The BMAT Exam

Here's the honest truth about why I sat the BMAT exam... I forgot to apply for the UKCAT exam in time to sit it. I looked to apply on the day the deadline had passed at midday. It was a pretty stressful moment in my application process. Fortunately I had not yet chosen my universities on UCAS. Some rapid research uncovered a November sitting of the BMAT exam and half a dozen or so universities who used it as their entrance exam. I chose to apply to Brighton & Sussex Medical School, University of Leeds, Imperial College London, and University Colleges London.

The BMAT website - http://www.admissionstestingservice.org/
The website is packed with useful information about the two sittings of the exam. There is currently one date in September and one date in November. It also has information about how to find your nearest testing centre, and the fees for the exam.

The closest test centre to me was The Norwich School, at the Cathedral in Norwich.
The total fee for the exam, late admission fee, and school admin fee came to a total of £129.00.

The BMAT exam - http://www.admissionstestingservice.org/for-test-takers/bmat/preparing-for-bmat/
The exam comprises of three sections. Section one tests your aptitude, lasts sixty minutes and is multiple choice. Section two tests your prior knowledge, lasts thirty minutes and is multiple choice. Section three tests your writing skills, lasts thirty minutes and you will be expected to write a side of A4. You will sit each section consecutively with approximately five minutes between each section. You are not allowed a calculator.

Do not be fooled by most of the exam being multiple choice. Most people sitting the exam will score around half marks, you are not expected to be able to get everything right.  If you head to: http://www.admissionstestingservice.org/for-test-takers/bmat/scoring-and-results/ and scroll down to almost the bottom of the page you will find PDF documents entitled "Explanation of results" followed by the year. These PDF documents will show you distribution graphs of the scores achieved by test takers each year. This should make you feel a little more at ease with the test, I know it helped me when I was struggling to achieve much more than half marks in section two on all of my practice papers.

Section one - Aptitude
It's a little difficult to prepare for aptitude questions because they test how you think and it's pretty difficult to learn that or change it. I did one BMAT past paper for section one and as I scored okay I never did any more. But, prior to preparing for my BMAT I had previously been preparing for the UKCAT exam in which the questions are based heavily on aptitude and so I felt like that had helped me to prepare for this section. Even though you can't really change the way you think, this section is still worth practising as you get used to the kind of answers they expect you to pick.

Section two - Prior Knowledge - http://www.admissionstestingservice.org/for-test-takers/bmat/preparing-for-bmat/section-2-preparation/
If you're sitting this exam while still at college and studying A-levels in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics this part might well be a breeze. If, like me, you finished your A-levels some time ago you might have forgotten most of the information required. Usefully the website provides a PDF document, which can be found in the section linked above, detailing every topic you need to know for the exam. Honestly, I struggled with this section, I hadn't studied chemistry for over three years, and physics for over five years, and in my mathematics A-level I got a D, so this section was the toughest for me and I had to revise a lot for it. I used the PDF I have just mentioned to guide my revision. I made flashcards. And I sat past papers. Lots and lots of past papers. I made notes on the kind of topics which seemed to appear in every paper e.g. a question on circuits, and a question on angles, etc, and made sure that I covered those topics thoroughly.

Section three - Writing
Section three was the only section I didn't practise before the exam day, and this was simply because I had nobody to mark it for me. It's impossible to mark your own writing piece. What I should have done though is read a few questions so I knew how the question was laid out and how much I would be expected to write.

Past Papers - http://www.admissionstestingservice.org/for-test-takers/bmat/preparing-for-bmat/practice-papers/
There's a wealth of past papers available on the website, found at the link above, along with the mark schemes so there's no excuse not to practise. The only problem is that only the most recent papers have an explanation of the answers, rather than just which option was the correct answer, meaning that if you get a question wrong you may not be able to figure out why, which can be very frustrating.

On the day
Standard exam advice applies. Eat a good breakfast, arrive early, remember to take an unlabelled bottle of water, and a clear pencil case with your pens/pencils etc in. Stay calm, work quickly, don't spend too long on any one questions because you will be losing time to answer others which you might know the answers to.

Good Luck!
Thanks for reading.
Katherine