⏳ How Much Time do you Have Per UCAT Question ⌛?

Most (if not all) UCAT applicants will tell you that the most difficult thing about the exam is its time factor. Timing is perhaps the most common theme for UCAT horror stories.

Here's a typical UCAT horror story 🎃:

A student is a few minutes into their UCAT subtest. Things are going well until they encounter a question they feel they'd probably find the solution to... but they don't (cue horrific piano smash). 

The student re-attempts the question once... twice... three times... only to realise that they've spent 5 minutes on the same question without getting anywhere.

There's 5 minutes left for the subsection and 10 questions left. The student accepts that they've flunked the section and in doing so, they (unsurprisingly) actually flunk the section.

Many applicants fall victim to the deadly time aspect of the UCAT 💀. As future healthcare professionals 🩺, we need to be asking a very important question: How can we protect ourselves and the community from such a deadly occurrence? 

What better way to explore this question than to calculate how much time we should be spending on each UCAT question? 

How much time you should be spending per UCAT question ⏰?

Here's a useful table:

 

And here's a useful table detailing how you should go about timing in the UCAT:

Lets be real though 💯...

You've probably seen the above table in a similar form before. The truth is, the above table isn't really helpful at all in the real UCAT. At Neura, we like to keep it 💯 so we'll provide you with a truly useful table below. 

Why isn't the above table useful 🤔?

Not all UCAT questions are of the same difficulty. As a result, the time needed to answer varies from question to question. Therefore, looking at individual question timing isn't all that useful if you think about it. 

A much better way to pace yourself in the UCAT is to look at the average time needed to answer 10 questions in a subtest.

Here's an even more useful table detailing how you should pace yourself in the UCAT:

Use this table as a guide for when you attempt mock exams!