Younis Abdulla

There's a memory from my UCAT prep I keep coming back to. It's a Tuesday lunch at work, around 3 pm, because again every time I’d sit down to eat, I get called out to one of the wards. I'd been on my feet for the entire shift so far, over 6 hours of running from ward to ward and constant bleeps because “there’s a discharge summary you have to sign off on” or “this patient has just been admitted and is on a long list of medication we can’t figure out”. I finally sit down on an office chair that has so many holes in the upholstery I stopped counting; I hunch over my UCAT questions textbook and start solving questions. I tell myself, “2 more questions, and you can get a bite of that sandwich”, or “get this one last question done, and you can have a sip of tea. Earlier that same day, I'd been quietly squeezing GPhC Common Assessment revision in before I left the house to battle the rush hour traffic. The next morning, I'd be back on the wards, doing it all again.

If you'd asked me, in that exact moment, whether I felt confident about either exam, I would have laughed at you.

But here's the strange part, and it took me a while to see it, the version of me hunched over the textbook not wanting to waste time by eating lunch was actually revising better than the version of me a few months earlier who had a clearer calendar and "all the time in the world." That period of my life taught me something about exam prep that no textbook ever bothered to mention. And it's the lens I'd want anyone preparing for the new UCAT to wear before they spend a single hour revising.

So let's talk about how to actually do this. Not based on what your school friend swears by, but based on what cognitive science actually shows works; and what I've personally found makes the difference between revising hard and revising well.

About That Missing Subtest: Goodbye Abstract Reasoning

"Abstract Reasoning has left the building. The other sections just got a lot more important."

If you've been flicking through slightly older UCAT prep books and feeling vaguely confused about what's still on the syllabus; you're not imagining it. Abstract Reasoning has been removed from the new UCAT. The shapes-and-patterns section that used to define the test for so many people is gone.

A few things this actually means for your prep:

Every remaining section now matters more. Fewer sections means each one carries greater weight. The maths of how you spend your time will never be the same again.
Old prep materials need filtering. A lot of online courses, books, and YouTube playlists were built around the old format. Don't assume content from before the change is still representative. Use older material for technique, NOT for format.
Your full mocks need to reflect the current structure. Otherwise you'll walk into the real test having trained for a different exam. I advise the official UCAT mocks as an accurate reflection of current exam layouts.
The underlying skills aren't gone, even if the section is. Pattern recognition, working memory under pressure, sustained attention; all of those are still being tested, just through the remaining sections. The brain training carries over. The question types don't.

If you started prep on the old format; relax. The fundamentals of revising well don't change with the syllabus. Adapt the what; keep the how.

1. Active Recall: Stop Re-Reading, Start Recalling

"The single most useful thing you can do in revision is close the book and try to remember it."

Most students I've spoken to treat UCAT prep like GCSE revision: read the technique guide, highlight the timing strategy, watch a YouTube video, re-read the guide again. It feels like work. It even feels productive. But it's largely an illusion. (I went into this in much more depth in Study Methods That Actually Work — worth a read alongside this one.)

The science here is brutally consistent: active recall beats re-reading every single time. When you force your brain to retrieve something, rather than just recognise it on a page, you build a much stronger, longer-lasting memory trace. For UCAT, that looks like:

After learning a Quants shortcut, close the page and write it out from memory.
After working through an SJT scenario, look away and explain the principle you applied in your own words before checking the model answer.
For Verbal Reasoning, summarise the passage's main argument in one sentence before you look at the answer choices.

Pair this with spaced repetition: revisiting the same idea after a day, then three days, then a week, then two. Your brain forgets predictably; the trick is to meet a topic again just before you would've forgotten it. Tools like Anki are built for exactly this. A small, well-curated deck of techniques, common Verbal traps, and SJT principles will outperform a 5,000-card monster you never finish.

If a topic keeps showing up in your "got it wrong" pile? Congratulations! You found a high-yield revision target! Now make these questions a close friend of yours.

2. Interleaving: Mix It Up, Even When It Feels Worse

"If your practice always feels smooth, you're probably not learning much."

Here's a counterintuitive one. Most students "block" their practice: 50 Verbal questions, then 50 Quants, then 50 SJT. It feels neat. Each block gets easier as you settle into the rhythm. And that easing into the rhythm is exactly the problem.

The science calls the better approach interleaving: deliberately mixing question types in a single session. So instead of one long Quants block, you do five Quants, then three Verbal, then four SJT, then back. It's harder. You'll feel slower. Your accuracy will probably dip at first.

That's the point.

Interleaving forces your brain to do the thing it actually has to do on exam day; recognise what kind of question you're looking at and pull up the right strategy from scratch. Block practice trains you to follow grooves. Interleaving trains you to switch tracks at speed. Guess which one your real UCAT will look more like. Think of your brain’s agility and ability to switch between thinking strategies. As much as we’d love a bulldozer approach the small bike messenger will reach his destination faster. Make your brain quick and nimble.

A simple version of this:

In the early weeks, block-practise to actually learn each section's techniques.
From around week 4, mix sections in every session.
Always finish with at least one short, mixed, timed mini-mock.

It will feel worse before it feels better. That's not a bug. It's the whole feature.

3. Recovery: Sleep Is Not Optional, It's a Study Technique

"You can't out-revise a body that's running on three hours of sleep and a vending machine meal."

I know. This is the part of every guide everyone skips. Hear me out.

The UCAT is essentially a two-hour cognitive sprint. Working memory, processing speed, pattern recognition, decision-making under pressure; every single one of those is directly degraded by poor sleep. Studies consistently show that even one night of restricted sleep tanks reaction time and short-term memory. Those are the exact muscles UCAT tests.

So the all-nighter the night before? Scientifically speaking, that's sabotage. The week of the exam, you should be:

In bed at the same time every night, no exceptions.
Getting some kind of movement in most days, even a 20-minute walk. Aerobic exercise boosts BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurootrophic Factor it’s kind of cool look into it), which helps your brain consolidate what you've been learning.
Eating real meals. Caffeine is fine; caffeine as a meal replacement is not. I know we all fall into it sometimes but create optimal conditions when possible.
Outside in actual daylight at some point before noon (get that blue and UV activation in your retinas early, preferably in the first 2 hours of being awake). It anchors your circadian rhythm and you'll fall asleep easier that night.

I treat exam week the way an athlete treats a competition. Because functionally, that's what it is.

4. Metacognition: Know What You Don't Know

"If you can't tell me, right now, which sub-skill you're weakest at: you don't have a revision plan. You have a vibe."

This is the one that quietly separates the students who improve fast from the ones who plateau for months. It's called metacognition; thinking about your own thinking (thought-ception). And for UCAT, it's basically a cheat code.

Most students rate their own ability based on feeling. "Yeah, Verbal's fine, Quants is the issue." But feelings are not data. The data is in the questions you've actually done.

So track them. Properly:

Every wrong question — what type was it? (Inference vs assumption vs tone, for example.)
How long did you spend on it?
Did you get it wrong because you didn't know the technique, or because you panicked and rushed?

I personally use a small Excel sheet with columns for section, sub-type, error reason, and a "needs review" tag. Once a week, I sort by error reason. Whatever's at the top is what I revise next. You can do the same in a notebook, or even with AI helping you spot trends. The format doesn't matter, the honesty does no one is gonna look at your track record and judge you because you get the compound calculations wrong but you will be grateful for the honesty later.

This sounds boring. It is. It also works, and it stops you doing the thing every UCAT student does — revising the topics they're already good at because it feels nice.

5. The Constraint That Made It Work (A Personal Note)

"I sat the UCAT while revising for the GPhC Common Assessment. I had no time to waste; and looking back, that constraint was the best thing that could have happened to my prep."

Back to that rushed lunch time. I'll be honest with you. When I was preparing for the UCAT, I was simultaneously deep in revision for the GPhC Common Assessment. Two big exams. One brain. Limited hours in the day. There was no version of my schedule where I could just "sit down for four hours and grind questions" that simply wasn't a luxury I had access to.

So I did what most students don't. I optimised aggressively.

I revised on commutes. At bus stops. While waiting for transportation that was, predictably, late. Lunch and dinner weren't lunch and dinner; they were 25-minute focus blocks with food in one hand and questions in the other. My work colleagues were saints who helped me, by giving me the space I needed to optimise my time.
My workspace was set up so I could start a session in under a minute. No looking for headphones, no opening half a dozen tabs, no faffing about. Everything in its place.
Every task had a clear, designated block on the calendar. I didn't allow myself to drift between sections, and I didn't gift myself extra time when the timer went off. If the block ended, the block ended.
I refused to multitask within sessions. One section, one focus, one timer. When it finished, I moved on. Even if I didn't feel finished.

Counterintuitively, that rigidity is what stopped me burning out. Because every block had a clean start and a clean end, my brain was never marinating in low-grade exam anxiety for hours on end. I was either on: fully in the work; or fully off. There was no soggy middle, and there was no day where I felt like I'd been "studying all day" but couldn't actually point to anything I'd accomplished (Retrospectively. At the time- every day felt like I didn’t achieve enough).

The other thing I did, and I want you to take this one seriously; I didn't revise everything equally. Verbal Reasoning was one of my stronger sub-tests. So I didn't pour the same hours into it that I poured into the sections where I was weaker. I gave it just enough attention to keep it sharp, then I redirected the rest of the time to where the marks were actually waiting to be picked up. On exam day, Verbal Reasoning ended up being where I scored highest. Not because I revised it the most, but because I had the metacognitive honesty to spend my time where it would actually move the needle.

If you take one thing from my experience, take this: constraints aren't the enemy of good revision. More often than not, they're the reason it becomes great. When time is endless, it's easy to drift. When time is tight, you're forced to be ruthless about what's worth doing and ruthlessness is the one quality every good UCAT prepper shares.

6. Build the Plan (And Be Honest About It)

If you're sketching out a few months of prep, something like this works well:

Weeks 1–3: Learn the Sections

One section at a time. Learn the techniques. Do small sets.
Don't bother with timing yet. Accuracy first, always.

Weeks 4–6: Interleaved Practice

Mix sections in every session. Start using a tracker.
Begin spaced repetition for the techniques you keep forgetting.

Weeks 7–8: Timed Mini-Mocks

Half-length sessions under timed conditions.
The goal isn't a perfect score: it's a clean post-mortem after every one.

Final 2 Weeks: Full Mocks + Recovery

Two or three full mocks under real exam conditions. Phone off, door shut.
Sleep, eat, walk. Don't binge-revise. Let your brain consolidate.

Final Thoughts: You're Not a Library, You're a System

The UCAT will not reward the person who revised the longest. It will reward the person who revised the most thoughtfully, who trained their brain like an athlete trains a body. The right inputs, the right rest, the right feedback loops.

So here's the recap:

Recall, don't re-read.
Mix up your practice, even when it's uncomfortable.
Sleep is a study technique.
Track your weaknesses ruthlessly.
Constraints are gifts. Use them.

You don't need ten hours a day. You need the right two. The students who score in the top decile aren't the ones grinding the longest; they're the ones running the cleanest experiments on themselves.

So go run yours. Be deliberate. Be honest about what's working and what isn't. And trust the process: when it's built on science instead of vibes, it actually delivers.

You've got this!

Cracking New UCAT: Science-Backed Approach, Revising Smarter