The Medibuddy AI-powered UCAT question bank is the only one on the market that uses AI algorithms to deeply analyse your ability levels and create a personalised learning journey specifically tailored to boost your UCAT score.
"The question bank really mirrored the real UCAT exam style. It was very comprehensive and helpful. I have used many other ones where they used almost the same questions but your question bank was completely unique"
The Medibuddy AI-powered UCAT question bank provides this and more.
“The new [Medibuddy] adaptive UCAT question bank made my revision much more efficient and it helped me get better and quicker at answering questions”
“I used the Abstract Reasoning section as I found the website the night before my test and I was pretty bad at AR. In my official exam my AR was my 2nd best section at 860! Overall, I thought the website was a very useful resource from what I saw and I liked the algorithm that showed skill in particular question types.”
Did you know that if you spend an average of 2 minutes answering and absorbing the explanation of each question in a question bank, it will take you 333 hours to get through 10k questions!?
No wonder the vast majority of people don’t answer anywhere near 10k questions before their exam!
We surveyed 100s of medical students and asked them what their biggest issue was when preparing for the UCAT.
Over 90% said that because the UCAT wasn’t a knowledge-based exam, they could answer thousands of questions but never feel like they were getting anywhere.
The trouble with standard question banks is that everyone is given the same questions to prepare with, with no consideration of what skills or topics each person is actually struggling with.
However, everyone has a different baseline ability. You might struggle with quantitative reasoning, whereas your friend might be a maths wizard. With a standard question bank, you’ll both answer the same QR questions, in the same order, meaning you’ll be left struggling while your friend doesn’t feel stretched.
No wonder so many people can find preparing for the UCAT frustrating!
The Medibuddy adaptive UCAT question bank is here to change all that.
We recognise that the vast majority of students don’t complete all 10,000 questions in a question bank.
It’s therefore vitally important that the questions you do answer are relevant to your skill and ability level.
We’ll ensure that in the areas you’re struggling, you’ll master the basics first. Whereas in your stronger areas, you’ll be immediately pushed.
This will mean that every minute of your revision is turbo charged to maximise your UCAT score.
As you progress through the question bank, you’ll be able to see a sophisticated estimate of your current skill level for each subsection of the UCAT. When other question banks give you a performance review, they are simply telling you how many questions you’ve got right or wrong.
We do things differently.
Our algorithm will tell you exactly what your ability level is for each area of the UCAT. We calculate this based on the actual difficulty of the questions you are answering and it’s done in real time, so you can be sure that the work you’re putting in is actually translating into real gains in your UCAT score.
The Medibuddy UCAT question bank is the only one available which shows you if you’re actually getting better at answering harder questions.
Verbal Reasoning is the first subset within the UCAT; it aims to assess your ability to understand information and draw conclusions from it. Although it appears relatively straightforward, it has consistently had the lowest average score of all subtests in the UCAT. This guide will provide you with more information about the Verbal Reasoning subtest, including how to prepare, tips to do well and where to access quality Verbal Reasoning questions.
Within the Verbal Reasoning subtest, you’ll be given a passage and asked questions related to it, to assess your ability to understand written information and draw specific conclusions.
The UCAT website outlines the following reasons why your verbal reasoning skills are assessed as part of the UCAT:
The format of the UCAT Verbal Reasoning section is as follows:
You’ll have only 21 minutes (plus a 1 minute instruction section) to read the 11 passages and answer the 44 associated questions.
Time is a crucial factor in the Verbal Reasoning subtest, with an average of less than 2 minutes for each passage and 4 related questions; you can find advice on how to manage this in the tips section below.
There are two question types within the UCAT Verbal Reasoning subtest, they are:
For each question in the Verbal Reasoning section you can only select one answer from the multiple choice options. 1 mark is available for each correct answer, meaning you can score a total of 44 marks. The raw mark you achieve will be converted into a ‘scale score’ between 300 – 900. The other cognitive subtests – Abstract Reasoning, Decision Making and Quantitative Reasoning – are all scored in the same way, whereas the Situational Judgement Test is scored using a band system.
As mentioned earlier, out of all the subtests in the UCAT, Verbal Reasoning has consistently had the lowest average score.
The UCAT website provides the following mean scores for the Verbal Reasoning subtest from 2018 – 2023:
For more information about how the UCAT is scored, including the scaled scoring, visit our UCAT Score and UCAT Decile Ranking blogs.
Generally, it’s advised that a ‘good’ UCAT score is approximately 20 – 30 marks above the average score for each of the subtests. For example, for 2023 a ‘good’ score for the Verbal Reasoning subtest would be 611 – 621.
As the average score will vary each year, depending on how each year’s candidates score, so will the ‘good’ UCAT score.
For all UCAT subtests, understanding what the subtest involves, the types of questions you will be asked and learning to deal with the time pressure, will help you to do well in the UCAT. Focusing on UCAT practice questions and practice tests during your preparations will enable you to do this.
You’ll find more information about practice questions in the section below, following our UCAT Verbal Reasoning strategies and tips to help you prepare.
There are two techniques which will help you to quickly extract the information you require from the passages, allowing you to answer the questions in the Verbal Reasoning section as swiftly as possible. These are:
Skimming involves rapidly reading the passage to gain an overview of the content, whereas with scanning you quickly look over the text to draw out specific information. Both are useful reading techniques, as skimming will help you to quickly gain a general understanding of the overall passage, while scanning will allow you to pick out keywords, which you can then read around to answer specific questions.
Some UCAT advice suggests only using the scanning technique – reading each question before scanning the passage to find the answer – but if you prefer to skim read the text first to gain an understanding of the content before approaching the questions, that works too. There’s no right or wrong way to answer, it’s best to explore the different approaches during your UCAT revision to find what works best for you; it may be that you find a combination of both techniques most effective.
You may find that the scanning technique will be easier to try using practice questions, where you can identify key words in the questions, before using your scanning to find them in the passage. However, you can practice skim reading at speed with any text, allowing you to practice whenever you have a free minute, which will ultimately help you to pick up the pace.
Time is the biggest factor in the UCAT Verbal Reasoning subtest; while the task itself is relatively straightforward, the challenge is in being able to read each of the passages and complete the questions in the short time allotted. The following tips will help you to deal with the time pressure of the Verbal Reasoning section:
While timing is a crucial part of the UCAT Verbal Reasoning subtest, and something which you need to practice for within your revision, the following tips will help you more broadly in this section of the UCAT:
Practice questions and practice tests are the most beneficial tool for preparing for your UCAT exam. They’ll help you to become familiar with the questions you’ll be asked and increase your pace when answering, which is vital for the all-important time pressure of the UCAT Verbal Reasoning subtest.
The free, adaptive, Medibuddy question bank offers personalised learning, with artificial intelligence powered practice questions, which adapt to your strengths and weaknesses. This adaptive learning experience means that you’ll spend time working on the areas that you need to improve, which is likely to have the biggest impact on your UCAT score, and therefore support your UCAT preparations.
Thousands of questions and comprehensive answers written specifically for UCAT preparation, with more getting added.
The Medibuddy platform has been designed to replicate the actual exam, so you won’t get any surprises on the day.
Each question and explanation you receive will be chosen by our AI algorithm, specifically for you.
The only question bank available that tells you if you’re actually getting better and not just how many questions you’ve answered correctly.
We don’t just pick the questions for our mock exams at random, we follow a similar process to the actual exam board by calibrating every question for difficulty, based on the abilities of 100s of medical students. This means your score will be a much more accurate reflection of the real thing.
You can access our platform anywhere and it works on desktops, tablets and phones. This means you can revise at home or on the go.
When the Medibuddy team were preparing for the UCAT, working out where to start was quite overwhelming. The online resources offered thousands of practice questions and lots of generic advice. However, the only way of getting help that was specifically targeted at you was by paying for expensive tutoring.
This didn’t seem right to us. The personalised learning you get with a tutor has been shown to improve exam results across all fields of education. So why when it came to the UCAT, an exam that is vital for medical school, should it only be available to those who could afford a tutor?
The good news is artificial intelligence has changed everything! Super smart algorithms can now identify exactly where your strengths and weaknesses lie, ensuring that every minute of your revision is focused on areas that will have the biggest impact on your exam score.
Here at Medibuddy we’ve used the latest educational technology and combined it with our deep understanding of the UCAT, to produce the first ever AI-powered, adaptive UCAT question bank.
Our sophisticated question bank platform will adapt seamlessly with every question you answer. As you improve, the type and difficulty of the questions you receive will change with you, ensuring that at all times, you only receive the most relevant questions.
The Medibuddy team has been creating educational resources for medical students and doctors for years. We’ve helped thousands of students pass their exams and we’ve put all of that experience into our UCAT question bank.
We stay up to date on all the latest educational science, so you can be sure that the techniques we use are state of the art.
We know how expensive applying to medicine can be, so we do our bit by keeping our UCAT question bank FREE.
We’re able to do this by charging a little more on our educational courses and question banks for qualified doctors. We strongly believe that no one should be priced out of medicine. Our doctors agree and are happy to subsidise our educational resources for students.
As you progress through the question bank, our algorithm will be performing complicated statistical analyses of the way you answer questions. All of our questions have been tested on hundreds of 1st year medical students so the algorithm knows exactly how difficult each question is.
The algorithm looks at how you answer questions across a range of different difficulties to work out what your current ability level is.
Every question in our database has been tagged based on the skills required to answer it and its difficulty level. Once the algorithm has worked out what your ability level is and the areas you need to target, it ensures that the questions you receive focus on these areas. As you get better, the algorithm adapts with you, moving you onto new areas based on your needs.
Every single question in our question bank is written specifically for UCAT preparation and is reviewed by our editorial team to ensure it is as close a match as possible to the UCAT standard. We don’t borrow questions that have been written to prepare for other exams. In addition to this, all of our questions are calibrated by 100s of first year medical students who have recently taken the UCAT, which allows us to remove any outliers and ensure consistency.
