Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Really not worth it. September 27, 2008
The guide kicks off with a lot of irrelevant information about general application to medical school, UCAS, personal statement writing etc - not useless by any means, but definitely not brilliant.
The real meat of the book is the practice questions, and I'm afraid to say that this is where it really falls over. The verbal reasoning questions are terrible, there are multiple typos, huge logical inconsistencies, many ambiguous questions and some of the answers are simply entirely wrong.
The other sections seem to be of a better quality, but on the basis of the second chapter, I really wouldn't bother with this book - no academic text (especially one with an emphasis on comprehension and critical thinking) should contain such elementary mistakes.
So far, so bad September 20, 2008
I'm a magazine sub-editor and my flatmate is a patent attorney - we're both professional wordsmiths in our thirties. Following considerable analysis and debate (with diagrams!), we agree that there are flaws in the reasoning and the explanations of some of the verbal reasoning tests in this book. The logic applied also seems to be inconsistent across different questions. As a result, some of the questions seem ridiculously difficult.
The text also contains grammatical and typographic errors, which contribute to the sense of a badly produced guide.
The rest of the book may be more useful, but I am not impressed so far. It gets two stars because it could be worse!
Helpful for some sections August 26, 2008
The book will help you mainly for the abstract reasoning and decision analysis. However the verbal reasoning section is terrible. A lot of the answers are wrong and provide invalid explanations.
Helpful? Some parts
Worth the money? No
Better alternatives? Buy the succeeding the UKCAT book.
 OK-ish August 17, 2008
I found the first section helpful, applying for Graduate Entry by myself means I haven't been told some of the things that I'm sure those applying straight from college will have about personal statements etc.
The questions were however too few and disproportionately difficult; though I guess being overprepared is better than under. There were also 3 errors (that I picked up on; there may in fact be more) but they were quie obvious ones so don't really impede on your learning.
Worth the 10 I paid just to feel a bit more prepared but not great.
Disappointing July 30, 2008
Like most people, I bought this book for the practice questions in order to supplement those already available on the UKCAT website, as well as some useful tips on tackling the questions, managing time etc.
However, I was dissapointed to see that the majority of the book was taken up with material irrelevant to the UKCAT (e.g. all the stuff about med school application in general, and the BMAT). I also found the practice questions VERY hard, which is odd as the test itself was comparitively easy and I scored well over 700 on each section.
If you're sitting the UKCAT and can borrow a copy of the book, then go for it, you might get something out of it, but not worth buying.
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