UCAT ANZ decision making: how it works

Decision Making is the subtest students most often say they did not expect. It is not a knowledge test and it does not look like school maths or English. It asks you to reason with the information in front of you, quickly and accurately.

The facts first

On the Consortium's test format page, Decision Making is described as testing whether you can use logic to arrive at a decision, weigh up arguments and analyse statistical information. It has:

• 35 questions
• 37 minutes, after a 1 minute 30 second instruction section
• a 300 to 900 scaled score

Thirty-seven minutes for 35 questions is about 63 seconds a question on average. Some questions will take 30 seconds and some will take two minutes, so the average is a guide to pacing, not a rule.

The Consortium says you do not need to know any special maths or logic vocabulary. Some questions are multiple choice; others present five statements and ask for a yes or no next to each one. A simple on-screen calculator is available.

How it is marked

From the scoring page:

Wrong answers cost nothing, so you should answer every question. Raw marks are converted to a scaled score from 300 to 900, and the three cognitive subtests are added to give a total between 900 and 2700.

The practical point is that the five-statement questions are worth twice as much as a single-answer question. They are also where partial credit exists, so even an uncertain attempt is worth making.

The assumption trap

One of the high-scoring candidates featured on the Consortium's candidate advice page said Decision Making was challenging for her because of a tendency to make assumptions about information that had not been explicitly confirmed in the question. Her fix was to take extra time to read through the question and ask herself, each time, whether her answer was based on an assumption or on information actually presented.

That is a good habit to build, and you can practise it without a timer:

1. Read the question and every statement.
2. For each answer, point to the line of the question that supports it.
3. If you cannot point to a line, you are probably assuming.
4. Choose the answer you can support, or the one the information does not contradict, as the question asks.

Pacing

The same advice page has two other useful ideas. One candidate recommends using the flag function: if you cannot see an answer quickly, flag the question and move on, because you do not have time to agonise over one question and may have to make an educated guess. Another calculated a per-question time budget and practised against it with full-length practice tests. A third notes that every question is worth the same, so it makes sense to identify the harder, time-consuming ones, guess and flag them, then come back at the end.

Combined with the 63 second average, a simple routine is:

• Aim to commit to an answer within about a minute.
• If you are past a minute and a half with no progress, flag, choose your best guess and move on.
• Leave the last couple of minutes to return to flagged questions.

A small example of the five-statement style

This is our own illustration, written for practice and not a real question. In a group of 100 students, 60 play sport and 40 play music, and 20 do both. For each statement, decide whether it must be true (yes) or not (no).

1. 80 students play sport or music, or both.
2. 40 students play only sport.
3. 20 students play neither.
4. More students play only music than play both.
5. Half the students play sport.

Working it through: sport or music is 60 + 40 minus the 20 counted twice, which is 80 (yes). Only sport is 60 minus 20, which is 40 (yes). Neither is 100 minus 80, which is 20 (yes). Only music is 40 minus 20, which is 20, the same as both, not more (no). Sport is 60 out of 100, not half (no). Notice that every answer came from the numbers given, and none required guessing what the other students do. That is the habit to practise.

Use the tools

The Consortium's test tools page says candidates receive a marker pen along with a laminated notebook, and it suggests taking notes particularly in Decision Making and Quantitative Reasoning. Drawing a quick diagram, listing statements or writing a small table is faster than holding it in your head. The on-screen calculator is a separate window, so click back on it if it stops responding after you have used a keyboard shortcut.

Keyboard shortcuts such as Alt + F to flag and Alt + N to move to the next question save seconds. Our post on the calculator and shortcuts lists them.

Practising

The Consortium recommends working through the question tutorials before the question banks, and using the practice tests nearer the date for timed practice. For Decision Making, a useful routine is:

• One untimed set where you justify every answer in a sentence.
• One set at 63 seconds a question.
• A review in which you sort mistakes into three piles: assumed too much, misread, ran out of time. The fix for each is different.

Where to go next

• The on-screen calculator and keyboard shortcuts
• Verbal Reasoning and the clock
• UCAT ANZ Decision Making practice is in our free samples.

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Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the UCAT ANZ Consortium.