You will discover that one of the most challenging steps in navigating the UK application system to medical schools is the UCAT exam. This is not to discourage you in any way. Coming from a student who ranked in the 93rd percentile, without speaking English as a first language, I can assure you that with the right preparation and with the right materials (plus commitment, discipline, etc.) UCAT can be successfully conquered.

A high score in this exam will be your first-class ticket to your dream UK university, so it’s important to take it very seriously and invest the necessary time and energy to succeed. I never recommend spending money on any unnecessary preparation for any exam… However, for the UCAT specifically, I would say that it’s one of the few exams where investing a little more is worthwhile, so that you emerge as a confident and strong candidate at the end of the preparation.

One more sidenote, I took the exam in the summer of 2024, so, since then, a couple of changes have been made, most notably, the exclusion of the Abstract Reasoning Subtest. This article will cover preparation resources for the UCAT exam that have helped me rank in the 9th percentile and get offers from prestigious universities.

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LIST OF BEST UCAT RESOURCES

The official UCAT website and YouTube channel

Two of the most useful and completely free UCAT tools are the official website and YouTube channel, and those are the exact places where you should start. The website is the exact place where you’ll find all the information regarding the session you’ll be attending, as well as a lot of helpful materials to help you start practising. There you’ll find a question bank with typical questions for every subtest (VR, QR, DM, SJT), as well as 4 model full-tests to estimate your score. Regarding those, I would personally advise taking the first one as your diagnosis test (the first test that estimates your starting score), and leaving the 3 remaining at the end of your practice to estimate your final score.

Besides this, on the website, you’ll find tutorials on how to effectively complete the test, how to use the keyboard shortcuts or the digital calculator, as well as multiple blog-style articles with different tips and tricks directly from the best source. It also provides information on how to register and book the test, how to find your results and a couple of webinars, so it’s crucial to explore the website and go through as much as you can from what it provides.

The YouTube channel is also pretty useful, as it gives important information on different updated functionalities (like pause-the-clock for 2025 onwards), what to expect at a Pearson Vue centre, and tutorials on how to create a study plan. Although the videos are short, it’s worth checking them out as they are official and free resources, important when starting out.

MedEntry platform as the basis for your practice

This is the best place where I would suggest investing a little bit of money, as it would stand at the core of your preparation, and, to be honest, this many materials in one place are almost impossible to find. You don’t want to waste valuable time scrambling for limited free resources on the internet, not even being able to guarantee their quality. It’s important to stay organised and find everything you need in one place, so that your focus stays on improving your performance and your speed.

This is why MedEntry has been transformative for me. The platform replicates the exam environment and has question banks of over 20,000 quality questions, more than 30 subtest mocks and 25 full-mock tests, so that you can work on improving your score without worrying about running out of resources.

It also provides access to an AI tool, workshops, small-group classes, and one-on-one tutoring in order to provide you with all the help that you need to succeed. For me, it was also important that I could track my progress with statistics of my latest scores, and graphics to show how I’ve improved (though I’ll warn you, they are never linear).

MedEntry provides some free resources so you can go ahead and see if you like the platform and if it is the right fit for you. I would also check out their blog and tips, as they can be very useful.

Grab yourself some practice books

Even though I don’t think this would be necessary if you’ve purchased any kind of preparation platform, UCAT books contain a variety of good-quality practice questions and can serve as a significantly cheaper version of a main practice tool if you don’t have the budget for a fancy online platform. The main disadvantage with these is that, obviously, they are in a physical paper version, which will not help you at all with practising your real speed in exam conditions.

You may discover that moving to the computer, the same questions might take you longer to solve, because UCAT is more than just solving questions: it’s about navigating the exam platform fast, knowing the shortcuts and relying on muscle memory to give you extra speed. Nevertheless, if you don’t have any other options, UCAT books are better than just searching mindlessly on the internet for free crumbs of expensive content. Usually, you can find them easily on Amazon, and I’ll list here the ones I think are the best to try:

• Get into Medical School – 1300 UCAT Practice Questions. Includes Full Mock Exam (Previously UKCAT) (most popular)

• The Ultimate UCAT Collection: New Edition with over 2500 questions and solutions. UCAT Guide, Mock Papers, And Solutions. Free UCAT crash course! (The Ultimate Medical School Application Library)

• Master the UCAT by the Top 1% (Third Edition): Updated for 2025, Full Mock Exams and Practice Questions (the most recent one I found)

YouTube resources

To be honest, one of the most useful tools for me, after the MedEntry platform, was following creators on YouTube who have been through the same experience and were able to share what they’ve learnt and how they’ve managed to get extremely high scores. I will share some of them below:

Emil Eddy

He makes videos where he teaches you how to solve questions in the most effective ways, shares best practice tips, and also solves questions live, so that you can see his thought process and his strategy to save time and go through the questions as effectively as possible.

Kharma Medic

His videos are getting pretty old at this point, but his style of explaining is very easy to follow and understand. He makes difficult questions easy to get, and explains clear strategies so that you can approach the exam most efficiently.

Jack Zhou

He has a very witty and fast-paced style of explaining, but I personally found his videos extremely useful to step up my game in Quantitative Reasoning. It’s difficult to explain, but every time after I watched him solving QR questions live, I had a faster way to approach them and better speed and accuracy in general.

theMSAG

They have a UCAT playlist and I remember feeling very lost because of my scores and just going through their content, finding it extremely easy to follow and understand. I think they have great micro-tips and strategy ideas that aren’t very common or cliche and they are worth checking out.

Overall, I think all of these mattered in my preparation. The best way is to try to have a huge bank of questions and work your way through as many of them as you can, as well as trying to consume as much informational content as possible. You’ve got this!