UMAT In Australia

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The Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test (UMAT) was developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and introduced in 1991 for selection into medicine.[1] The UMAT is now utilised by twelve universities across Australia for entry into their medical programs. [1] According to ACER, who design the UMAT questions, the purpose of the examination is to “complement your academic results.”[2] The exam consists of three sections, logical reasoning and problem solving, understanding people, and non-verbal reasoning, which have no relation to the academic arena. All of the questions in the UMAT are multiple choice, students take the test mid-July and receive their percentile towards the end of the year. However, …show more content…

Tens of thousands of students take the UMAT examination both in Australia and overseas and only those in the top 10 percent are granted an interview. The UMAT examination requires a registration fee of $250, which was introduced in 2014 by ACER.[5] This amount may seem small, but when you consider that tens of thousands of people take the UMAT globally, every year, ACER will be making millions of dollars just off the registration for the UMAT examination. This registration fee and other training costs may put a lot of families in financial strife, especially when considering the cost of the courses students believe will help them in improving. The whole process of the UMAT, registration and paying for UMAT courses can end up costing thousands of dollars to families, money which they may not have. In many cases these thousands of dollars will have gone to waste, as only a select few are accepted into medical …show more content…

The study also highlighted that the UMAT presents no relevance to university or the undergraduate courses students may take, illustrating that students may be disadvantaged by having to study for a test which has no relevance to university.[7] Hence, it is just another tool utilised by Medical Schools to sort candidates

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