Top Tips For HPAT 2023 Success

The HPAT, or Health Professions Admission Test – Ireland, is an admissions test mainly used to provide an extra assessment component for prospective medical students in Ireland. It is an intimidating exam for many students.  The question style can be unlike any exam you’ve sat before.  A common complaint for many students is coping with complex HPAT exam questions under intense time pressure. Using these top tips will set you on course for success despite the difficulty of the exam. 

1. Learn the Format of the Exam

Your first port of call when preparing for the HPAT is making sure you understand which competencies each section of the exam is aiming to test. The best place to start is our other HPAT blogs or the official HPAT website. The three sections with their weightings in the final HPAT scores are:

• Logical Reasoning (40%)
• Emotional Reasoning (40%)
• Non-Verbal Reasoning (20%)

Once you understand the types of questions that come up in each section, and what skills you need to practice, you will be able to prepare effectively for each one. You will likely find you are stronger in one or two sections rather than equally talented at all three.

HPAT 1-1 Tutoring

Improve your HPAT Score with a 1-1 Tutor

Join now5* Rated

2. Perfect Your Timing Early 

The extremely strict time constraints for the HPAT exam are one of the issues that students frequently encounter. For instance, the stimulus tends to take time to read, and having enough time to consider the options and deduce the correct answer is a challenge. Therefore, it is important to start early on with time management. It takes more than just knowing the right answers to the questions to achieve a high score. You must be able to respond to them immediately. 

The HPAT exam structure is different from the majority of school examinations you have likely taken thus far in that you are unlikely to finish all of the questions within the allotted time. At first, it may be difficult to understand this. It’s actually more advantageous to not review your work and to make calculated, time-saving assumptions throughout your exam.  Many students often wonder how long the HPAT exam is and what the sections are. 

Below is a table with the number of questions in each section and the time allocation taken from the official HPAT website linked above: 

This works out to about ninety seconds per question in the first two sections and slightly under eighty seconds in section three. 

Candidates rarely struggle with timing in section two, but unfortunately the sections are timed separately meaning time gained in section two means little for the highly pressurised sections one and three. 

A good rule of thumb is to try to complete 5 questions every 7 minutes. You can also experiment with strategies such as completing all the longer multi-part questions first, instead of following the exam in procedural order.

3. Study Each Section Independently

Making sure you have adequately prepared for each and every component of the UCAT is essential for proper preparation and, ultimately, for a strong performance. Finding out which skills are examined in each section is the first step, after which you should structure your study plan to focus on these talents. 

As you revise, you’ll see that your approach to the three sections will vary significantly. 

Questions in section one of the HPAT test your comprehension, capacity to draw logical inferences, ability to recognize important facts, analyse information, spot omitted/supplementary information, and ability to formulate and evaluate potential hypotheses. 

Section two of the HPAT aims to evaluate your comprehension of interpersonal interactions. You are given a dialogue or chapter to read. Questions centre on the emotions that characters may be experiencing, the reasons behind their actions, or their voice tone.

Your spatial reasoning and nonverbal reasoning abilities will be put to the test in section three.  In order to determine the solution to questions, you must identify logical patterns within the figures. Although many students initially find this area to be quite challenging, it is the one that is the quickest to improve.

4. Use the Official ACER HPAT Practice Tests 

Your HPAT preparation should include plenty of HPAT practice tests. These will give you the most accurate simulation of the actual test and enable you to realistically put all of your preparation to use. 

The official HPAT website is one of the best places to find HPAT mock questions. This will allow you to practise questions in the same style as the ones that will appear on the real exam.  You can opt in to purchasing the exams while registering for your HPAT exam. You will have access to the practice exam material for a year after purchasing them, so you could potentially purchase them in February the year before the exam takes place. 

There are very few HPAT books for sale so your main port of call for HPAT resources will be online. 

Unfortunately there are no HPAT past papers. The best way to prepare is through using the ACER practice papers. 

You could even take a full HPAT mock exam with one of our experts if you want to take your HPAT preparation to the next level. This can be especially beneficial because it will let you look into any questions you might have had trouble with, letting you grow and learn from them.

Students often wonder what the best HPAT preparation course is, however working with a tutor will provide you with a far more personalised and effective experience than any preparation course.

5. Start Early and Go Slow at the Start

HPAT preparation, like preparation for most aptitude exams cannot be crammed into the week before the test date.  It’s a marathon not a sprint and it’s best to start as early as you can.  If you are studying for your final school exams it can be difficult to manage your time without the additional burden of an aptitude test such as the HPAT. Yet if you are aiming for Medicine it is best to get to grips with the material on the exam as soon as possible.

Most candidates start their preparation in September/October and at this stage it’s important not to take on too much too quickly. Build up the amount of time you spend studying slowly and you’ll find your performance in practice material gets progressively better. If you try to practise very intensely early on you will find your motivation dips and you could possibly run out of practice material to work with.

6. Practice with Friends 

One of the best ways to stay motivated for the HPAT is to study with a group or with a friend. Generally most people have varying strengths with the exam and studying with other people means you can teach and learn from one another.  You might find it difficult to include time for HPAT preparation on a regular basis with the backdrop of preparing for other exams, but having someone to be accountable to will make it much harder to skip. 

Your HPAT score is based on your performance against the other candidates, and having someone to compare notes with regarding the difficulty of the questions will give you a better idea of where your performance might land you in reference to the rest of the cohort.

7. Monitor your Performance 

Monitoring your progress is one of the most efficient ways you can optimise your HPAT performance. If you find out early on you are naturally adept with one section, it is best to spend time trying to improve in the others instead of focusing on what you find easiest.  It’s vital not to compare yourself to others in a self-deprecating way.  Most students find that their confidence in their HPAT abilities only starts to build at the end of their preparation near the exam. There is no point in being hard on yourself early on when you struggle, as the questions are designed to catch you out. With enough preparation and repeated exposure to the styles of questions that are on the HPAT, you will see your skills improve dramatically over time.