MedEntry Blog

In life, we are told that ‘practice makes perfect’. The more you practice a particular skill, whether it be playing the piano, swimming or writing essays, the better you become at it. So, in theory, it should be the same in HPAT – the more practice questions you do, the better you are at HPAT – right? Not necessarily. Just like any skill, to do well in HPAT you first need a basic understanding of what it is, what it tests and how to approach the various types of questions. Without this understanding, you may still be able to improve...

The final school year is a stressful time. Add in HPAT and the pressures of getting into medicine, and stress levels can rapidly sky rocket. As a parent it is easy to succumb to feelings of powerless as you watch your son or daughter struggle to prepare for such an important and difficult exam. However, there are many things you can do to boost their performance and have a positive impact on their wellbeing.  1. Provide a sound working environment  HPAT is a two and a half-hour test requiring extreme concentration. The best way to prepare is to complete full length...

A very common question asked by aspiring medical students is “How do you balance your school work and HPAT practice?” Given that the HPAT can be equally or even more important as the ATAR in the medical school selection process, it is crucial that students devote sufficient time in preparing for the HPAT, without neglecting their 6 th year studies. The key to finding this balance is planning your time. Many students attempt to fit in HPAT study in their ‘spare time’, which is hard to find in 6 th year. It is more productive to set aside blocks of...

As many of you would have noticed, HPAT preparation takes time. And I mean a LOT of time! It’s often overwhelming trying to get those HPAT practice exams you’d promised yourself to get done as well as study for that first chemistry quiz if you’re in 6th year, or keep up with your GAA training.    In many cases, students often lose time, confidence and their interest in HPAT since it simply adds to their already overwhelming workload. So before you start stressing about the upcoming HPAT exam, let’s just take a quick look at how you can manage studying...

Some students who are preparing for HPAT wonder if they should get a private tutor for HPAT or attend weekly HPAT classes. Often this is because that is what they are used to doing in high school. But HPAT is very different to school and therefore requires a different approach. Here we suggest a much more effective (and much cheaper) way of preparing for HPAT: group study. The benefits of group study are well known: it is more social, more enjoyable and more effective, particularly for tests such as HPAT.  Extensive pedagogical research has shown that group study is far...

So you’re going into your final year of schooling, and you’re super duper set on being a doctor. There are lots of ways you can keep hold of medicine as a big picture throughout this long and sometimes arduous year. By putting some of these points into action now, you will increase your chances of getting straight into med, pump up your motivation over the year, and be an awesome doctor in the future!   ·          People – get amongst them! Medicine is all about the people. In your career you will interact with others from diverse backgrounds, and...

There are a wealth of resources available to you on the LMS. You can check your progress by visiting the Check Progress page, either by clicking on the icon on the homepage of the LMS or by clicking on the icon next to the ‘Check’ section under HPAT resources:      When you arrive on the Check Progress page, you can view your progress with the practice exams or drills by clicking on the relevant tab:   Practice exams You will see a drop down list of your HPAT exams and information about their completion. Click on the drop-down arrow...

Should I prepare for the HPAT with friends or alone?  It’s a question many students ask themselves leading up to a major exam, including the HPAT. Although the answer will vary depending on personal preference, this article will endeavour to discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks of both group and individual preparation. For most, the answer lies somewhere between the two – ideal preparation involves a combination of both individual and group work. Tackling practice questions on your own is an essential part of preparation. In the exam, you won’t have a group of friends with which to discuss the...

Many students who have scored 100th percentile in the HPAT have said that preparing for HPAT is like preparing for a marathon. There are many similarities: they both require significant motivation, consistent practice over a period of time and a clear head under pressure. Not to mention that for many people both a marathon and the HPAT are the hardest challenges they have faced so far in their lifetime. So what can we learn from marathon runners that will help us prepare for the HPAT? Step 1: Develop muscle In the HPAT you will have a limited amount of time...

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. – Mark Twain Brian Tracy’s 5 minute YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKOMTZ7PPLg  discusses a time management strategy that has changed many people’s lives (including mine!). It discusses time management in the context of the workplace, but the strategy is applicable to HPAT and high school/university study too. This blog summarises the key points.  As Mark Twain said, if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a live frog, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that’s probably the...

With the exception of the Non-Verbal Reasoning component (section three), HPAT is primarily comprised of written – rather than pictorial – questions. Thus, it stands to reason that your HPAT preparation should include improving your reading skills. With that in mind, here are some of the many strategies you can use to develop your reading efficiency for HPAT.  Firstly, you must ensure that you read every single component of the stimulus, particularly for section two (Understanding People). A past HPAT stimulus, for example, described a middle-aged man. This information was included in the introductory stem of the stimulus, but nowhere...

Your final year is a juggling act between all-important tests and exams with your other commitments, be it sport, music or a part-time job. On top of this, you have to squeeze in quality time for your family, friends and personal relationships. Well, once you leave this final year, you may find the added pressures of medical school can be overwhelming at times! Here are my trialled-and-tested tips for reining in the chaos that University can be at times. Honestly, if someone had given me these three pointers in my first few weeks at university, it would have made the transition...

Preparation is key for any exam, and UMAT preparation is no different. But we’ve all had that horrible experience when the nerves hit, and all that preparation is thrown out the window because your brain is more interested in stressing itself out than answering the exam questions. But you can, of course, prepare for that too. 1.    Practice Since I’m supposed to be telling you what to do when it feels like preparation isn’t working, you might not expect a synonym for “preparation” to be the top tip. But it is, so hear me out. Nothing is as reassuring...

So you’ve decided to spend x hours per week preparing for the UMAT. Well done on making a commitment! But it doesn’t end there. The next step is to squeeze as much as you can get out of those HPAT preparation hours. One way of doing this and making the questions work for you is to carefully review solutions. When going through HPAT practice questions, it’s very tempting to avoid reading the solutions for one reason or another. As someone who achieved 100th percentile in the HPAT, I’ll try to make a case for reading the solutions all the time....

For many students, HPAT preparation begins with enrolling in a HPAT tuition program such as MedEntry. But boy, there sure is a lot of stuff on here, isn’t there? How exactly should you use all of the resources, such as Practice Exams, Drills and Eureka? In this post, I’ll share how I navigated the MedEntry LMS to ultimately achieve 100th percentile in the HPAT.   The HPAT is such an important of your application to medical school. Obviously it is unfeasible to spend as much time on the HPAT as you do on schoolwork, so I found that treating the...

Keeping the balance is something we all struggle with in our final year of schooling, myself included. At the commencement of the year, I jumped into everything. Then, at the end of term one, I crashed, and in term two I tried to do nothing. Neither of these worked for me, and over the remainder of the year I learnt some important lessons about keeping the balance. Not only was I happier and more well-rounded as a result, I was also able to succeed in both HPAT and in my final exams.     The golden rule for staying well-rounded...

Preparing for the HPAT is similar to preparing for a marathon: it requires training, preparation and strategies to optimise your performance on the test day. Just as an athlete prepares for a major sporting event, so you must prepare yourself to sit HPAT, which is one of the most important exams that you will face in your career. We can learn much from athletes about optimising performance in HPAT, as outlined in this TED talk by Martin Hagger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG7v4y_xwzQ This talk discusses how highly successful athletes prepare themselves before a competition. The main points are summarised below, with an emphasis...

So you ’ re in 5th year of secondary school and thinking about pursuing a career in medicine. You ’ ve got great grades as well as the people skills to become a doctor, so there should be no problem getting in. Then you find out about the HPAT. You hear that it is a major obstruction to your journey, and only a select few are able to succeed in it. You hear about all the people who have done poorly despite studying so hard. You may even hear about the people who passed that didn ’ t do much...

Rather than assessing your knowledge, the HPAT is an exam which isolates certain deductive skills that will be important in work as a doctor and requires you to apply them in various scenarios. Therefore, if you wish to succeed in the HPAT, you will need to nurture these skills, sharpen them and know exactly when to use them. If your eager mind has begun this uphill climb towards HPAT success and if you have thoroughly scoured the LMS and still seek ways to better your logical reasoning, this guide will show you how.   Logical Reasoning & Problem Solving questions...

Medicine is largely a people-oriented career, which is one of the reasons HPAT tests how well you can understand people in a personal and professional setting. Whilst you can try to “study” for this section of the exam, the best way to develop and refine your interpersonal skills leading up to the HPAT is via emotional reflection and understanding certain concepts. ‘Understanding People’ questions will frequently require you to assign a specific emotion a person might be feeling at a given time. This blog will cover how to approach such a question methodically, in various steps.   STEP 1: Recognise...