This is an article regarding the recent UKCAT (UK Clinical Aptitude Test)
medical and dental examinations which is required by so many medical and
dental schools, it might as well have been compulsory. I would like to
address and explain some of its many problems, as this is a completely new
examination; many people including the examinees have been left in the dark.
The fact that this is a test of speed was never properly explained, and
the “sampler” version certainly didn’t help at all, as it gave you 4
questions out of the usual 44, yet with the usual time limit of 22 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great idea testing potential medical
student’s responses in a time pressured situation, but it was hardly fair
that the game rules were not explained to the hamsters. If a better
simulation of the exam was published, there probably wouldn’t be so many
shell-shocked faces in the examination room and perhaps a lower incidence of
traumatised examinees leaving the room.
Lots of things were not explained properly prior to the exam, such as the
fact that photo identification is required, this was written on one of those
annoying pop-ups, which frankly, no one actually reads, certainly not
hormone-imbalanced, impatient, teenagers. Maybe if a scarlet red warning
sign that filled the whole page was displayed, some notice might have been
taken. This may seem insignificant, but with personal experience, if no
photo identification was shown, the examination would need to be rebooked
and the fee paid again, so that’s £60 +£60 = £120. Also, information
regarding how Pearsons VUE (the test distributors) would send off the exam
results to UCAS or the universities was not explained at all, and if you
wanted to ask them, they don’t have a phone number, not for the test
centre, not for Pearsons VUE central, not for UKCAT organisers, nothing. The
medical applicants are left at the bottom of the food chain; we take what
ever is given to us.
More importantly, is the health of the examinees, not their mental health
but the fact that the examinee has to sit, unblinkingly at a computer screen
for an hour and a half. Since there are so many questions to get through you
can’t afford to look away even for a second. After only 30 minutes I felt
dizzy and had a painful headache, being prone to migraines the UKCAT soon
became an unbearable prediction exercise to see if I’ll get a migraine.
Since there are no timed breaks during the UKCAT, I had to sit there and
suffer through it.
Another serious issue that may be relevant to medical/dental applicants is
that if they/their school don’t own a computer or simply if they hate and
are petrified of going near one, the UKCAT, being a completely computer
mediated test, puts them at a disadvantage and therefore the UKCAT could be
seen as a discriminating test, and by no means can anyone say that people
who can’t use computers are not fit to become a doctor. For example, the
fact that there is a calculator available for use was not explained nor was
it clearly visible; it was just sitting there amongst the other strange
looking buttons that could potentially seem like it will set the computer on
fire to the non-computer literate user. Even I, as a somewhat amateur
computer fanatic, only found it half way through my timed 20 minutes, before
which I was using long division to work out the questions and inevitably
lost a lot of precious time.
Some of the feedback that I have been getting back from this year’s
applicants is that most of the UKCAT medical schools assort the interview
line-up by UKCAT scores. As efficient and effortless this method is, it is
also unfair to the applicants who have devoted so much of their time to work
experience and actually finding out about their career. Even though the
medical schools may then asses the interviewees by their other achievements,
the applicants who have not paid £200 to go on an UKCAT preparation
course; or spent a month revising IQ tests for the UKCAT will not get an
interview as the interview quota would have already been reached.
Perhaps, the biggest problem the UKCAT poses to medical/dental applicants
is the price, it’s £60 a pop, and that’s not to mentioning the travelling
costs. Although some bursaries are available to households earning £1250 or
less per month, nothing is available to most people. To apply to the
universities you want, you will probably need to take the BMAT (Bio-Medical
Admissions Test) as well; which is about £40, so that’s £100 down and yet
no remote guarantee you will get in to any university. Not only does this
deter potential students from less well-off families, but it also suggests
that richer students make better medical students, since the top UKCAT
scores positively correlate with rich students who have the spare¡ê200 to
spend on preparation courses, which go through an indefinite amount of
similar UKCAT questions, guaranteeing you a good score and thereby becoming
a medic.
I hope that my article has been informative and is able to bring some of
the problems to light, as a 17 year old medical school applicant who has
experienced all of these problems, I’d like to thank you for reading this
article this far.