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:

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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.