FREE UPCAT USTET Reviewers

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FREE UPCAT REVIEW MATERIAL -- Permutation, Combinations and Probabilities

Happy new year, everyone! This is to a wonderful year ahead!

Let me do the traditional "pasalta" and give out FREE but useful stuff.

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This is one of my favorite topics to teach because the mathematical concepts are so easy to understand you can almost hold them with your hands.

It looks daunting on paper but we explain it a very tangible way during our UPCAT reviews. But, don't let your math melodrama start, if it becomes too difficult or scary, read UPCAT Review -- Dealing with Math

Example:

In how many ways can the first, second and third prize winners be chosen from 5 contestants in an essay writing contest? 

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Explanation: 

How many options do you have in picking the 1st prize winner out of five? You may choose writer A, B, C, D or E so 5.

How many options do you have in picking the 2nd prize winner out of five? Note that in a contest, each participant only has one entry so the 1st prize winner CANNOT be the 2nd prize winner at the same time. So you have 4 options for the 2nd prize winner.

How many options do you have in picking the third prize winner out of five? As the 1st and 2nd prize winners cannot be the 3rd prize winner, you have 3 options for the 3rd prize winner.

According to the fundamental counting principle, you just multiple the number of options per pick and you have the total number of ways. 
Number of ways = (# of options for pick 1) x (# of options for pick 2) x (# of options for pick 3) and so on...
=5x4x3
=60 

Try the pre-test then read the chapter and finally, do the post-test and see how well you improve. In our UPCAT review, it is not a problem getting zero in the pre-test but it is a problem if you still get less than half after 4 hours of teaching. 

I will post the answers to the pre-test and post-test after you guys leave comments. Leave your questions in the comments, too! If I receive no comments, the answers will not be revealed. If there are typos, please let me know. The attachment is a draft.

The full review material is downloadable here (and yes, feel free to pass around FB or via email, just don't alter the contents please):

UPCAT Review Math 6of16.pdf

For more reviewers, visit MORE FREE UPCAT REVIEWERS . For more study tips on Statistics and Probabilities, go MORE STATISTICS AND PROBABILITIES EXAMPLES.

UPCAT Review -- Dealing with Math

In my four years of teaching Math for our UPCAT Review and in my entire existence as a student (yes, I still consider myself a student at 31), most of my students expect a nightmare going through the Math part of the UPCAT. Last time I checked, they still tend to make it the first part of the exam. As a smart student, you should remind yourself that this is a game. A torturous game that you just need to put up with. They are trying to break you down.

As most students dread the Math portion of the UPCAT, the point of putting the Math part first is to make test takers curl up into a ball and start weeping like a five year old. So don’t. You are bigger than that. Plus, I’ve made it my new year’s resolution to give free reviews online by posting Math exercises before our UPCAT Review this summer starts. Yey freebies! (Note: Short Math exercises for UPCAT will be posted on this blog starting next week until our website gets constructed this January.)

Math is believed to have the largest standard deviation of all the four parts of the UPCAT (Math, Reading Comprehension, Language Proficiency and my personal nightmare, Science — yes, I am human and I have my own personal demons to deal with) – thus, our reviews spend almost half of the review teaching Math, not because it takes about half the score but it tends to weaken the test taker’s confidence, which is what I personally think accounts for the largest proportion of why students fail.

So how do we, at Excel Tutorials and Review Center, deal with Math for our UPCAT Review? Here are our five guiding principles:

1.      First, we deal with the emotional aspect of Math. In Batangas City and Lipa City, our strategy last year was to show students  how big their improvements are by doing pre and post tests. It is amazing to see students’ eyes light up after being almost zero in a non-multiple choice exam to getting 60-80% after an hour of lecture. This gives them hope and determination that if they put in the work, they will keep improving.

2.      We always remember that some of the students are scarred by Math. After years of having not-so-good, ehem, bad teachers, most of my UPCAT Reviewees are scared of Math. Some don’t even try. So last year, we instituted an addition small group tutorial for our students who are struggling with Math. The result of our little experiment was very encouraging – about half got over their fear of Math after a week of private tutoring after the review session. 

3.      Teach in sections so as not to overwhelm the students. At Excel Tutorials, our book has 16 chapters of Math and we only teach one to two sections per session depending on the level of difficulty. 

4.      Divide and conquer – separate the fearful from the confident. How about those that you can’t seem to identify between fearful and confident? Put them in the confident pile. I am super proud of one particular student that I had last year, Ivy Hernandez, who passed the UPCAT with a slot in UP Diliman to take Political Science. She was one of those who kept asking me if Math was really necessary. Of course, my answer was it is necessary as it will be a quarter of the result. The 15 year-old girl was very doubtful but when I kept throwing Math questions her way, she gets most of them right, and I kept reminding her that she keeps worrying when she’s scoring consistently above the class average, she started being confident. The lesson is: reward students who do the work but keeps worrying with confidence-boosters and they will succeed. 

5.      Cater to the confident as you would cater to the fearful. As an UPCAT Review teacher, it is easy to fall into the trap of helping those who are fearful first and forget about the needs of those who you are sure to pass. There would always be students that you’d bet your annual salary on that they will pass like Khimi Nopre, Novaya Dolor, Quio Saludo and Kimberly Litargo, my students from Batangas City and Lipa City. It is a struggle to remind myself that they need my help, too. So I had an alarm one day that they top 20% of each class will get a 30-minute discussion with me after class. I ended up giving them additional materials and my personal number so they can ring me when something pressing avoids them from getting a good night’s sleep. Next year, we will have separate classes for struggling and advanced students. It is hard for a teacher to teach when the advanced are bored but those struggling can barely keep up with the pace.

As this is my first entry after the 2014 UPCAT results came out,  I’d like to take the chance to thank the wonderful parents who supported their kids during the review, our students for doing the work and for all my co-teachers for doing all they can for our students. We did better than last year -- our passing rate is 33% (about double the national passing of 17%, apologies at the time the picture was made, we had an incomplete list of passers.) Thanks to all of you, we have expanded to 9 confirmed centers this coming year and I can’t be more excited. I will see all of you again for our 2014 Summer UPCAT Review in Manila, Batangas, Antipolo,  Lingayen, Bulacan (Pulilan and Baliuag),  Lipa, Naga, Iloilo and Dagupan.

 Here is our partial list of passers:

To receive more tips, the latest updates on our UPCAT Review and this blog, like our page, UPCAT Review Page.

Pictures taken from Mathfail and Mathjokes. 
For more reviewers, visit MORE FREE UPCAT REVIEWERS . For more study tips on Statistics and Probabilities, go MORE STATISTICS AND PROBABILITIES EXAMPLES.