BMAT | BioMedical Admissions Test | theMSAG Blogs

The BMAT is by no means an easy exam, and a good score is achieved by getting roughly half of the questions right. With an exam that’s only two hours long, there is little margin for error, and due to the score conversions, losing just one or two marks due to silly mistakes may result in your point score reducing by 0.5. There are many common mistakes that people make along the way, be that by preparing incorrectly, or their actual exam technique. Through this blog post, our aim is to guide you through the common mistakes so that you can avoid them and thus maximise your potential.

The University Clinical Aptitude Testand BMAT (BioMedical Admissions Test) form a very important part of your medical school application. Many prospective medical students find themselves struggling with the third and final section of the BMAT, feeling that as scientists they ‘can’t write a good essay’. In this blog post, we hope to be able to dispel some of the myths surrounding the BMAT essay and help you feel more confident in your essay writing abilities. 

It is really important that as part of your BMAT revision you ensure you follow your progress using practice questions. Thankfully, all of the past papers since 2003 are available on theCambridge Assessment and Admissions Testing website. We thoroughly recommend working through as many of these as possible. Not only will it allow you to refresh your knowledge, but it will allow you to get very familiar with the exam format.

Preparing for the BMAT and UCAT is vital as they are a very important component of your medical school application. The skills tested are all applicable to life as a medical student. The third section of the exam is a 30-minute essay paper which tess your ability to develop ideas and communicate them effectively in writing. You only have one side of A4 to formulate your arguments, so planning is crucial.

Section 2 of the BMAT assesses applicants' biology, chemistry, physics and maths knowledge. Supposedly, the knowledge required is GCSE level. Students usually fall due to the time pressure of this section - there are 27 questions to answer in 30 minutes. You may feel that the BMAT is difficult to prepare for, however, section 2 is probably the section where BMAT preparation is the most important.

Preparing for the BMAT andUCAT is vital as they are a very important component of your medical school application. The skills tested are all applicable to life as a medical student. The first section of the BMAT test assesses your ability dealing with unfamiliar information. This involves 35 questions on understanding arguments, analysing data and problem-solving. You have one hour to complete the multiple choice questions so you should assign just under two minutes per BMAT question. From the test specification, there are three main types of questions:

The BioMedical Admissions Test (BMAT) is an exam required by some dentistry and medical schools as part of the application process. The exam was introduced as an additional method of differentiating candidates who appear equally qualified for the course. It is a two-hour pen and paper test aimed to assess the ability to apply school science and mathematics knowledge, as well as assessing problem-solving, critical thinking and written communication skills. In many ways, this tests draws several parallels with the UCAT, but the depth of knowledge is broader.