How To Choose The Best UCAT Preparation Course
Your UCAT score is critical in your medical school application. Based on our own information from our partner schools, if you score in the 6th decile or above – that is in the top 50% of students – your chances of getting at least one offer are good. In addition, you need to score Band 1 or 2 in the Situational Judgement section. Getting a Band 3 can stop and otherwise good students from getting an offer.
Some medical schools will increase your UCAT scores if you fit the widening participation criterion – which does vary between medical schools to some extent but is generally based on factors like the deprivation of the area in which you live and the attainment of your school for example. This unfortunately does not apply to the vast majority of students applying to study medicine.
Don’t rely on the BMAT as an insurance choice – for students applying to a UK medical school. The BMAT is used by Oxbridge and attracts the best academic candidates. Our feedback shows if you score poorly on the UCAT, you will also likely score poorly on the BMAT.
There are medical schools that may be suitable for students who have lower UCAT scores based on the way they weigh your UCAT score against other assessments (for example your interview performance) or traditionally they have had a low cut off. They tend to be the newer medical schools or those that are not central to the UK and therefore less popular.
There are several UCAT courses, and they do vary in quality and what they offer, as well as in price. Here are some tips on how you should decide which UCAT course you should attend
1. The best UCAT preparation course is run by fully qualified experienced tutors
Sounds long and complicated, doesn’t it? It is important to know who will be teaching you – on a live course – and who has recorded the tutorials on a self-study video based online course. You will find that many organisations will proudly point out one or two individuals who are the authors of such a course, and then they ‘quality assure’ others to teach on their behalf. This is simply a way of getting as many students as possible to sign up with them and then dilute the quality of tuition.
Trouble is, you do not know the identity or the qualifications of the ‘assured tutors’ or what experience they have in education. Quite often they are medical students paid a minimum amount to teach you. If you look at reviews offsite, you will find comments like the tutor is ‘following a script’, ‘could not answer when challenged’ or ‘seen to lack knowledge’ in certain areas.
Gaining a high score in a UCAT exam does not qualify you to effectively teach a UCAT course, especially to a student that needs extra help. Does getting a grade A in A-level Chemistry automatically qualify you to teach the subject Year 12 and Year 13 students? It can take years of experience to become a good teacher or a medical educator – medical schools are very strict about who they recruit to teach students in placements. Why should sixth form students not deserve the same quality of tutors?
The tutors at Blue Peanut are fully qualified doctors who teach medical students from several medical schools. They have completed Masters level training in medical education and use effective, evidence based methods to teach you, similar to that used in medical schools.
2. The best UCAT preparation course uses teaching materials of an excellent standard
Our teaching materials are written by medical school tutors and A-level sixth form teachers from top UK grammar schools. The question bank is written by experienced teachers and the situational judgement section by practising UK doctors. The full course materials and question banks are tested by some of the top UK A-level students in the country and their feedback used to critically evaluate how we can improve.
The course materials are updated every year to reflect changes in the UCAT exam set by the UCAT consortium and updates to the General Medical Council ‘Good Medical Practice’ guidelines.
We are one of the few providers that will let you see some of our video tutorials for free before you purchase and also hold free sessions for students to attend via Zoom for you to have a look firsthand at the quality of our training resources. We are one of the most open and transparent providers.
Again, if you look at off-site reviews, you will see comments like poor quality of videos, very little learning content, boring monotonous content and outdated content for some providers. In addition, we have had feedback from our sixth form teachers that some providers have content that does not replicate the standards of the real UCAT exam, especially in Situational Judgement. This has resulted in students getting a false perception of doing well with the course provider, then performing poorly in the real UCAT exam.
3. The Best UCAT preparation course provides you with all the learning materials you need to revise for the exam
You will find some providers appear to charge a relatively low price to attend a course, which could be tempting. But then, perhaps similar to budget airlines, you have to pay extra for support videos and again for a question bank. The experience you get will feel like no frills but so will the quality. Can you risk this for an exam that you only one attempt at per academic cycle?
The Blue Peanut course offers you a full day of live training with a medical school tutor, follow up support videos you can watch after the course to help you revise, as well as a calibrated question bank. Despite us including a question bank, we advise students to choose another two from outside Blue Peanut. The UCAT consortium provides an excellent question bank that you must attempt, and you can choose one other – perhaps from a book. Ensure it is updated and calibrated to the correct level for the exam.
We provide access for all our students until the last date of the UCAT exam (usually in September but this can vary). We do not define a ‘crammer’ or ‘premium’ package based on time and don’t charge more for simply giving access to the materials for a longer period. You should not cram for this exam – most students have plenty of opportunity to prepare over a period of 6-8 weeks.
4. The Best UCAT preparation course has a proven longstanding record of success
The doctors at Blue Peanut have been teaching for over 21 years. Over 5000 students have got into medical and dental school with us over the years. These include undergraduate and postgraduate entry students. In 2019 we had our very first student obtaining a scholarship due to outstanding interview performance following our Medical School Interview Course.
We have our own NHS undergraduate and postgraduate teaching GP practice in Lancashire. We have been teaching and supervising medical students, foundation year and GP specialist trainee doctors. We also look after physician associates and nursing trainees. Our practice also hosts sixth form work experience placements for aspiring medics.
Our doctors also help organise the widening participation ‘Get Into Medicine Live’ conference for aspiring medics with the help of local hospital consultants and UK medical schools.
This is all excellent you may say, but what about our student’s real-life performance in the UCAT exam over the years. In the UCAT exam, our students generally score 2800+ with the majority of students in Band 1 of Situational Judgement, enough to give them confidence to apply to the top medical schools in the UK. This is based on data from our live day course – which we therefore encourage you to attend over the self-study course.
5. The Best UCAT preparation course has outstanding testimonials and review from students, parents and teachers
See for your self – here are some of the reviews given to Blue Peanut for the courses we offer. One student has even indicated to us that they have been on courses with several providers and Blue Peanut’s has been ‘the best by far’.
Yes, we did get some negative comments once – these were related to the quality of the venue rather than the course! We still acted upon these and changed our venue. If students find certain topics hard, we update our tutorials and offer these to every one of our students. Our Medical School Interview course is often updated midway through the interview season.
We regularly ask for feedback from our students on elements relating to the quality of teaching using the same methods as we use for our medical student evaluation. Here are the results from our 2020 survey in which the students were asked to rate the quality of certain areas: -
Learning engagement - 97%
Teaching Quality - 98%
Student Support - 98%
Learning Resources - 99%
Educational Experience - 99%
Would recommend to a friend - 99%
This data is from students who attended our UCAT course, Work Experience Placement and Medical School Interview Course. They showed the percentage of students who rated that domain as either ‘good’ or ‘excellent’
6. The Best UCAT exam preparation and Medical School Interview Preparation course is Blue Peanut.
Over 5000 students realising their dreams of becoming a doctor or dentist will agree with us. The unmatched quality, experience and qualifications of our tutors combined with a through system of quality assurance of all our educational materials is testament to this.
Please click the link below to learn more about our UCAT courses and how we can help you get into the medical school of your choice.
