**UKCAT, HPAT + Medicine 2017 Entry**

IrishLassie26

nol980 wrote: »

Phew.. what are you all thinking of putting down after medicine? Section 1 was such b@lls that I need to put a lot of thought into plan B.

I really do not want to repeat the Leaving Cert. I would consider taking a year out to repeat the HPAT but I'm apprehensive about wasting another year on something that all goes down to luck on the day.

I've put down pharmacy after medicine.. I think I might be happy with that either, but I'm not certain

Bex634

nol980 wrote: »

For the LOL texting extract, did people say "indignant" and "something and unnerved"

I said something and unnerved too! but i think i said something other than indignant but i just can't remember what it was

mbh008

Today was so bad I feel like all the study I did was useless
What did you guys answer for that wind turbine question in section 1?

mbh008

Bex634 wrote: »

I said something and unnerved too! but i think i said something other than indignant but i just can't remember what it was

I remember saying something else too
A word that's close to shocked or something

Consonata

IrishLassie26 wrote: »

I really do not want to repeat the Leaving Cert. I would consider taking a year out to repeat the HPAT but I'm apprehensive about wasting another year on something that all goes down to luck on the day.

I've put down pharmacy after medicine.. I think I might be happy with that either, but I'm not certain

Honestly just ignore the HPAT for now and put your full focus on the LC. I made the mistake of feeling dejected last year after the HPAT and just completely losing energy in the LC afterwards.

Repeating the HPAT is much better than repeating the HPAT + LC. You can keep up your hobbies and enjoy a year out whilst putting your full effort into the HPAT.

nol980

mbh008 wrote: »

Today was so bad I feel like all the study I did was useless
What did you guys answer for that wind turbine question in section 1?

I didn't get a wind turbine question:eek:

jamesmcsweeney

Bex24 I'm with you. Indignant is anger at a perceived injustice (unfair treatment). There was no injustice. Agree with the unnerved part.

(2)Pharmacy (3)Radiology (4)Health Sciences .... basically every other course thats health related

mbh008

nol980 wrote: »

I didn't get a wind turbine question:eek:

Whaaaat
The one with the nocebo effect

jamesmcsweeney

Yeah we all don't get the exact same questions .... a few will be different.

Acer uses them as trial questions and research questions. they aren't marked (supposedly)

Out of the 110 questions .... not all of them count/matter. Catch is we don't know which ones which. That's why people are saying there's an element of luck to the HPAT cause if the ones you got wrong are the ones they aren't marking you're golden!!!!!

Consonata

If the Nocebo effect wasn't on all papers it may not be counted towards your overall score. Occasionally Acer put on questions that are trialing out sorts of styles. Then they aren't worth anything. I could be wrong though.

mbh008

Ponguin wrote: »

I remember despondent and desperate being options

You must be right..I guess im just out of my mind after this exam

Bex634

Do you guys remember a question that involved the option contrite and what you put for it?

Mr Rhode Island Red

Friend of mine was doing the HPAT for the third year in a row today trying to get into medicine. If she doesn't get it this time round I don't know what she'll do. I think I heard some story of someone in the Midlands that repeated their LC 5 times trying to get medicine, but I could be wrong.

I don't care whether this goes left or right, no way am I repeating or doing the HPAT again, I'll take it as it comes

Bex634

jamesmcsweeney wrote: »

Yeah we all don't get the exact same questions .... a few will be different.

Acer uses them as trial questions and research questions. they aren't marked (supposedly)

Out of the 110 questions .... not all of them count/matter. Catch is we don't know which ones which. That's why people are saying there's an element of luck to the HPAT cause if the ones you got wrong are the ones they aren't marking you're golden!!!!!

that's unfair though, especially for section 1

panda100

I sat the HPAT today in the hopes of gaining entry to SLT in UL. I say I might be the first person in HPAT history to have studied medicine and then sat the hpat I can honestly say that exam in no way prepares you for the life of a medical student. Medicine is based on evidence and academic learning. I fail to see how skimming over an infactual piece of writing in 1.5minutes and reaching a conclusion with limited knowledge prepares you to be a skilled practitioner.

I really do feel sorry for all of you that you need to do that exam to get into medicine. Really leaving cert results and an interview would be a much better way of finding good doctors.

CookieCat97

I'm a repeat and overall I think the paper was a lot easier than last years, which leaves me hopeful! It also helped that I wasn't feeling that nervous about it.
Section one had lots of visuals which was nice! I got it all finished just about on time.
Section two didn't really have any complex words and the paragraphs for reading weren't too long in comparison to last year (maybe I'm just getting wiser 😜)
Section three was about the same as anything I've seen. I knew about half of them for sure and kind of made an educated guess for the rest.

CH1123581321

I'm actually really depressed about the the paper over all, section 1 was bad for me with timing, I reckon I had to blindly guess a good 15 or more. I also would've preferred more logical reasoning questions
Section 2, I haven't a clue, it was a bit odd, I just about had time to complete it, it could go either way really though.
Section 3, I think I was most content with this section maybe had to guess about 5-7 but I think I found the patterns in the majority of them.
So in conclusion I'm really really scared as to what percentile I could get, I have the feeling I can no kiss medicine goodbye after yesterday though

CH1123581321

Oh one question I enjoyed in section 1 was that hobs and knobs question, where some people read left to right or right to left and top to bottom or bottom to top

WorthlessPeon

Yeah that was a nice question. I feel exactly like you do, I had to guess a decent amount. However very few people actually complete the exam (especially S1), and if they do they probably rushed a few questions.

There are simply so many variables related to the HPAT - trial questions, weighting, how everyone else did. So right now it's impossible to predict how you did. Also there's always at least one person you talk to afterwards who thought it was 'grand' or whatever..Take it from experience that these people found it as difficult or even more so than you did, they just don't want to admit it.

vanilla_bean

I did the HPAT yesterday too, for graduate entry into OT in UL. I did my undergrad in SLT in the UK and at the time I had to do the HPAT to get in there. It's a bit of an unfair system, the test is so abstract. Section 1 and 2 were fairly ok for me but section 3 was awful. Not too hopeful that I will get in based on my results but all I can do now is wait.

Medicine should go the way of the UK and have a personal statement or interview requirement.

vanilla_bean

I got all the sections finished but that's because if I spent too long on a question, I made my best guess and marked it to come back to. I checked over all the sections each time I finished and started to doubt my answers though! Section one seems to be particularly maths based which wouldn't be my strong suit.

WorthlessPeon

vanilla_bean wrote: »

I did the HPAT yesterday too, for graduate entry into OT in UL. I did my undergrad in SLT in the UK and at the time I had to do the HPAT to get in there. It's a bit of an unfair system, the test is so abstract. Section 1 and 2 were fairly ok for me but section 3 was awful. Not too hopeful that I will get in based on my results but all I can do now is wait.

Medicine should go the way of the UK and have a personal statement or interview requirement.

I agree completely. From talking to the Dean of a large medical school here in Ireland the universities think the same. So what's stopping them?

Prisoner24601

Probably resources. I can't imagine it's a simple matter for universities to narrow down thousands of applicants for their medical programs, especially since Irish universities have no experience in doing so for their undergraduate programs. It's by far easier for the schools to leave the decision making process to third parties like Acer, with their HPAT exams.. Sadly.

vanilla_bean

WorthlessPeon wrote: »

I agree completely. From talking to the Dean of a large medical school here in Ireland the universities think the same. So what's stopping them?

I don't know. I heard that the HPAT aims to eliminate bias that could arise from a personal statement/ interview situation. However it would be very useful to pick out who has a genuine passion, has the correct temperate, is applying for the right reasons (e.g. Not just applying because their parents want them to/ applying just for the perceived prestige) etc

Having applied to the UK for SLT and going through interviews, aptitude tests and personal statements, I can say without a doubt that the process of writing a statement and going for an interview prepared me more for my course than the HPAT did. It seemed more relevant. But there obviously is some research to prove the HPAT is valuable, otherwise it wouldn't be in place.

Daggermouth

Did anyone think that the mother (who had cancer) and the daughter (who came home to live with her mother) would come to a mutual agreement/compromise? And for the sleep onset question in section 1, was it possible to work out the first question which was something like how many people in 2008 thought they had sleep onset problems and thought they still had them in 2009?

vanilla_bean

Daggermouth wrote: »

Did anyone think that the mother (who had cancer) and the daughter (who came home to live with her mother) would come to a mutual agreement/compromise? And for the sleep onset question in section 1, was it possible to work out the first question which was something like how many people in 2008 thought they had sleep onset problems and thought they still had them in 2009?

I said they would come to a compromise. Wasn't sure but the mother's last line sounded like she knew about how bad her cancer was and wanted to realistic.

I said you couldn't figure out the sleep onset one because you don't know how many people didn't have problems in 2008 and then had them in 2009 as there was a diagonal arrow.

Daggermouth

vanilla_bean wrote: »

I said they would come to a compromise. Wasn't sure but the mother's last line sounded like she knew about how bad her cancer was and wanted to realistic.

I said you couldn't figure out the sleep onset one because you don't know how many people didn't have problems in 2008 and then had them in 2009 as there was a diagonal arrow.

Let's hope you're right! Both the mother and daughter seemed to be concerned about eachothers best interest, so I couldn't imagine it escalating.

In section 1, the only question where I hadn't a notion of what to do, was the 4 people cutting a cake. Did you make any progress with that?

vanilla_bean

Nah, that question was a write off for me, just made my best guess at it. I really liked the table question though, it was just like a logic puzzle.

Daggermouth

Yeah I found that one handy enough, I flew through them questions once I understood what the seating arrangement diagram. The one way street question was nice too, and the map question was easily enough answered once you took your time with it.

InsertCoins

Daggermouth wrote: »

Did anyone think that the mother (who had cancer) and the daughter (who came home to live with her mother) would come to a mutual agreement/compromise? And for the sleep onset question in section 1, was it possible to work out the first question which was something like how many people in 2008 thought they had sleep onset problems and thought they still had them in 2009?

I didn't say that they'd come to an agreement. There didn't seem to be any evidence for it in the passage, IMO. They were consistently disagreeing with each other up until the end of the passage.

Not sure about that question in Section 1. I remember working out numbers for parts of it, but not sure if that was the first part.