HPAT Preparation Guide Part 1

With the HPAT exam fast approaching (this year’s date is February 26th) many students are wondering what they can do to prepare.
The main difficulties with this are:
a)  The exam is not based on a curriculum or information that can be learned off by heart.  HPAT candidates are expected to deal with and process information they have never seen before.
b)  The style of the questions is quite different from the exams that most Irish students have experience with i.e. Leaving and Junior Cert.
c)  Many students find it hard to deal with the stress of the exam itself, particularly the need to answer many questions in a limited amount of time – simply practising sample questions often fails to prepare students for this stress.
My main advice to students in the coming weeks would be:

• Make sure you are familiar with the style of questioning in all three sections, using the two booklets of sample questions available online.   If you haven’t ordered these already, do so as soon as possible.  http://www.hpat-ireland.acer.edu.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69:information-booklet&catid=12:practice-test There are certain patterns in the questions.  It is very important to try to get into the mind set of the HPAT.  Remember that you won’t always agree with the answer given, particularly for Section II, but careful analysis of the question once you have attempted it and checked the correct answer is invaluable in helping you to become familiar with the type of answer that is typical.
• For all three sections, a helpful tip is to make sure that you can back up your answer with concrete evidence from the given text i.e try to identify a specific sentence or even word that supports your choice of answer.  Start doing this with questions where you selected the correct answer without any great difficulty and then extend this technique to questions where you are less certain which answer to choose.  For example, if you have narrowed down your options to two answers, see which of these is better supported by the text or the information provided.  Sometimes 2 or more answers might seem correct but usually one will be clearly better supported than the others.  Remember that it’s not always obvious and may require some careful and subtle thinking.
• It may help to remember that part of what the HPAT examines is your ability to cope with a very stressful situation and still remain logical, focus and as calm as possible.  If you’re aware that this is the case and that it is the same for all candidates, it is easier not to panic.  After all, managing the stress of having a huge amount of work in a short time is part of being a health professional!  To prepare for this I would recommend practising HPAT in stressed and less stressed situations – perhaps do a warm up where you do 5 questions in less than 10 minutes and then try 1 question where you take as long as you need to think about it.  Always take time to compare your answer with the correct answer and analyse why you got it right or wrong.  This combination of putting pressure on and taking pressure off will help you to understand how your mind works under stress and the errors you are likely to make if you have to hurry.

Hope these HPAT tips help – we will be looking at more specific HPAT study techniques and stress management techniques as the exam gets closer.

Tags: HPAT

By admin in HPAT on January 6, 2011