Medentry Workshop or just online material?

[dossie58]

Hey guys,

I've been looking at Medentry's packages, and from experience, do you reckon that the workshop is necessary, or is the online distance package enough for preparation, with perhaps the Atar Notes lecture?


Thanks!

[enwiabe]

Hey guys,

I've been looking at Medentry's packages, and from experience, do you reckon that the workshop is necessary, or is the online distance package enough for preparation, with perhaps the Atar Notes lecture?


Thanks!

We're coming out with our own course. The beta will be live in 2 weeks. Don't waste your money there, you'll save hundreds with our stuff.

[holly.may]

Hi! Just thought I'd let you know, if you decide to do the platinum package and are looking for the group discount, I have a space available within my group. If you are interested email me at     [email protected] and I'll give you the details. 

[treystorm]

i myself am doing the online material for UMAT through MedEntry.
it is very helpful. although if you wanted a 3 day work shop, it will cost you about $400-500 more.

i myself chose to stay in the budget and brought the distance package.
i dont think the 3-day workshop would really have helped since MedEntry already provides
extensive guides into each section.

[totaled]

I found just the online material enough, i hear from many people the lecture itself isn't very good and it's awfully expensive just for a two-day event!

[sodapop]

I did the MedEntry Workshop earlier this year, so I'll put in my two cents:

Day 1 went over some techniques for each section, and displayed some sample questions for you to discuss with other students. One of the questions displayed was actually in this year's UMAT, but in a much more simplified form. To be frank, the "tips" they give you come straight from the online materials (which has more than enough tips, since I never did any of the "extra skills development" stuff). And the questions they gave were much harder than what was on the UMAT, not very indicative at all.

Day 2 was spent mostly doing a printed trial exam, and I suppose it was useful to do one under similar conditions to the UMAT, but I couldn't finish their paper, whereas I finished (albeit with mistakes) the actual UMAT without too much difficulty (go figure). It was recommended to go home and pore over the questions, but honestly, I didn't, because there was so much stuff to do on the LMS anyway. Also, they gave us an indicative UMAT score based on our performance on that day. Mine was in the 80th-90th percentile (after scaling up my scores), which was discouraging and didn't turn out to be accurate anyway.

So for the extra price, I wouldn't recommend going for the package with the lecture, it's not worth the extra cost. As long as you are willing to put in the time and effort to read over their guides and regularly attempt the practise exams (I only did 4, but I should have done more), then you'll reap most of the benefits of buying MedEntry. And yeah, perhaps that money could be better spent going to AN's cheaper course, where you'll get different, more material and a different perspective. That's what I'd do anyway (and I'm not affiliated with the AN UMAT course either).

[dossie58]

Thanks a lot for all your feedback, very helpful!

[brenden]

Go the AN option. Better be taught how to think than what to think.

[Destiny]

I got a ninety fifth percentile and an interview. If you need preparation which costs money, I'll shoot myself in the foot. Many of my school friends failed the UMAT, for heaven's sake. You know what? They did Medentry and I didn't. Just do a filetype:pdf search on the internet for umat practice tests. There are plenty of old 1s and 2s there and that plus the free 1. They're closer to the actual exam than a random series of smileys (true story) you see on a screen.

[slothpomba]

Hi! Just thought I'd let you know, if you decide to do the platinum package and are looking for the group discount, I have a space available within my group. If you are interested email me at     [email protected] and I'll give you the details. 

I'm not sure why someone downvoted you :/, i voted you back up to neutral again.

It might not be a good idea to put your email on a public forum, you can always ask them to private message you.

I got a ninety fifth percentile and an interview. If you need preparation which costs money, I'll shoot myself in the foot. Many of my school friends failed the UMAT, for heaven's sake. You know what? They did Medentry and I didn't. Just do a filetype:pdf search on the internet for umat practice tests. There are plenty of old 1s and 2s there and that plus the free 1. They're closer to the actual exam than a random series of smileys (true story) you see on a screen.

We have no way of checking your claim but we have no reason to suppose its untrue for you, as an individual, either. The problem here is everyone is not you. Some people will benefit greatly from a UMAT preparation course.

We've done the discussion to death a million times (use the search function) on whether its worth it or not but if you can afford it, it certainly wont make you any worse off. Either you'll be no better off and lose your money or you will actually improve. Some people will just be naturally good at all of the sections but i think section 3 is definitely the most amenable to change, a lot of practice there will really make perfect.

If you do end up paying for it though, make sure you actually used it. I bought it and barely touched it. There is an absolute shitload of stuff supplied by medentry, i think most people will struggle to do absolutely everything they offer, thats how much there is. So, you do get a lot but its also rather pricey. I got ninety something percentile in the first section with very little practice but i really bombed out in the third and got something like 30 percentile. It could just be me being horrible at shapes but i think it's the easiest section to improve on and you can find a lot of the shape puzzles for free on the net.

[gibsonaxxxs]

Personally, I found the lecture only slightly helpful; like what people have said, much of what they say is in the guides (and often rather self-explanatory). However, that being said, having an exam on paper to practice with, under exam conditions, is a great benefit.
I think that with medentry, the main helpful things they supply are their practice exams.
If you purchase the material, I'd recommend trying to finish all the exams. Because they're 3 hours each, you'd need to spread them out (I forgot about the UMAT and had to finish them all in 3 weeks - it was pretty intensive!!)

[watto_22]

I bought the MedEntry distance package and found that really useful. Didn't do any of the workshop/lecture things

[dossie58]

There's 12 prac exams from med entry, and i have 14 from F2F.
I was thinking, ill do some of them (like 5-10) under full timed condition of a 3hr simulation of the exam, and split the rest up into section components, so do say 44 mins on section 2 one day, and then 48 mins on section 3 the next day and section one the day after. I thought of this, because I thought this would be least detrimental to my VCE study.
What do you guys reckon?