Well, thank God that’s over.
I’m literally just home from my HPAT exams, i.e., the “Health Professions Admissions Test” which all medicine applicants are required to sit.
I’ve yet to eat anything proper, but the serious hunger this exam has inflicted on me isn’t comparable to any other type of hunger, ever. I could be exaggerating, but would I do such a thing?
So this is going to have to be a relatively short post so I can go inhale copious amounts of food, preferably the variety that’s dripping with grease.
The HPAT scared me. This is the first year they’ve been run and my God do I hate being some sort of test subject, a guinea pig of sorts. There’s a whole new system in place whereby you have to do well in them to have a chance of getting into Medicine in 3rd level. Balls. Absolute balls.
Last night I started to feel a little bit jittery, but there wasn’t much I could do at that stage. It’s not exactly something you can study for, seeing as it’s an aptitude test. I did a few sample papers, the HPAT sample booklet that everyone got their hands on, and some UMAT papers, the Australian version.
I wanted to get an early night, but I was feeling a bit too “meh” to sleep, so when a friend called over with a good luck card and some chocolate I jumped at the opportunity to escape from the house for a while.
I eventually got to bed; I think I was asleep somewhere between 12.30 and 1 am, which is a pretty early night.
7.45 wake up calls are not fun. I was extremely nervous this morning. So much so that when I was getting dressed I put my t-shirt on back to front (Remember: I want to be the future of your Health Service. And I can’t even dress myself properly). I noticed halfway through the exam that I was a mess with a backwards tshirt, but really it just made me chuckle more than anything else.
I left my house in plenty of time, but obviously I couldn’t find the test centre this morning. Obviously! I don’t know Waterford at all, I mean I have been going to school there for the last few months, but I literally only know my way from the bus to the school and that’s about it. However, in a panic-y rush of asking poor randommers where the centre was, I arrived. A little later than the suggested time, but not too late by any means. It wouldn’t have hurt to stick up a cardboard sign or two to let people know where exactly the “Ursuline Convent” was to be fair.
I was not as calm and collected as I’d like to have been, but as soon as I got there I met people from school and stuff, so my frayed nerves were calmed. Nothing a bit of “Rescue Remedy” didn’t sort out as well. Apologies to anyone who was sitting near me, I don’t usually smell of whiskey at 10am in the morning, it was the rescue remedy dropper stuff, I swear.
So at 10.30am the exam started. Section 1.
I hate this section. It’s all about problem solving and logical reasoning and stuff. Quite frankly, it’s a horrible section designed to trick you. I couldn’t help but feel that for some of the questions more than one of the answers would have sufficed. A lot of the questions are RIDICULOUS.
One of the questions was to the effect of ” All people in Porcupinas are Liars” or something, followed by 4 statements which may or may not be true. I can’t really remember, I’ve mentally blocked most of it out. Although I do recall the very first question being related to probability, just like that in honours maths, except a bit simplified. I liked that, it soothed me before the big slap across the face that was most of the rest of the section.
65 minutes later heralded the beginning of Section 2: Understanding people.
I like this section, in all of the sample tests I did best here. You’re presented with passages from texts or dialogues of conversation and you’ve to analyse how the people in question feel and react and so on. It’s all a bit wishy-washy, but I generally thought this section was grand.
And then, at around 12.30 we started Section 3.
Eugh, this is non-verbal reasoning, so you’re shown sequences of pictures and that, and you’ve to work out what’s next in the sequence, or what’s in the middle of the sequence, or, what should be in the middle of a big freakin’ picture. It’s hard to explain, but generally I like it. It’s easy enough like, generally.
Today, I did NOT like this section. The last few questions were disgusting, absolutely disgusting, and I started to feel myself going red and getting flustered. I did my best on them, but I just couldn’t work out the connections within some of them. I had to guess the last 4 because I ran out of time. Statistically if I gave the same answer for all 4 I’ve a greater chance of getting one or more right, yeah? Hopefully. I don’t quite know how I managed to think of statistics in this exam, it was pretty draining.
All in all, I don’t know how I got on. With the Leaving Cert last year it was grand, I could come out of an exam and say “Eh, yeah, I knew all that stuff. I’m sure I got a B or an A”. After the HPAT though, I haven’t a clue. I’m confident enough I did alright in most of it, but it’s all up in the air.I’m starting to doubt myself, which is BAD.
The results for this are out on the 22nd of June, so by then I’ll know what’s in store for me. Right now though, I’m flummoxed.
Phew, at least it’s out of the way and I can get on with the rest of my Valentines Day. Sitting at home alone whinging about the exam, eating junk food, and eventually leaving my humble abode to go out and get absolutely smashed. Ah, alcohol. What more could I want?
I hope everyone else got on well. If you too sat the HPAT, please leave a comment! I’m dying to know what the general consensus was! Of those I’ve talked to, most people have said it wasn’t that nice… but what about you?
PS: I’d like to take this very public opportunity to thank anyone who text/ emailed/ facebook’d/ blog commented me etc to wish me good luck! Much appreciated!
its like this. i dont know how i did, i cant remember any of the questions, ( i probably could if i tried) and lately im starting to have seriously negative thoughts.
If your serious about doing medicine ( and you appear very much to be) then relax. you did all the preparation possible, ( HPAT, UMAT etc). theres nothing more you can do!!! its out of your hands!!!! I found the whole thing quite horrible. i never immagined you could experience such heights of elation and of desolation in 2 and a half hours!!!what i mean is my whole career flashed before my eyes each time i met a challenging question!!!!
im just guna get it out of my head now and try and drain as many points as i can from this lc….we’ll see how it goes!!! Best of luck!!!
My impression:
1. The RDS was a shambles, terribly organised – with DCU students hired for the day who didn’t have a notion what was going on, mass confusion, general hysteria, leading to panicked conflict and eventual cannibalism.
2. TOO MANY PEOPLE! Could there have been 800 at my centre alone?
3. Section 1 I liked. However, going back over it afterwards (I had 20 mins to spare) I noticed an awful lot of stupid mistakes. Therefore I worry.
4. Section 2 I did not like. Seemed like there were a lot of attractive answers for each Q. I worry about Section 2.
5. Section 3 scared the bejeesus out of me and I flew through it in a bit of a panic but once I calmed down and went back over it it started making sense. At the same time, it’s so possible I started seeing patterns where there were none. Hence, I worry.
Had the HPAT myself, didn’t think it was too bad, but I don’t really get nervous abot tests, love seeing people nervous when I’m not, only chance I get to feel superior 😛
I’d say you did better than you thought, there were a lot in my centre in Blackrock who looked completely flummoxed the entire time, and it’s them and me who you’re competing against 🙂
Blackrock was poorly organised, was after 11 before we got started I think, or very shortly before it. 4 hours on a flat wooden seat was no fun 😛
Section 1 was ok, think I did better than on the sample test, there were two blocks of 3 questions I skipped and barely got back to due to time, thought they’d take too long and so answered the questions at the end which I assume are meant to be harder and worth more.
Section 2 was so much harder than the sample. Only got 2 wrong in the sample but yesterday there seemed to be 2 good answer to at least 5 or 6 questions, if not more.
Section 3 was easy to start, middle I went to crap, but I got at least 5 of the last 9 right and was choosing between 2 answers on the others. Anyone I was talking to afterwards said they guessed the last 10. Though knowing my luck they probably guessed as many correctly as I worked out 😛
Best of luck with trying to get into medicine. Are you a repeat? I’m doing the LC as an external candidate after a year of college and 4 months of the dole 😛
Ugh that HPAT…I feelt the same as you! Still have to blog about it, but I’m waiting for my last post to be approved and posted (which is strange cos I wrot eit about 4 days ago >.<) before I whinge.
We only received it today!
We shall allow you to publish your own posts soon anyway.
*sighs at the thought of database configuration!
Hehe it was my own fault cos I forgot to add tags so it doesn’t get sent to review until I add tags, which I did today!
Also did the HPAT the other day – have tried to shut it out of my mind but I’ve got to deal with it eventually so here goes.
– Did mine at RDS: the people, dear god the people. how the hell are there this many people that want to do medicine in dublin. I was told by friends that there were similar numbers in Galway! Everytime my mind drifted during the test (which was quite often) I kept thinking “how am I going to get a better score than most of these people” – not the best state of mind to be in. Also – it was like the administrators had never done anything like this before…so much hanging around before we even started.
– Section 1 was difficult but i completed it in time and i thought i did ok. obviously very difficult to know. i always make silly mistakes in this section and i think the actual test will be no different.
– Section 2 who knows? for almost every question, there seemed to be at least 2 decent answers. how are we supposed to distinguish between whether a person is feeling “isolated” or “alone”???
– Section 3 felt surprisingly good. I sucked at these initially but did quite a bit of practice on harder questions, so the ones in the hpat seemed fairly straightforward. didn’t think i’d be saying that when i first picked up those hpat sample papers!
I did a couple of preparation courses for the hpat (parents are a little OCD):
– IOE (www.ioe.ie): i was disappointed with this course to say the least. it was fairly obvious that this was the first time they’d done the course because i’ve been to some of their other stuff for LC which isn’t bad. they hardly had anything in terms of practice questions and the ones they had were easy even for a semi-intellectually-disabled person like myself.
– MedEntry (www.medentry.edu.au): these guys were really good and i reckon without them i would have failed quite miserably. They had an online resource with more questions than i could complete and a specific section 3 trainer which is why i think i did well in that section. the workshop was well run and they clearly knew what they were talking about. Only thing was that the workshop took up the entire weekend before mocks which sucked.
Anyway, that was kind of cathartic 🙂
Oisin:
It was horrible, and I’m seriously with you on the mood changing aspect of things! At times i was like ” SCORE! I’m going to be a doctor!” and then for others I was like “Ah, balls. Basket weaving here I come.”
Liam:
I heard about that cannibalism alright. Not that I disagree, it’s a good way to get rid of the competetion. Far too many people. Everywhere. Depression!
It sounds like you’re not at all worried though, that’s good! Aha.
Seriously though, I’d say there aren’t too many who aren’t somewhat worried. We’ll be a’right.
Faloonzer:
I tend not to get nervous, but, yes, I’m afraid the shakes hit me before this!
Wooden seat? Baha, we got sexy padded ones. Things are better in the south east, I’m tellin’ you that much!
But yes, I’m one of those poor unfortunates who’s repeating. It’s not the best fun ever, especially since I probably have enough points to get through without repeating (550). Wouldn’t mind the dole myself 😛
Elizabeth:
I’ve yet to meet anyone who felt massively different to me about it all. Stupid HPAT. Fingers crossed everyone else in the country apart from writers/ readrs of this blog failed in an epic way. (I’m lovely)
Ben:
It actually feels quite nice to rant about it, doesn’t it?
I can’t believe so many people are applying for it, but keep in mind the fact that many of them won’t get enough LC points/ are already in college/ are sitting the HPAT for the lulz and don’t have medicine down first/ etc.
Actually, I’m interested to know, did you think the prep. courses gave you a bit of an advantage over others? Just out of curiosity more than anything else. They were ridiculously expensive.
Jennie: I was also hoping other people would fail, I’m not going to pretend to be nice about this :p Was half considering going around trying to persuade people to take up pharmacy instead :p
Jennie: talking it over with my friends afterwards (most hadn’t done any prep), i think the prep definitely helped but yes – it was really expensive. as mentioned, the medentry one pooped all over the ioe one imo.
the ioe one was around 350 euros for the workshop alone w/o practice stuff. medentry was a similar price if you purchased by yourself but you got the workshop and all the online stuff. i got it with a friend so got a ‘group discount’ so it was about 250 for the lot. i think the online stuff without workshop was about 150 euros.
elizabeth: i was thinking the same dirty thoughts 😉
I don’t know why everyone is so anxious about the HPAT… I’ve just turned 17 and I thought it was an absolute walk in the park! 🙂 I don’t mean to sound arrogant but I thought that test was unusually easy for a DOCTOR’S test!;-)
Section 1 was a breeze- I don’t know why such an abundance have been complaining about the allocated time- I was finished with 25 minutes to spare!
Section 2… yawn… Didn’t think anyone – apart from those with Asbergers- would have any difficulty with that section. Relatively simple and straightforward.
And Section 3 was a hell of a lot easier than the sample. Very easy-to-read sequences, topped off with an easy “middle of sequence” section.
After reading all the comments I was surprised in that so many people had difficulties. The fact that I thought the test was so easy is either a really good sign, or a horrifically terrible one! 🙁
I suppose we’ll all see on that faithful day- June 22nd.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dominate some Leaving Cert exam papers! 😉
Thanks 4 ur blog!!!At least i know now that im not alone when i say….fuck sake…that was hard!!!!Ok slight exageration section 1 was easy and so was section 2 but omg section 3!!!
Chances are nobodys guna read this seeing as the last comment was posted in march,but anyway….if anybody whos experienced the hpat IS reading this could ye give me the links to any useful websites etc. to help in preparation for the exam?im only going into 5th year after summer,but im dead serious about doing medicine in college and well its not the sort of course you can start preparing for a couple of months beforehand….unless ur einstein.im petrified to hear that theres so many people going for it so its refreshing to see alot of ye came out with a fairly unconfident state of mind, that way i know i wont be the only one when it comes to my hpat exam.
Best of luck to the writer of this blog and everyone who left comments, hope ye realise all the hard work paid off when you get your results on the 22nd of june.
And anybody reading this with experience of the hpat or if you feel youre in the same boat as me please leave a comment….im the only one out of all my friends that wants to do medicine and frankly i could do with discussing it with someone who has a slight interest!
Good luck again!!
Hi Kiera!
First off, fair play for being so prepared in advance- Woah! I wasn’t thinking about the HPAT until the months immediately before it.
Yeah, I still honestly couldn’t tell you how it went, I’ll let it be known in about a month and a half (scaaaaaary!)
I couldn’t find any useful websites beforehand (Granted, I didn’t try very hard) but if you go onto the official HPAT website (It’s all organised by the company ACER if I remember correctly) you can buy a book of sample questions for about €22.
Also if you use a bit’a google to find the UMAT ones you can order sample booklets. You have to actually pay for them too. They’re exactly the same as the HPAT ones, just the Australian version.
(I’ll come back and leave links later- currently in the library and my session’s about to be timed out!)
(Yes, in the library. Studying. The internet.)
Hiya Jennie!To be fair i kinda have to be prepared…soo many people wanna do medicine and im definetly not the most intelligent out of all them….because the hpat has only been introduced since this year,its scaaaary…i cant actually imagine what it must have been like for you when you first found out they were bringing in a brand new aptitude test that you knew nothing about.Bastards.
But honestly,with the few months you had to prepare for it did you find that enough?Like,how easy could the hpat be if you prepared for it for two years?Cos one thing i know for a fact is if i began studying at the same time as everybody else(im talking the all a`s kind of people)i wouldnt do as well as them.
Also,is it true you could sit the hpat in 5th and 6th year and then use the best one out of the two when applying to college?And whats the cost of sitting the hpat exam?
I know im asking a shit load of questions but…ya ive only REALLY started finding out what I need to do since the start of transition year.
aaargh good luck to all of ye getting the results from the test soon scary scary times!