If you're taking the UCAT, you'll need all the help you can get. The exam is known for being difficult and even if you don't find the sample questions that taxing, you have to answer them in a limited amount of time and do better than the vast majority of other candidates just to be considered for a place on a medical or dental program.
In addition to all the useful UCAT resources out there, one of the best ways to prepare for this challenging exam is with a private tutor. Here are the advantages of choosing to prepare for your UCAT exam with a private tutor.
Analyse Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Every student is different and it doesn't always help to take a one-size-fits-all approach to education. While the UCAT exam may be the same, the preparation should work with the student's individual strengths and weaknesses.
A private UCAT tutor can work out what your strengths and weaknesses are and how they'll affect your UCAT preparation.
This can also help you to make changes to your study plan to get the most out of the time you spend studying.
Build Your Confidence
A private UCAT tutor can also help you with motivation and confidence. It always helps to have someone there to motivate you and if you ever doubt yourself or your ability to do well in your UCAT exam, they can provide encouragement.
Naturally, building up a student's confidence takes time, but they can make it so that they start with small manageable goals and progressively increase their confidence until they feel comfortable tackling the UCAT and getting the best results that they're capable of.
Clear Explanations
While self-study is certainly possible when it comes to preparing for the UCAT, it doesn't really help if you don't understand something.
With a private tutor on hand, you can ask them for clarifications and explanations rather than having to hunt them out online.
A good tutor will also be able to explain concepts in different ways so even if you don't understand something the first time they explain it, you can always ask for them to explain it in another way.
After a while of working with the same tutor, the tutor will know you better and likely be able to give succinct and clear explanations, too.
Create a Study Plan Adapted to You
A good study plan is at the foundation of all effective study. You and your tutor can work together on a study plan that works for you.
Your study plan may even evolve and change over time depending on how you're doing and what the tutor believes is the best course of action.
While your initial study plan may be quite generic and based on what your tutor's past experience has shown them to be effective, they can start to alter and tweak your study plan to ensure every minute is spent studying as effectively as possible.
They can also make it so that the ways you study work with your strengths and weaknesses as well as the ways you like to study.
If you have any specific requirements, they can also take these into account when coming up with a study plan.
Exam Practice
Since it tests innate skills like verbal, quantitative, and abstract reasoning, decision-making, and situational judgement, the UCAT can be very difficult.
Instead, practice makes perfect and it's recommended that candidates use practice questions and exams to familiarise themselves with common question times, the time constraints of the exam, and how to do well under pressure.
While it's probably better to do practice exams when your tutor isn't there, they can go through your practice exams with you, explain where you went wrong, and let you know the best ways to improve.
Get Resources
There are lots of great UCAT resources out there, but there's a whole market for UCAT study and resources and it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
A private UCAT tutor can make sure that you're using quality resources that work and avoid the pitfalls of paying for out-of-date or inaccurate resources.
Guidance from Experts
If you choose the right private tutor, they should be an expert in the UCAT, study skills, and exam technique. They'll be able to guide you both during your UCAT preparation and teach you the necessary skills to perform to the best of your ability on the day.
You can find help and guidance online through forums and social media but even other students that mean well with their advice mightn't necessarily be giving you the best advice.
A private tutor with a proven track record and many happy students can certainly be more trustworthy and useful than the guidance received in forums and social media, for example.
This isn't to say that all advice from forums and social media is useless, but you can't guarantee that it's always going to valuable or even trustworthy.
Learn Time Management
One of the toughest parts of the UCAT is that you have to do each of the subtests in a limited time. This means that time management is an essential part of the exam and could drastically affect your results.
Private tutors can teach you the best strategies for managing your time so that you know when to skip a question, when you should spend more time on something, and when you've spent too long attempting to answer certain questions.
They can also help you with time management for studying so that you can effectively use the time you spend preparing for the UCAT.
Tailored Sessions
The difference between private tutoring and a UCAT preparation class is that your private tutor can tailor every aspect of the sessions and the study plan to the student.
With just one student in attendance, everything can be done with them in mind. They can study what they need to study in a way that works for them. If something isn't quite working, they can change things up.
The sessions can also take place where and when you like (within reason) so whether you have a busy schedule, can only study at certain times, or work better at certain times of the day, they can work around that, too.
Track Your Progress
A good tutor will make sure that they're tracking your progress. After all, how can you be sure that your preparation is working if you're not keeping track?
They can use this information to improve future sessions, manage your expectations, build your confidence, and adapt activities and study techniques to you.
How to Find the Right Private UCAT Tutor
To enjoy all the benefits of private UCAT tutoring, you have to carefully choose the right one.
Before you start contacting private tutors, make sure you make a shortlist of potential candidates to contact. Consider what exactly you'll be looking for in a private tutor and see which tutors meet your criteria.
A lot of private tutors will be happy to schedule a call or even offer the first session for free so you can get a better idea of the service that they offer.
Try out a few different tutors before settling on the one that's right for you and make sure that you can afford the cost of their sessions in the long-term. You don't want to waste your money by having to stop working with your private tutor because you can't afford it. Your budget has to stretch right until the day of the UCAT exam. Fortunately for you, there are a few ways that you can make private tutoring more affordable.
Generally, the less experience a tutor has, the cheaper they'll be. Of course, this comes at the expense of expertise, but it's a quick way to save some money on each session.
Opting for online tutoring over face-to-face tutoring is also a way to get more affordable sessions. Online tutors don't need to travel to their students so they can schedule more sessions each week and don't have to worry about travel costs.
If you're on a really limited budget, you can also look for group tutoring. This allows you to share the cost of the tutor's time and expertise with others but it does mean that the sessions and study plan can't be fully adapted to you because they also have to work for multiple students.
Just search for UCAT tutoring on the Superprof and you can start shortlisting the best potential private tutors. On each tutor's profile, you can see how much they charge, what their other students have to say about them, and what kind of tutoring they offer.
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