A full mock takes about two hours. Most people then spend five minutes looking at the score and move on. That’s a lot of effort for very little in return.
The score tells you where you are. The review tells you what to change. Here’s the system I use with my students.
Review every question, not just the wrong ones
Start with the questions you got wrong, but don’t stop there. Go back through the ones you got right too, and be honest about how you got there.
- Right, and confident: great, your method is working.
- Right, but guessed: treat this like a wrong answer. It won’t be so lucky next time.
- Right, but slow: you know how to do it, but it’s costing you time somewhere else.
Sort every mistake by its cause
This is the part that makes the biggest difference. For each question you missed or guessed, ask why it went wrong. Almost every mistake fits into one of four groups:
- Method: you didn’t have a clear approach for that question type.
- Timing: you knew how to do it but rushed, or spent too long and ran out of time later.
- Reading: you misread the question, the passage or the data.
- Careless slip: you knew it, you had time, and you still clicked the wrong thing.
Each group has a different fix. Method mistakes need teaching and untimed practice. Timing mistakes need a pacing plan. Reading mistakes need a habit, like rereading the question stem before you answer. Careless slips often mean you’re tired or rushing the end of a section.
Keep a simple error log
You don’t need anything fancy. A notebook or a spreadsheet with four columns is plenty:
- Subtest and question type
- What went wrong
- Which of the four causes it was
- What you’ll do differently next time
After two or three mocks, patterns jump out. Maybe most of your Decision Making errors are method, or most of your Verbal Reasoning errors are reading. That’s what tells you what to work on next.
Make the next week about the pattern
Once you can see the pattern, build your next week of practice around it. If one question type keeps showing up in your log, give it its own focused session before your next mock.
Practice turns into progress when each mock changes what you do next.
Use the official practice tests
The UCAT ANZ website has free official question banks and practice tests, including answer explanations. They’re the closest thing to the real test, so they’re worth saving for timed practice closer to your test date.
If you’d like help reading your mock results and turning them into a plan, send me a message. It’s one of my favourite things to work through with students.
