what I want to do with this is show you what goes on in my brain when I see a question like this. And obviously it's going on a lot quicker than the way I'm describing it to you now, but with a bit of practice and trying these techniques that I'm about to show you, you will see how quickly you internalize it and then go really quickly. The abstract reasoning is always the most daunting to start with, but actually the one that people see the most improvement on because of these techniques that I'm about to show you.

So the trick is always with this is that you ignore the test shape and first try and work out the pattern in one of the sets. Often I say try and look for the bare bones box or the simplest box and then you can work out everything from that. But as you can see, they're pretty much all exactly the same. So I'm going to take you through my foolproof method first. And actually, if you haven't seen this already, I recommend you check out this playlist here where I go through abstract reasoning techniques and all of the kind of things that you need to know to make sure that you do well.

So in those videos, you will see that I introduced a acronym, which gives you all the possible patterns and shapes that can occur. And that is called Spartan IBS. So I'm going to take you through all of these now and show you how very quickly in my head, I'm just going through that mental checklist of all of the possible patterns that can occur. So the first two are shape and position. And I'm actually going to ignore them because it will come as no surprise from looking at these that shape and position are two big parts of this pattern.

But I wanted to show you that we can rule out a lot of the other ones. So angles, right angles are relevant in this. There aren't many right angles, nothing, no pattern there, obviously. Root and direction, well, they've got maybe a triangle that's pointing in a certain direction, but clearly no rhyme or reason to that. Touching sides, nothing is touching sides.

Area and size is more about the number of enclosed areas when shapes overlap. Number of items, well, all of the boxes contain six items on both sides. So that's not going to be one of the distinguishing features or the pattern. There are no intersections, there are no borders. And with borders, I'm not going to count them all up now, but I can assure you that there is no pattern with the borders.

However, the last one, shading is one. So again, mentally, when I'm going through this, I am going through that checklist in my head, or I might even use the whiteboard to write down the acronym just to quickly help me scan through. So I've identified the three things that are the elements in the pattern here. Normally, like I say, I would start with the bare bones box, but because they're all the same practically, I would just start with the top left one of set A. So what can we see here with set A?

So firstly, like we said, the three things that are at play here are the shape type, the position, and the shading. So with set A, the first thing that I see is that there are three black shapes in each one. So normally what I would do is just work out what's going on in set A. But this is one of those where sometimes when you zoom out and quickly have a quick look, you can quite see from the bird's eye view that set A all has three black shapes and set B has two black shapes. So that is something now that's already one pattern that we've identified.

One thing that I can also see is that set A also has one circle in each one. Sometimes it's patterned, sometimes it's blank, but it always has a circle. The thing that I can also see, sometimes it has two circles. And actually, if you notice where it has two circles, it is always on the right side of the screen in the second box, the third box, or the middle left, if you will, and then the middle right, so the fourth box. So we have three Sometimes it's blank, but it always has a circle.

The thing that I can also see, sometimes it has two circles. And actually, if you notice where it has two circles, it is always on the right side of the screen in the second box, the third box, or the middle left, if you will, and then the middle right, so the fourth box. So we have three black shapes, always one patterned circle. If there's an additional circle, it is blank and to the right side of the box. And then if there are any additional other shapes, they're usually white octagons, and there's not really a pattern, rhyme, or reason to those.

So just before we go on to set B, just to let you know that this is what we call a conditional pattern. Now, these are probably some of the more complicated ones, and I have an entire module on my online course when we go about how to tackle these. But just to set your mind at ease, these are some of the more complicated types of questions that you might get on the UCAT. And if you want to check out my online course, we've got 20 hours of videos where basically every type of question that can come up, we do videos where we explain them, show you the patterns, and show you the fastest method to do it.

So you can check out that video there. So let's move on to set B. And now that we've got a few patterns in set A, we can almost kind of hone in on those to know that set B is going to give us something similar but different that distinguishes it from set A. So firstly, we can see that each box in set B has a circle, and actually that circle is clear. And sometimes it actually has an additional circle, which is patterned.

And actually what you notice when you see that it has a patterned circle as well as a clear circle, is that the patterned one is always above the white one. So that's an important thing to notice. We also notice, again, the really standout thing, as we mentioned earlier, is that there are two black shapes, no particular rhyme or reason to the shapes. But what you do notice with this is one of the black shapes also has a patterned same shape of that type, which is also in the box. So it's almost like they're coming in pairs.

There's two black, two clear, and two patterned. However, one of the patterned and one of the black shapes are the same. And as I say, any additional shapes might be an octagon, but they'll always come in those pairs of clear, black, and shaded. Okay, great. So it's really important to establish the pattern before we attempt to have a go at the test shape.

And the reason is that you will spend, I always recommend about a minute for the entire set of five questions for the abstract reasoning. So they come, you'll get something like this, a grid like this, and then you'll get five questions to follow up from it. And really how you should be allocating your time is about 45 seconds to work out what's going on with the pattern and then go on to just do the five questions. Because if you know the pattern, then you can really knock out the questions quite easily because it's very easy once you know what's going on. So we have this, it's pretty straightforward now.

We'll straight away looking at this test shape, you can see that it has three black shapes. So that means instantly it cannot fit with set B. So we know now that it's either going to be set A or neither. Remembering that neither is obviously if it doesn't go with either pattern, but also if it goes with both patterns, if it works with both sets A and set B, then it can't belong to one, it belongs to both. So that makes it neither.

So now that we've ruled out set B, let's have a look whether it actually fits with A. So first tick is that it's got the three black shapes. Then we see that it has a shaded circle, which was one of our prerequisites. And then finally, any additional shapes are white octagons, which it has two of. So that fits perfectly fine with our set A.

So we know that the answer is set A. Now that, as you can see, is the really, really slow way of doing this. So actually what I'm going to show you now is two ways that can speed this up. The first is what I call the kind of shortcut way. Now this is something that I teach on my course.

I'm going to show you just one part of the cheat sheet here that I have. So as part of the course, there are six areas that you actually can shortcut quite quickly by looking just at the type of question that it is. And you know from that question that it's only going to be a certain number of possibilities. So with this one, I call it the overwhelming number of shapes. And when it's an overwhelming number of shapes, I have an acronym and it's called PSAAL.

So imagine an Alan Sugar. And from that acronym that I know when I see a question like this, it can basically only be position, shading, size, type of shape, angles, or lines of symmetry. Now that instantly cuts out about half of the possible patterns and you can hone straight in and you can see from what we're looking at with this shape and this test question that actually within the first four of that acronym, we've got all the possible patterns that it could be. So again, the course is super cheap. You get access for a year.

I'd recommend just doing it, honestly, just watching those videos alone. You can check out one of my students here who actually did this course and absolutely nailed the UCAT and recommends it so highly. He says all of the techniques that he learned in that particular course have just made the difference between him getting a low score and a really, really good one. And actually the final one is super, super quick, but it's a bit of an investment over time because it requires you to look at a lot of patterns up front and just be able to recognize one straight away just by looking at it. Actually, this is spoken by in this video here, but one of my ex-students, Daisy, who got 3,150 or something ridiculous in her UCAT After doing our one-on-one mentoring program, she talked about all the types of patterns that can come up and how to very quickly make a list of all of them so that instantly you can recognize them and you don't have to go through all of these acronyms or even the shortcuts that I've showed you.

So if you want to do that, there's a list on my online course of all the ones that we've come up with that you can possibly get. So I'd recommend checking out this video, like I said, here just by clicking the information button to see how Daisy did it. And also if you want to check out my online course here, where I go through all of these things that I talked about and give you all the information that you need to get another 3000 plus score. So thank you for watching this video. I'll see you over in that course, or if you want just a pure YouTube free abstract reasoning playlist, you can check out this one here.

Thank you for watching and I will see you over in one of those videos. Take care.

Hey, welcome back to the channel. In today's video, we are going to be talking through the abstract reasoning section of the UK exam and going through some worked examples. Also, I will be sharing three top tips that you will find really helpful when trying to answer abstract reasoning questions, so stick around for that. Abstract reasoning is one of the sections that students worry about the most. It is very time pressured and initially it can be quite hard to get your head around, but with time and practice it is definitely something that you can get the hang of.

It's one of those like hard to learn, easy to master type of things, but once you get over that initial hump and that learning curve, it does become much easier. On the UCAT website, they define it as follows. Abstract reasoning assesses your ability to identify patterns amongst abstract shapes where irrelevant and distracting material may lead to incorrect conclusions. The test therefore measures your ability to change track, critically evaluate and generate hypotheses and requires you to query judgments as you go along. This is important because when considering possible diagnoses, medical practitioners may be presented with a set of different symptoms or results.

Some information may be more reliable, relevant and more clear than other information. So doctors and dentists need to use sound judgment given the information that they have in order to reach a conclusion. In the abstract reasoning section of the UCAT exam, you will have 11 question sets, each containing five different questions associated with a set of patterns. Overall, you will be presented with 55 questions that present you with different shapes. You will have 13 minutes to answer all of the questions in this section, which is about 14 seconds per question.

In this section, you will see four different types of question. For type one, you will see two different sets of shapes labeled set A and set B. You will then be given a test shape and you will have to identify whether it belongs in set A, set B or neither. For type two, you will be presented with a series of shapes and you will then be asked to select which shape follows along in the series. For type three, you will be presented with a statement involving a series of shapes and you will then have to determine which shape completes the statement.

And for type four, you will be presented again with two sets of shapes labeled set A and set B and you will then have to select which of the four answers given belong in either set A or set B. Out of the four different types of questions, type one and type four are very similar because you'll be presented with two different sets of questions, each in a grid of six. These will be labeled set A and set B and you have to decide which of the answers given belongs in either set A or set B or neither. So let's have a look at an example. This is a classic type one question.

You can see set A and set B and you're given a test shape and you have to decide whether it belongs to set A, set B or neither. Take a moment to pause the video here if you would like to try it out for yourself. Otherwise we can move on to discuss the answer. The correct response for this question is option C, neither. That's because in set A, there are three figures with four crossover points and the top left quarter of the space is blank.

In set B, there are three figures with six crossover points and the top right quarter of the space is blank. In the test shape, there are eight crossover points, which means that it doesn't belong in either set A or set B. Let's now have a look at a type two style question. In this question, you are presented with a series of shapes and you have to select the next shape in the series. Again, take a moment to pause here if you would like to try it out for yourself.

Otherwise, again, let's discuss the answer. For this question, the correct response is A. This is because there is a rule that follows in the series of shapes that you're given. In the series, there is one square and one triangle. The square has a diagonal with a circle on the end.

The triangle has a circle on one side. The circle and square move around the template by 90 degrees each time. The square itself turns by 90 degrees each time. The circle within the triangle moves in an anticlockwise direction and alternates between black and white in each sequence. Looking at the answers that you're given, A is the correct response because the square and circle must be on the bottom of the template.

The circle on the square must be on the bottom right. The triangle must have the circle on the right-hand side and must be black as the previous circle was white. Let's now have a look at a Type 3 question. Here you are presented with a statement involving a group of shapes. You then have to determine which shape completes the statement.

Again, take another minute if you want to try it out for yourself. Otherwise, let's take a look at the answer. The rule here is that there are always two squares and two circles. The three inner shapes grow outwards, keeping their shading, and the outer shape collapses into the middle, keeping its shading. So the correct answer for this question is option B.

This is because the outer shape collapses to the middle, keeping its shading, while the inner shape grows outwards. So B is the correct response. There are different techniques and strategies that you can use to help you answer abstract reasoning questions. Here is a basic approach that you might find useful when you are presented with a question. Firstly, you want to ignore the test shape.

This is the complete opposite advice to the verbal reasoning section. If you want to find out what approaches you can use in the verbal reasoning section, then check out this video just here. Your main aim for abstract reasoning is to identify the pattern. So you want to go straight to Set A and then to Set B, and you want to try and figure out what's going on with the shapes. The way to tackle this is to start off with one of the boxes in Set A.

Try and figure out what you think might be going on and see if it applies in the following boxes in that set. Whatever you think the pattern is in your head, you want to test that with the next box and see whether you are correct or incorrect. If you're correct, you will keep going for the rest of the boxes. And if not, you will have to try and think of what else the pattern could be. Now, you could start off just by looking at the top left box, or you could start off with what we call the bare bones box.

This is the box with the least amount of stuff in it, which should make it easier to identify what is going on. Remember that the pattern has to be present in all six of the boxes, so the bare bones box is a great place to start. At this point, it is also worth trying to see if you can identify any major patterns in all of the boxes. For example, there might be an arrow present in the top corner of every single box. Step number three is to identify the pattern.

It usually helps to have an acronym that will give you a system to work through, and I'll share mine with you in a second. Once you have identified the pattern, you then want to try it out on your test shape to see if it fits. One top tip to remember for abstract reasoning is that if you consider the questions in a set, remember I mentioned that you will get five questions per set for the abstract reasoning section, then you actually get 75 seconds roughly to try and figure out what the pattern is at the start of the set. This means you could feasibly spend between 40 and 45 seconds at the start of the set trying to find the pattern before moving on to answer the rest of the questions.

So let's now move on to the acronym that I mentioned. Having a systematic approach to abstract reasoning will make your life so much easier. There are loads of different acronyms and lots of systems that you can use, but if you practice one and stick with it, it means that you'll be more consistent and you will get faster with time. The acronym that you might find useful is SPARTAN IBS. This will help you to remember different things to look out for when trying to identify patterns.

SPARTAN IBS stands for shape type, position, angles, root or direction, touching sides, area and size, number, intersections, borders, and shading. Having this acronym in your mind when you are looking at shapes and trying to identify the patterns will really help you and remind you of what to look out for. Okay, so now that you have an acronym and you kind of know what to look out for when identifying the patterns, I would highly recommend that you practice, practice, practice, especially under timed conditions. It is normal to feel stuck though, especially at the start when you're trying to figure out what the pattern is. So here are three top tips that can help you.

Number one is remember that you don't always have to start with the top left box. You can use the bare bones box or the box which has the least going on inside of it. Remember that the pattern has to apply to all six of the boxes in that set. Also, if you can't figure out what's going on in one box, then try another box or try and take an overview approach where you're looking at all of the boxes as a whole to try and figure out what the pattern could be and what's common and similar to all of them. My second tip is don't go too crazy with it because again, you are under timed conditions And you might not have the time to figure out exactly what the pattern is, especially if it's a conditional pattern.

If you are finding a question really difficult, then it's totally okay to make a guess, flag it and come back to it later. Remember that there's no negative marking throughout the UCAT exam, so even if you don't know the answer, they won't take away a mark if you make a guess. And it's better to try to guess than to leave it blank. Finally, my third tip would be to trust your gut. Sometimes you just have like an instinctive feeling or maybe you can't quite figure out what's going on but your gut is telling you to go with one.

If you aren't able to figure out exactly what the pattern is, then trust your gut. Okay, so that was an overview of the abstract reasoning section with some examples. These are just some of the tips and the strategies that you can use to help you succeed in this section. To learn more of our techniques, make sure to check out the FutureDoc website for more information on our coaching programs. So that is everything for today's video.

Thank you so much for watching. Remember to like and subscribe to the channel and I will see you in our next UCAT video, which will be on the quantitative reasoning section of the UCAT exam.

So I'm going to show you how I do abstract reasoning questions and give you a walkthrough of the exact technique that I use so that we can train your brain to have that knee-jerk reaction. As soon as you see a question, you know exactly what technique to employ for speed and accuracy, which are the two most important parts of the UCAT. In the questions, I'm going to refer to a couple of resources, and at the end, I'll show you exactly where to get them. But otherwise, have a go, and you'll see me talk through it and show you the best ways to answer them. Hope that you learn a lot from it.

But like I say, at the end, join me, and I'll show you some more abstract reasoning resources that you can use to up your score. But otherwise, go forth and enjoy. So welcome to the first question. And here, same as always, we're going to do one minute for the first question, 30 seconds for each subsequent question. So I'll see you back here very shortly, and we'll go through some answers.

Enjoy. OK, welcome back. And we started with a relatively simple one. And I just want to take you through kind of how I think about these, right? Now, if you saw that video that I made probably a couple of years ago now called the three fastest ways to tackle abstract reasoning questions, you'll see me do the slow method, which I'm going to show you first.

Then I'll show you the in-between method. And then the really fast one is kind of once you get a little, once you get quite experienced, you can speed up. Because when you're learning the abstract reasoning, the first thing that you want to do is first understand how to do it slowly so that you can speed up. You want a system to fall back on. And then with practice, you get better at these and you get a lot quicker.

So let's show you the slow system first. And that is the very random, but the acronym that I use to help people remember. And that is the acronym Spartan. That should be a T. That should be highlighted as well.

Sorry, emboldened as well. That would say Spartan IBS. And the thing with acronyms and memory techniques, the sillier, the better. So I imagine, you know, 300, the film, and I think of Gerard Butler, the Spartan, on the toilet with irritable bowel syndrome. That is a silly image that sticks in my head that reminds me of Spartan IBS.

And like I say, it's a mnemonic or an acronym kind of for this to help you remember a system for which to almost perform as a checklist to help you understand. So we'll compare these side by side. I've got, so I've got this first box that I'm going to assess, and we're going to look at shape type position, angle rotation, touching sides, area and size, number of items, intersections, border and shading, right? So without going through that, I can see that the shape type, it seems to be very random. So I would be surprised if the shape type is significant here.

The position, well, we can see that all of them have a line with one and above, one and below. The angle doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Rotation, no. Touching sides, nothing's touching the sides, so not really. Area and size, I would say no.

Number of items, but number, okay, borders, here we go. Borders is probably the one that I'm thinking of, but there are no intersections. I don't think there's anything really to do with the area here that matters. The number of items, let's have a look. So we've got five on the first one, three on the second, then we've got three and four, four and four.

Yeah, I don't see any pattern there. No, so I think it's the last two, which is border and shading. Now, while I'm at it, I want to show you the medium method, because for those of you who have bought the UCAT course, our UCAT course, you'll see that I'll give you loads of these little cheat sheets. And these are shortcuts for the certain types of questions that come up, and they're little, again, more memory mnemonics that help you understand quickly the things that it's going to be. So this is what we would call overwhelming number of shapes, and I won't explain it now, it's on the course, but I'll explain the things that it could be.

So we narrow it down. When it's an overwhelming number of shapes, it's either going to be position, shading, sides, type of shape, angles, or lines of symmetry. So we can instantly rule those two out. Position we've already ruled out, and shading, a number of sides, type of shape we've ruled out as well. So it's something to do with the shading and number of sides, right?

So let's have a look. The thing that I think it is, looking at it, is when I look at these, I can see that, so three four-sided shapes are shaded here, and four three-sided shapes are shaded here, the same here. And then, let's see, so this is a five-sided shape and one-sided shape times two, so that's also 12 sides. That is nine plus three, so 12 sides. And then, let's see, that is nine plus three again, so 12 sides.

Okay, so remember the circle is a one-sided shape. Now, what do we have on the other side? So that's five times three, 15, and then that is, what's that, five times four, 20. Okay, so maybe the relation is something to do with the number of sides relative to the ones that are shaded, okay? Maybe that's the hypothesis.

Now, when we're doing this, you just have to bear in mind that you will probably spend, you get about 55 seconds on these, I believe, I think maybe it's a minute to do all of these. Remember, it's one set of patterns, and then it is the five questions after that. So when you do that, you need to spend this portion of amount of time working out the pattern, and then once you've worked out the pattern, you can look at the shape. You can see here that I'm not even looking at the shape yet because I want to work out what the heck is going on here.

So I have a hypothesis, let's test it. So basically what I'm saying is when it's shaded, regardless of whether it's top or bottom, it's 12 sides, right? Now, this one, let's have a look. Okay, so straight away, I was going to say it's probably going to be the not shaded ones are 12 sides, but straight away I can look at the first two shapes and I can see that there's no correlation between those, but maybe is that the shaded shapes and a different number of sides, right? So what's that?

Five triangles, so 15, got three squares plus a triangle, also 15. Aha, maybe we're onto something. Another set of five triangles. That's the thing that jumped out at me first, by the way, that made me think that there's maybe a pattern. You can see here, there's something very similar about these two boxes.

This one here and this one here makes me think that these have something in common that will apply to the rest of them. So again, when I see two sets where there's something exactly in common here, I'm like, well, that's probably a clue that there is something here. So 15, 15, that's also 15, five, five, four plus one, yeah, 15. Okay, yeah, so I think we have our pattern. And don't worry if this didn't come to you.

This is something that you need to practice a bit and you'll see enough of these. And that really is the quick method. The quick method is do so many that the Spartan IBS and the shortcut become so second nature to you. They're just really easy. So knowing what we know, well, this basically has shaded shapes at all.

So I would say that that's neither. Let's have a look. Quick answer, you see neither. Okay, let's see. So now as well figure out what the pattern is.

So there are two rows of shapes arranged horizontally with a horizontal line between them. Okay, well done, UCAP. Thank you for telling me that. One row of shapes has 12 sides in total, and this row is always colored black, regardless of whether this is on top or bottom row. Okay, so that's what we said, right?

When it's shaded, 12 sides. The other row has no significance, like we said, yeah, also nothing to do with it. There are two rows of shapes arranged horizontally with a horizontal straight line between them. Again, same again. One of the row of shapes has 15 sides in total, and this row is always colored black, regardless of whether it's top or bottom.

The other row has no significance. So, okay, shaded shapes plus the number of sides of shaded shapes equals either 15 or 12, right? There are four shapes with a total number of 15 sides. In the test box, sorry, here, there are four shapes with a total of 15 sides below the line as required for set B, but they are not colored black. So there we go.

There's no shading. There are three shapes with a total of nine lines of verb, which is irrelevant. So basically, there's no shading, so it's neither. Okay, next one. So this is where we go quite quickly now.

So 12 sides of the black shapes, so that must be set A. I'm pretty confident that's right. Oh, hello. Hold on. What's happened here?

Okay, there are three black shapes with a total of 12 sides above the line as requested, but they have been related. Oh, sorry. Yeah. See, this is where I make mistakes as well. And I tend to any because I took the mic earlier for saying, oh, thank you for saying that arranged horizontally and then thinking it was stating the obvious.

And then like an idiot, I've gone and ignored that. So yes, that is neither. Okay, naughty Dr. Ash for getting that wrong. Let's see if I can do better this time.

Now, this is a funny one. Does our rule say that they have to all be shaded because they're, well, to be fair, it's irrelevant because regardless of whether they're all shaded, this doesn't add up to 12 or 15. So this is definitely neither. You see how many there are of neither for this. I mean, assuming that's correct.

Yeah, the response is C. This is a row of shapes with a total of 12 sides in set A above the line, but they are colored white rather than black. Shapes below the line have total 13 sides and all of them except one are colored black, whereas the other set should be all white. Yeah, for either set, they should be all white or all black, right? So yeah, that one a bit more straightforward.

Then let's see. So this one is, what do we have? Six, eight plus four, 12. So this is hope a barn door set A. I guess I do.

I don't always get these 100% correct. There we go. Correct is A. The shapes below the line are total of 12 sides. These are colored black.

The shapes above the line have a total of 21, which is irrelevant because we said it's not significant. Okay, so let's look at the last one. Now the last one has, what's that? Four by six plus six, 12. So it's also set A.

So we've not even had a single answer in this be set B. So we've had three nevers and two set A's. And just for completeness, the shapes below the line have a total of 12 sides. And these are colored black. The shapes above the line have a total of 19 sides and are colored white.

So there we go. I mean, easily one way you can get caught out by simple things like, for example, just careful of this arrangement. I mean, I should have seen that, but I was, maybe it's because I'm multitasking and trying to do this live that I'm maybe not quite as sharp as I normally would be. Make an excuse now. But anyway, I hope you find that one okay as a first question.

And I'll see you in the next one. Okay, so to mix it up this time, we're going to do slightly different ones. We're going to do the sequence ones. And there's only one of these. So I'm going to give you 30 seconds to do this one.

And then there's only going to be this one answer here. So we'll talk through that. So enjoy, have fun. And you've got 30 seconds starting now. Cool.

Cool. So let's try and figure out what we've got going on here. Now, this is where I look at this and it's hard for me to verbalize exactly what I see. I see this a bit like a sequence of things. This transition from here to here gives me a bit of a clue that this is going almost like a conveyor belt.

almost, and things are appearing from this top right side here, and they're kind of going around this way. Can you see? You can see that going around in this direction, so anticlockwise starting from the top right box anticlockwise. And as it progresses, at first I was like, well, it's just rotating around. And then I looked at it and I was kind of like, hold on, what's going on here?

It's gone. You'd expect from the third, for the third one, for the square to go to here, right? But actually, it goes to here. So then I'm thinking, well, what must happen is that the square, or all of the shapes, but the square's the easiest one to focus on because it's in all of them, goes one at first, so it jumps from here to here between the first two tiles. Then between the second and the third, it jumps two, so it goes, imagine if we're twisting it, it goes from here to bosh to bosh.

Then the next one, it goes four. So it's going one, two, three, four, and ends up here, right? So essentially, if that theory is correct, and what's really happening is that each time a new shape is getting added to the end of the cube, before I've even looked at these test shapes or test figures, I have got a hypothesis in my head of what's going to happen. Firstly, the other thing that we can see is that each time a new one's getting added, or actually, oh, not a new one's getting added, maybe a new one will be added, I don't know. The number of shapes is disproven, really, because it's a two, then a three, then a three, then a four.

So we don't know if there's any correlation to that. But really, if my hypothesis is true about the square moving in progressively one more each time, so the next one it will move, so it's moved one, it's moved from this one to this one, it's moved one, two, three. So I'm expecting it to move four. So it's here, one, two, three, four. So I'm expecting to find a square in this shape.

And actually, if we're doing two, then three, then three, then four, I'd probably actually expect four in this one. So they all have four. And this one has the square in the box that I expected. And also, the order of all of them is the same if we're going around anticlockwise, right? Can you see that?

So this, they've all shifted four anticlockwise. So this one is, the circle has gone one, two, three, four, and is in the bottom right corner. Square has gone one, two, three, four, it is in the bottom middle. Triangle has gone one, one, two, three, four, is in the bottom left. And then the arrow has gone one, two, three, four, is in the top left.

So to me, that makes sense. Now, I'm not going to go through why I don't think it's the other ones. Because I have a pretty strong feeling that it's that one. So let's have a look. Let's see if I've embarrassed myself again.

Let's see. So correct answer is D. So the rule is in the series, each figure in position in position n is obtained when the shapes in the previous figure shift n one plate n minus one places in the anticlockwise direction. Additionally, the new shape is introduced every alternate figure, starting with the second figure in series. Okay, fine.

So correct response, this is because shapes in the final figure in the sequence will shift four places in the anticlockwise direction from where they were in the fourth figure, and no new shape is introduced. Okay, that's why. So I kind of had it probably add a little bit more complexity to it. But yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it. So let's have a look at the next one.

Again, another 30 seconds I'll give you and it's just going to be one question, one answer for this. So I'll leave you to it. I'll give you 30 seconds and I hope you enjoy. Okay, so I hope you find that one. Okay, let's have a look and I'm going to give it a crack myself.

So what can I see? So again, this is the relational ones. So this goes into this. So what does this go into? So the first thing that I can see is that all the arrows change direction, right?

So that's the first thing. So all of these, so when I'm looking for them, I can rule out any ones that don't have up, down and going to the left. So up, up and going to the left, you can rule that out. Up, down and going to the left, that one could be, so the rest of it. So you can rule out A from that.

Now what's happening here is the, okay, the triangle. What else has happened? So the outermost has gone, so the innermost has gone out, but also the outermost has gone in. And what's happened is it's almost kind of like the middle shape is almost the fulcrum and they've twisted, flipped around that point. So out goes to in, in goes to out, and middle stays the same.

Now, what's also happening is as the out goes to in, it's changed color. So it goes from shaded to clear. So again, before we even look at the test shape, let's have a look at what we want to do, what we're thinking here, what we're expecting. So I'm expecting triangles to come out like this. So one would go, initially one would go here, one would go here, one would go here, but then also twist.

So the dark triangle, the shaded triangle should be in this top right corner, and then the rest should twist along. So we expect that. Then we, like I say, the innermost goes to the outermost, so we're expecting triangles on the outside. And if we look briefly at the test shape, at all the test shape, that doesn't really help us in terms of the triangles being on the outside because we can see for all of them, but we can see that only two have twisted, right? So it has to be C or D.

But then also, I can see the outermost shape now needs to go to the innermost, and that's a square. So can't be a triangle, so that rules out D. Now, so when I was doing this on the first take, I was actually confused as to whether the square should be clear or not. And it's because I'd missed the anti-clockwise thing that I was actually torn between B and C. But it goes from an outside shaded shape to an inside clear shape.

So if it's an outside clear shape, it should go to an inside shaded shape. So that would mean that it's C. So let's have, I mean, I'll show you the answer because I've already seen it. So the rule, there are two large shapes, an outer and an inner shape. There are three small inside shapes.

So yeah, I called it like an inner, a middle, and an outside, but they've labeled it slightly differently. The three small shapes move out of the two larger shapes and move one place anti-clockwise. So I missed the anti-clockwise bit, but they go from inside to innermost to outermost. The outside shape changes color and moves inside the inner shape. So again, like I said, they're flipping, they're switching places about the middle.

And so the outside, the outermost goes to the innermost and changes color. So like it says, the correct response is C, which is what I knew. This is because triangles have moved out of the two large squares and moved one place anti-clockwise, like we said. So triangles go from innermost to outermost and rotate anti-clockwise. The outer square has changed color to black and moved inside the inner square.

So as we can see here, gone from clear on the outside that you can see here to shaded on the inside that you can see here. So there you go. So that's the end of this type of question that we're going to do. We just did three quick ones, but these do take a bit of time. I think they're the most enjoyable sometimes because you can just work out the pattern or the sequence and then pick the next.

But they are the most laborious in terms of time. Just remember that if you're struggling with one, just guess, flag, and move on. Don't waste time on stuff that you're struggling to get because you're depriving yourself of easier marks that are later on in the test. So be very disciplined that if you're not getting it and you're just slowing down, if you keep saying, oh, but I just need 10 more seconds, if you keep doing that over time, it'll accumulate and you will miss chunks of the test. So really important to just be very disciplined with that.

But anyway, I'll see you in the final question. Okay, so last question. Have a go. As always, a minute and then 30 for each subsequent question. Very different to how you'll do it in the actual thing, but we're just practicing here.

So go out there and just really enjoy yourselves and really make the most out of it. And I'll see you back here for the answers in a moment. very disciplined with that, but anyway, I'll see you in the final question. Okay, so last question, have a go, as always, a minute and then 30 for each subsequent question. Very different to how you'll do it in the actual thing, but we're just practicing here, so go out there and just really enjoy yourselves and really make the most out of it, and I'll see you back here for the answers in a moment.

Okay, so we're back, and I hope this one was a bit more manageable, but I'm gonna talk you through again, a little bit like in the first question, the slow method, the fast method, and then the really fast method. Now, the slow method, sorry, again, to just go through this acronym, this Spartan IBS, and we can look at, you know, we can actually just go through that now with you, but I'd like to show you again, what we have here is something called conditional relationships, right? So what's happening is when a certain thing happens, then something else happens. So when the shape is like this, something else is like this, or I'll talk you through exactly what's happening here, and I kind of can just spot these straight away.

And like I said, on the course, I do have this cheat sheet, if you will, for to kind of the shortcuts for all of these types of questions. So this is a conditional relationship. I just remember it as an air conditioner, but it's just for this, it's number, position, shading, size, and root and direction, which I'll show you in a moment is what can be the orientation of it. So what we've got here, I always like to start in the top left and figure out what's going on. So we have cross and we have some shapes.

There are different types of shapes at the end of each cross. Some are shaded, some are not, right? So let's see, is there anything to do with circles? Is it all something to do with circles in one? No, not circles in each one.

Is there something to do with the shapes or the side of the shapes? Well, not really because there are, let's see, there are one, two, four. If you can buy, sorry, I'm saying one here and three here, so four. Obviously, if we're doing double, it'd be eight, but I'm just doing the shortcut version here. There are five here, and then there are four here.

I don't think there's any relation to that. So we have some shaded and some not. So we can see that whenever something is shaded, it's shaded on both sides. And I wonder whether you guys are starting to see this, but ultimately the cross is either on its, if you want to call it, on its side in an X or it's upright in a plus sign, right? So it's either a time sign or a plus sign.

And I can see here that the ones that are shaded are the ones where it's a plus sign. Okay, so I think I'm onto something here. Kind of going through this in my head, the number, let me put it to the side so you can see. The number, sorry, there's some seagulls outside getting very excited about something. And the number, well, that is irrelevant, and especially the number of sides we've said is irrelevant.

The position is relevant. Like we said, whether it's a plus or an X, the shading is relevant. The size is irrelevant. It doesn't really matter. And the root is kind of the direction that's usually for arrows or something like that.

So we have two things that are relevant here. Well, that's all I can see anyway. Like I say, when it's an X sign, they are all clear. And when it's a plus sign, two of them are shaded in opposition to each other. So I imagine going over to set B, and remember, this is what we're doing when we're doing these types of questions.

We know that there are going to be five questions based on our understanding of this pattern. So I know I'm spending a long time just talking through it, and it might be maybe even a bit dull to listen to, but then it makes the other questions incredibly easy. But then we have a similar thing on the other side, except for when it's a plus, they're all shaded. And when it's on its side, well, you know, as an X, two of them are shaded. Okay, so that kind of helps us because straight away, I'm going to guess that this is set A because it's an X and they're clear.

So it should go here, right? Let's hope that, right, okay, that's just A, yeah. Okay, so let's see. So now this will tell us how good my assessment of the pattern is. So set A, there are two pairs of shapes, yeah?

The shapes are unshaded, then the pairs are in an X. If one pair is shaded, then the pairs are in a plus. Okay, yeah, so that's what we said. So it is just shading and rotation or position, whatever you want to call that. There are two pairs of shapes.

If the shapes are all shaded, then the pairs are in a plus. And if one pair is shaded, they're in an X. So exactly what we said. Okay, and now it says A because two pairs of shapes are unshaded. Good, right.

So I think I wouldn't know this in the real thing. Now that I've spent the time to get this pattern and I know, well, I have the benefit of knowing that I'm right with the first one, this should be super easy now. So this should be neither because both pairs are unshaded except for it's in a plus. So that should be neither is what I'm guessing. Brilliant, two pairs are unshaded.

Yeah, correct response is C, neither. Well done, Ash. This one is two in an X, so this should be set B. So it's a pair of shaded and the orientation is X. So it's super simple.

You only have two factors to check now. So let's check that's right. Okay, response is B, exactly what I said. Two pairs of shapes, one pair shaded in an X. So that gives us B, two more to go.

This one's gonna be A, isn't it? Because it's one pair is shaded and it's in a plus. So it fits nicely into that. So let's double check. So I've got very arrogant here now.

I'm not even checking the ones yet. So that's A. And then final one, we've got, so this is gonna be B, isn't it? Because we've got two pair that are shaded and it's in a plus. So that works quite nicely.

Perfect, okay, great. Well, there we go, five out of five. Well done me. But so well done for having to go at that. I'm gonna see you in a very short moment where I'll tell you exactly where you can get access to some of these resources that I've showed you that are gonna help you speed up.

So I hope you found that useful. If you have any more requests for some walkthroughs that you'd like to see, please leave them in the comments. Otherwise, like I said, you can get a free UCAT guide that you can access by going to the future.website and going on the free resources tab. And there you can find plenty of other things as well if you'd like to use them. But otherwise, if you'd like access to that cheat sheet that I showed you, that is on our UCAT course, which every day in UCAT season, I get loads of emails about how much it's helped them with their UCAT performance.

You can access that course by checking out this video here. Otherwise, if you would like some one-on-one help with your entire medical or dental school application, check out this video here and how the FutureDoc program has helped over 93% of people who've applied via the program get into their first choice medical and dental school. So thanks for watching, and I'll see you over in one of those videos.