Medify's Guide to the UCAT Quantitative Reasoning Section

There will be no complex prerequisite knowledge required, just a basic understanding of percentages, graphs, tables and data interpretation is all you need. However, as there is limited time, you will be required to process data quickly and as accurately as possible, as there are many “traps” to confuse and mislead you.

24 minutes have been allocated for the completion of 36 multiple choice questions. There will be 9 scenarios with 4 questions attached to each scenario and 5 possible correct answers to choose from.

How does this relate to being a doctor or dentist?

As a doctor or dentist you would be required to translate numerical data in order to perform the basic duties such as prescribe medicines in relation to a patient’s weight and height or more advanced duties such as operations or other medical procedures requiring mathematical skills and abilities.

Here we have collected the 5 best Quantitative Reasoning Revision Tips just for you, to successfully get you through.

What needs calculating?

Before heading straight into calculator mode, read the whole question properly first. Make sure you fully understand what needs calculating while keeping in mind this is not a maths test but a reasoning test involving maths. Beware of purposely placed incorrect answer traps, reason it out in your head first and check it with the online calculator if both of you are wrong you may be looking at one of these tricks.

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How are your maths skills?

Getting to know your basic math principles and knowing how to use data from tables, graphs and diagram is really useful for this section. The following list of math principles are imperative to know for success in this subtest:

• Mean, median & mode
• Speed, distance & time
• Areas & volumes
• Converting units & percentages
•  Fractions, percentages and ratios

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How useful is the whiteboard and pen?

Extremely useful. It is a good idea to start using one of these during your revision and practise time so to form the habit of using it for the real test. It is a great visual aid for writing and checking mental calculations when trying to reason the correct answer in this section.

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Any good at mental maths?

The ability of great mental maths is a huge help in this section as it will save you answering time on simple questions that do not really need to be checked on the online calculator. It is definitely worth working on improving your ability to mentally calculate the basics such as subtraction, addition, division and multiplication without depending on a calculator. Our UCAT Online Course is perfect for practising the skill of judging when to pick between a simple or more complex calculation, we have an online calculator and we give you feedback too.

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When should you use the UCAT Online Calculator? ‍

Use it when you feel you really need it, do not feel just because it is there you should use it for every calculation. As #4 points out, if the question requires a simple calculation and you feel confident enough to solve it without a calculator, then do so, as you will be saving yourself time for the much harder question yet to be presented and requiring more advanced reasoning.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed and anxious right now? Please don’t worry, head over to our UCAT Online Course and we’ll get you signed up to guide you through this whole process step-by-step.

We have a bank of over 10,239 questions, a decision-making section and 8 full mock exams and 18 mini-mock exams; we even give you performance feedback too.

We’ve been lending a successful helping hand since 2009. Medify’s here to support you, just reach out to us.