UCAT Tutoring | University Clinical Aptitude Test 1-1 help

OUR MOST PERSONALIZED OPTION FOR UCAT PREP

Professional Guides

1-1 sessions with a top 10% tutor

Improve weak areas

We match you with tutors who scored highly in those sections

TESTED STRATEGIES

Proven results to boost your average UCAT (UKCAT) scores

TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

Continued monitoring of progress through detailed progress reports

Data driven analysis

Get results from realistic mock UCAT practice tests

Everyone who has taken the UCAT will tell you how important it is in your overall application to medicine or dentistry. Many reapplicants will tell you that a major part of their later success in getting into medical school was a drastic need to improve their UCAT score.

In 2020, there was a record number of medicine applications in the UK, leading to a colossal increase in competition for places (source). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 saw many medical schools use the UCAT as an initial screening process to reduce the number of applicants. This means that if your UCAT score is too low to get you over the threshold, you won’t even get a chance to prove yourself at interviews!

The Medical Schools Council have stated that “The consequence of this rise in applications is that the selection criteria universities use in 2021 are likely to be stricter than those used in 2020.” (source) For 2021, all students need to be aiming for high UCAT scores to be in with a chance of getting an interview. But fear not, we are here to help you!

UCAT Tuition is the most personalised way to improve your UCAT score. The best thing about 1-1 UCAT tutoring? It can be used by almost anyone taking the UCAT, for a variety of reasons.

Some of our previous students have used 1-1 UCAT tutoring to:

• Find out their weaknesses when previously they were unaware
• Iron out specific problems with certain subsections or question types
• Learn strategies instead of making the same mistakes in repeated practice
• Improve their timing
• Receive full UCAT teaching as a private 1-1 course

1-1 tutoring can be used by any student, from those who are currently scoring poorly and need help getting a good average, to those who are naturally scoring well and want to take their score up to the high 700s - even 800s!

Why tutoring?

Tailored to your needs

Though the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT) is now commonly used by medical and dental schools or universities in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, it can still be difficult to prepare for.

You may be stumped that the UCAT exam is not like your GCSE, A-Level or other high school tests. You may require more focused help than a group UCAT course can provide. Or, you may have attended a course already but have found particular weaknesses that you need help with.

1-1 tutoring allows your UCAT preparation to be completely personalised.

Our 1-1 tutoring is personalised by:

• Before your first session, we will be in touch to assess your current comfort level with the UCAT. Perhaps you have sat the UCAT before and scored poorly? Perhaps you have only ever done a few questions and really don’t have a grasp on the exam. We will analyse any previous scores or practice tests, and may ask you to take a short UCAT assessment. This is a mini mock test covering all five sections. From this assessment, our Senior Tutor will review the results to gain an understanding of where your starting natural abilities lie. This data will help us to formulate a study plan.
• Sessions are planned based on what you want to cover. Did you do a tricky Verbal Reasoning practice test and want to go over it? Did you find a couple of awkward Decision Making questions that you just couldn’t figure out? Our tutors can go over full exams, mini mock tests, individual questions or your general understanding - based on your needs. Additionally, if you aren’t sure, we will happily lead the way and create an individualised study plan for you.
• Individualised study plans are created by our expert team, to guide you into getting the best out of your sessions. We can create study plans for any length of time, whether you are preparing months in advance, or whether you have 2 weeks to go until your test!

Learn at your own speed

One major advantage of 1-1 online tutoring, is that you learn at your own pace.

Have you ever felt that you have been left behind in a group setting, not able to keep up with the crowd? It may be the case that for certain concepts, it takes you longer to really understand them. Or perhaps you have found yourself moving quickly through the material in a group and you need to move at a faster pace to be challenged? In our 1-1 tutorials, our experienced tutors will teach at a speed that is comfortable for you and that will aid in your learning.

One to one tutoring allows us to vary the speed depending not only on you as an individual, but also per subsection or even per question type within a subsection. From our experience, students' natural abilities can vary within a section, for example you may be good at Probability but fairly weak at Logic Puzzles within Decision Making. Our experienced tutors will be able to note when you are strong in certain areas, and they can move quicker through these topics, leaving more time to delve deeper into your understanding of weaker topics.

Strategy-focused

You can’t just revise for the UCAT like a school exam, but nor will you do well if you only practice. The key to success is knowing what strategies to employ to solve questions - and to be able to do this in good time.

Our 1-1 tutoring sessions are strategy-based, and we teach strategies for sections that are not taught anywhere else.

In Verbal Reasoning, the lowest scoring section on average, we have come up with a method that sees students' scores increase by 100 points. Our method avoids the need to read all passages in full, but also doesn’t rely on scanning for words, which often sees students miss out on valuable marks.

In Decision Making, we teach strategies to solve each question type - of which there are thirteen. We will work with you to identify your strengths and weaknesses in this highly varied section, and can help by teaching you to write effective shorthand, use tables and quick diagrams to solve questions.

In Quantitative Reasoning, we have researched and interviewed high-scorers and have come up with the fastest methods to solve each type of maths question - including Percentages, Geometry, Tax and Time Zones. Often, this can take a 3 step question down to a 2 or 1 step question just by changing to a more efficient method, saving you valuable time!

In Abstract Reasoning, the MSAG approach enables students to get difficult patterns that previously they would have to skip. We do not rely on any mnemonics that you can find for free on the internet, instead, we will teach you a thorough 5-step approach that combines speed with systematic checking.

In Situational Judgement, most students lack an approach and can be caught out by only relying on their gut instinct. We will help you to refine your approach so that you can more reliably be scoring in the top bands.

Personal one-to-one environment

Every one of our 1-1 sessions are designed to be fun and engaging. We can make our sessions fairly formal, if you’d prefer to learn in a similar environment to school. Likewise, if you’d like a more informal approach, we will strive to get to know you as an individual, and you will also get to know your tutors! We’d love to chat about your weekend plans and hobbies whilst still spending most of the time teaching and discussing strategies. This allows you to strive to achieve your best - through feeling engaged and prioritised during your sessions.

Why the MSAG?

Our tutors

Top 10% scores

All of the MSAG UCAT tutors have not only sat the UCAT before, but they have scored in the top decile for the sections that they teach.

Our tutors are proven masters of their sections. Our philosophy is that the best person to teach Verbal Reasoning is not necessarily the best person to teach Quantitative Reasoning, for example.

Experts in Verbal Reasoning...

Experts in Decision Making...

Experts in Quantitative Reasoning…

Experts in Abstract Reasoning...

Experts in Situational Judgement…

Competitive Universities

Not all Universities use the UCAT in the same way. For example, Liverpool states that a competitive score for undergraduate applicants in 2019-20 was 2400, whereas Birmingham have previously had a cut off of 2640 (2020). Many of our tutors, along with their top 10% scores for the sections that they teach, attend highly selective UCAT-Universities such as King's College London, Sheffield, Newcastle, Manchester and Bristol. We also have tutors at Oxbridge, UCL and Imperial, who scored highly in both the BMAT and UCAT and can give you tips on balancing your prep for both admissions tests!

Tutor selection process

At the MSAG, it is not simply enough to have scored highly in the UCAT to be part of our tutoring team. Having good marks does not always equate to being a good teacher.

All of our tutors have been through a thorough selection process to be a part of our teaching team:

• We select tutors after a rigorous hiring process, which includes sample question writing, a mock teaching simulation and co-teaching alongside an experienced tutor. This is to ensure that all tutors in our team are those that not only have a good natural ability to teach, but those who enjoy and have a personal interest in teaching. Many of our tutors have done extra teaching courses such as Post-Graduate Certificates or Masters in Education.
• Tutors gain experience in writing UCAT questions, usually simultaneously alongside their teaching commitments. This means that they are up-to-date on the latest question types and intuitively know the common tricks found in UCAT questions.
• 1-1 tutors teach on our Group UCAT courses, giving them lots of experience in managing different students' learning styles, working through common errors and explaining concepts. Teachers on our group courses are continuously trained and monitored by our senior tutors, and progress to 1-1 tutoring when they have gained sufficient experience and consistent high feedback.

Get to know your tutors

You should get to know our tutors before wanting to book a 1-on-1 session with them. At the MSAG we believe in transparency and your right to know who will be teaching you. All of our tutors have experience sitting the UCAT themselves, gone on to study medicine or dentistry, and achieved UCAT results in the top 10%.

All tutors have an enhanced DBS check as part of the requirements of their medical or dental courses.

Our material

Those who score highly in the UCAT, will concentrate their practice on replicating the exact conditions of the exam. This means practicing online, with a software that has the same layout, colours, buttons and online calculator as the real UCAT test.

So shouldn’t this also be replicated in tutoring?

We believe that this should be the case, so that you get used to the style and formatting of the real test. But many other tutoring companies will teach using resources that don’t replicate the real test - such as powerpoints, or hand-drawn notes and diagrams.

In 2021, theMSAG Online Question Bank has been adapted to deliver intuitive learning in 1-1 tutoring lessons. This means that not only are you are being taught using the software that most replicates the official online UCAT, but you have access to all of the features that make our Online Platform the best for use in your tutoring sessions:

• By using the Question Bank in 1-1 tutoring, you will be working with a platform that exactly replicates the real exam in terms of style, colour, formatting and functionality. This means that there will be no surprises on test day!
• You will become an expert in navigating the UCAT platform by focusing both your tutoring, and your practice
• Your experienced UCAT tutor will monitor your progress by being able to view the practice that you do in your time outside of lessons through your platform account. With many other tutoring services, you have to inform your tutor of what you have recently practiced and get them up to speed at the start of each lesson. Having the MSAG question bank integrated in 1-1 tutoring allows both you and your tutor to be on the same page before the start of your next lesson. This also means that your tutor can create lesson plans based on your current weaknesses that they have observed not just in lessons, but from your overall practice.
• You will be able to revise questions that have been done in your 1-1 lessons, alongside those which you practice in your own time. Having this data in one place will give you a realistic appreciation of your current abilities, and it allows you to see all of your data in one place, at a glance.
• Our online question bank has an unrivalled quality of Practice Questions. The 5,000 questions have been created by authors that have gone through a rigorous assessment process for their writing and explanation skills. In addition, each individual question is assessed in detail for:
  • Complete accuracy in spelling, grammar and formatting
  • Concordance with the style of official questions
  • An adequate level of difficulty
  • The clarity in language and wording
  • Creativity in the uniqueness of question
  • Depth of understanding in methodology and strategy
  • Ability to link a question to relevant teaching material
  • Outstanding pedagogy in how to approach questions

Read more about how we invested and researched to create the highest quality UCAT question bank to aid in your preparation, here.

Our experience - Proven success

Every tutor and teacher for theMSAG has been in your shoes. As medical students, doctors and dentists, we have sat the UCAT/BMAT, been successful in interviews and have consistently strong academic records. Throughout our training we are both taught and examined on our communication skills through specialist practical examinations (OSCEs) only seen in healthcare degrees.

Communication and teaching are intrinsic parts of any medics or dentist’s job - we are best placed to transfer these skills to tutoring students, helping you boost your average UCAT score.

At the MSAG, we have been tutoring students for 12 years, our team has done over 5,000 hours of solely 1-1 tutoring and we have helped 2,000 UCAT takers in the last 12 months. We have met students from a variety of backgrounds, undergraduates, graduates, career changers, those with extra learning needs, and have dealt with almost all learning problems and styles before!

If you have a particular worry about your own learning style or needs, please get in contact for a free consultation with us. One of our Senior Tutors will be back in touch and will be able to give advice for your individual circumstances.

Keeping you involved/monitoring progress

We understand that applying to medicine or dentistry can be daunting, stressful and for some, disheartening. Those who are supporting you in your journey to becoming a doctor or a dentist, don’t just want you to do well, but they want to see you thrive and achieve your personal best. Doing your UCAT (UKCAT) tutoring with theMSAG means that our tutors, yourself and your parents can monitor progress, so that we can all be best placed to help with your continued learning.

We recognise that each individual’s training needs will change with time, and with detailed monitoring we are able to adapt to these changes so that you can reach your full potential.

We monitor this within our Online Platform - through integrated Progress Reports after each tutoring session, in combination with your practice scores. This is viewable by you (the student), parents, tutors and senior tutors.

In addition, one of our advisors is available 7 days a week over email or the phone. We are happy to take calls regarding any aspect of your preparation - and can even help with last minute nerves or advice on test day!

Completely Digitised: Join us from anywhere in the world

All of our 1-1 tutoring services are conducted over Skype or Zoom as online video meetings. This means that you can join us from anywhere in the world. We have tutors across different time zones who have all taken the UCAT, so that we can arrange sessions to suit your schedule. We have previously taught students from Canada, USA, UK, UEA, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and many more countries - helping them all to achieve their dream of attending UK medical school.

1-1 Tutoring covers every Subsection

Although the UCAT is an exam of 5 subsections, as part of 1-1 tuition, we view each subsection separately. This is because they test different skills, and from our experience helping hundreds of students with their UCAT, students will make different mistakes within each section.

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