Key QR strategies
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Use our top tips for every Quantitative question:
1. Find the goal: Always read the question first – before looking at the data – so you know what you must solve for.
2. Select the relevant data: Look at the data with the goal in mind and see what you need to solve for the goal. Train your eyes to pick out the essential data so you do not linger and read the data more thoroughly.
3. Set up and solve: Take a moment to think before you calculate to get a quick grasp of the required steps. This will help you to ensure you use the calculator efficiently. With practice, you can reduce unnecessary steps and use the memory function to avoid writing down intermediate values.
4. Confirm and click: Be sure to check your answer matches the question before you click it and move on to the next question. Watch out for wrong answer traps waiting for anyone who stops short of the goal by omitting the final step.
Good pacing is essential for a good score in Quantitative Reasoning. To maximise your marks in this section:
- Answer most questions quickly at first sight. This includes no maths and simple calculation questions.
- Skip questions with complex calculations or difficult data and flag for review.
- Return to flagged questions on a second pass with any remaining time. You may need to make a quick guess on some of these questions.
QR questions test your ability to do maths quickly, not your ability to do advanced maths.
You must take control of the test in order to answer the most questions in the shortest time. This way, you can lock in the marks on simpler questions before attempting the harder, time-consuming questions.
Snap judgements about QR question difficulty are key: you must train your eyes to immediately estimate the difficulty of each question.
In QR, the question difficulty depends on:
- The amount of maths required to solve for the correct answer.
- The question wording can be tough to untangle as you try to translate words into maths.
- The challenges in the data that make it hard to work with or difficult to understand.
The harder questions are less common but more time-consuming. Don’t let them drain your time. Flag for review without attempting these questions, then come back later. This will conserve your time and efforts for shorter, straightforward questions.
Lock in marks on simple, quick questions before tackling harder ones. On Test day, relatively few questions will be very difficult but the ones that are will likely take a lot of time.
Each question is worth one mark, so treat your time as a valuable resource. Don’t overinvest time on the hardest questions before you have answered the easier ones.
The hardest sets can come at any point in the QR section. In fact, you may find sets with difficult data will appear earlier in the section, with one or more sets with simple data late in the section.
This is a common approach in multiple choice exams, as it serves as a penalty for those who answer all questions in the given order.
If you skip and flag for review a difficult set earlier in the section, you can then answer the simpler later sets before you return to the harder set.
Be brisk and ruthless in your QR triage in order to maximise your marks.
Within a QR set, the hardest questions can come at any point. They are not given in order of difficulty. This means that you may find the first question is the hardest, and it may be so hard that you struggle to understand how to use the data to answer it.
Whenever a single question early in a QR set seems hard:
- Immediately flag for review and skip it without doing any more work.
- Advance to the next question and see if it helps you to understand the data.
- If that question is workable, complete it and keep working through the set.
- If that question is too hard to do quickly, flag for review and skip it.
- Repeat this process for any remaining questions in the set. Ideally, you will find an easier question later in the set that helps you unlock how to use the data.
- Once you find an easier question, flick back through the set to check if you can now quickly solve any of the flagged questions, or if it is better to leave them for a second pass through the section.
This process will take some practice to become quick and comfortable, but it is a good approach for finding the simplest questions to help you understand a tough set.
Go to the calculator with purpose. Otherwise, you may take longer to figure out the steps to the correct answer during calculations.
The key is to set up mentally with a rough idea of the steps on your path to the goal. You can then use the calculator as a tool to power your mental maths.
This approach takes practice but will allow you to get faster and maintain accuracy.
Look at the data only after reading the question. This way, you know exactly what you need to solve the question.
Different questions in a set will focus on different parts of the data. If you start by studying the data, you will waste time looking at unnecessary details.
Take a moment to check the data labels and verify data units before you select numbers from a table, chart or graph to use in the calculator.
The UCAT deliberately includes common calculation errors as answer choices. If you misread the data, you may end up with an incorrect answer that seems correct because it matches one of the answer choices.
Look above, below and beside the visual data to ensure you understand the units as well as the context. Essential details may be in a paragraph or bullet points nearby.
Wrong answer traps exploit common errors in reading questions and data. They appear tempting precisely because they reflect typical mistakes under timed conditions.
Work quickly but carefully in Quantitative Reasoning. If you rush through questions, you will fall into these traps. Take a crucial extra second to sense check your answer to ensure it answers the question being asked before you click an answer.
On Test Day, be careful not to select an answer before finishing all the steps needed to solve for the goal.
Some wrong answer traps will be the next-to-last number that you calculate in working towards the correct answer. This is one of the common errors that anyone can make in Quantitative Reasoning.
You must be sure to carry out all calculations completely. This is why you should confirm that your answer matches the question before you click it and move on.
You will struggle to get a high QR score without efficient calculator use, which requires two key skills:
- You will need to think before you calculate in order to minimise maths and follow the shortest path through your calculations to the correct answer.
- You must work quickly and accurately with the number pad and keyboard shortcuts.
You may make notes in the notebook, but you will want to limit any rough working by hand as you practise. Writing out the maths will slow you down, which can imperil your QR score.
With practice, you will set up mentally, then use the calculator speedily and ruthlessly to reach the correct answer in the fewest possible steps. Developing these skills will optimise your QR performance for Test Day.
Whenever possible, try to practise with a number pad keyboard to simulate the Test Day experience. This is essential for any questions requiring the onscreen calculator, including Quantitative Reasoning and parts of Decision Making.
You will use the number pad for most basic maths:
- Type numbers up to 8 digits and complete the four basic operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide).
- Hit enter to calculate; the separate equal sign key may not work on some keyboards.
- Use backspace to clear the calculator (instead of ON/C), but note that you cannot delete individual digits, you can only erase everything and start over.
- Click Alt+C to make the calculator appear or disappear, though it will disappear automatically when you advance to the next question.
You may find you need to keep an eye on the calculator as you type numbers, to limit errors and missed digits (when you think you typed a number, but it does not register on the calculator).
Note that UCAT test centres have desktop computers that are PCs. Thus, all keyboard shortcuts in official materials assume a PC (Windows) keyboard.
If you practise on a Mac:
- Try Option + letter instead of Alt + letter.
- You may need Control + Option + letter depending on your Mac and browser.
The UCAT calculator includes some keyboard shortcuts for the memory function which you can practise in Medify’s onscreen calculator:
- Click ‘MRC’ once or type ‘C’ on the keyboard once: Recalls a stored value
- Click ‘MRC’ twice or type ‘C’ on the keyboard twice: Clears the memory
- Click ‘M+’ or type ‘P’ on the keyboard: Adds a value to memory
- Click ‘M-’ or type ‘M’ on the keyboard: Subtracts a value from memory
Remember that you can use the memory function to store a number you will need for a later step in your calculations.
The memory function also allows you to reuse the same number repeatedly. For example, if you want to cube a multi-digit number, it may be faster to add it to the memory, then do ‘MRC’ × ‘MRC’ × ‘MRC’ to find the cube.
Certain functions in the onscreen calculator require you to use the mouse. These are relatively limited, but they may be useful on Test Day.
- The % key: Click the % key after a percentage which must be the second number you add, subtract, multiply or divide. Examples: 300 + 10% = 330; 250 ÷ 25% = 1,000.
- The +/- key: Very handy if you calculate out of order and end up with a positive value in the calculator that you need to subtract from other numbers in the data. Click the +/- key, then add the other numbers.
- The square root key: Not commonly used in QR, but you may need it for geometry, and especially for Pythagoras’ theorem.
You must also use the mouse to move the calculator so it does not block the question or data.
- Grab the calculator by clicking the top bar with the word ‘Calculator’ in white
- Hold down the mouse button as you drag it elsewhere
- Release the button and the calculator is ready to use
You may find it helps to move the calculator to the lower-right part of the screen. Here, it is least likely to overlap the data at the top or the question at the lower left.
Be ready to simulate the Test Day experience for your QR calculations every time you practise – whether you use the question bank, mini-mocks or full mocks.
- Find a place where you can practise online using a number pad keyboard and a traditional wired mouse – perhaps at school or a public library.
- Take a few minutes to try the official onscreen calculator in the UCAT QR question bank, using the number pad, the keyboard shortcuts and the mouse. You do not need to properly answer the questions at this point – just experiment with the equipment so you know what you have to work with on Test Day.
- Then, do the same using Medify’s onscreen calculator, perhaps with some QR questions from the Medify question bank. Again, you must get comfortable with the equipment as you will use it to score higher in the UCAT.
- When it comes time to practise QR questions, make sure you have scrap paper and a pen to simulate the notebook. Any type of pen is preferable to a pencil as you cannot easily erase the notebook on Test Day.
If a number is too large to use in a calculator, or provided in a shortened form (e.g., ‘270 million’), you can save time on the calculator by removing a factor of 100 or 1,000 or more while doing the calculations – just remember to multiply by that same factor when you finish using the calculator.
