Some of the questions in BMAT Section 1 will ask you to find a conclusion, assumption or flaw of an argument, or to assess whether a certain premise strengthens or weakens the argument. In order to answer questions like this, you need to know the definitions of these terms and how they formulate an argument.
It’s important that you are able to understand and identify all of these individual elements, so you can then work on critiquing the argument correctly and quickly!
Critical thinking questions will appear in one of two forms: either a short passage followed by one question, or a long passage followed by 3-4 questions. For both question types, you must read the question first. This way you can keep in mind what you need to look for as you read the passage.
After you’ve read the passage with this focus in mind, look at the answer options and pick the one that best correlates with what you came up with. Don’t read the answer options first, because this may skew your view as you read the passage.
In BMAT Section 1, it’s vital to not be phased if you see a large amount of complex data. Some questions will test your ability to extract and summarise different types of data, so you won’t need to make use of all the data that you’re given.
Don’t waste time reading through every single piece the data, because the question might just want you to use a particular number or data item. Remember that even though the BMAT isn’t quite as time-pressured as the UCAT, the clock is still ticking!
After you’ve read the question, it’s a good idea to look at the answer options first, before going to the data (i.e. the opposite approach to critical thinking questions). This means that you’ll start reading the data with an idea of which part you need to look at.
For problem-solving questions, being quick at mental maths, multiplication tables, squaring numbers, cubing numbers and other basic maths principles will take you a long way. If you’re a bit shaky on any of these, make an effort to improve your mental maths skills before test day.
Make sure you are very comfortable converting between fractions, decimals and percentages, as questions involving these tend to come up often!
In BMAT Section 1, there are only a certain number of things you can be asked about an argument and only a limited number of things you can be asked to identify in a passage.
Therefore, the best way to improve is by doing as many practice questions as you can, and trying plenty of BMAT past papers. Practice makes perfect – and if you’re struggling with a particular area, there’s always the option of BMAT tutoring to work on your weaknesses.
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