By now you should already know that all Philippine med schools require their students to take the NMAT. But just as a DISCLAIMER: This isn’t a guide on how to get a high score because quite frankly, I don’t remember much about my study strategy. This is a more of a recollection of my own personal experience.

I read so much about people going to review centers and studying for months. Personally, I didn’t enroll in any and just used the reviewer books that you buy at National Bookstore. I went through each of the small booklets once and did the practice test, but that’s about it. On the other hand, I know of some people who literally studied the night before and did well. But you know, that’s their thing – you have to know what’s your thing. Pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses and work from there.

Since this is an international med student targeted blog, let me just compare the NMAT to the MCAT really briefly.

The NMAT is completely different in that the first part of the exam actually deals with your “mental abilities,” so to say. This part encompassed basic reading comprehension & mathematics, as well as weird things like predicting the next pattern and finding hidden images (totally weird, huh). It was pretty fun, but also quite mind-boggling. The second part dealt with the actual science subjects: Biology, Physics, Social Sciences, and Chemistry. If you did well in undergrad, this part is going to be a breeze.

The MCAT on the other hand is something people literally HAVE TO set aside 3 months of their life just to study. I don’t know very much about the MCAT since I didn’t take it, but I know for sure that it’s 5x more difficult (if not more) than the NMAT, just based on the amount of time people put into it.

Another thing worth noting is that the NMAT is scored on a percentile basis whereas the MCAT uses raw scores, which are converted to a scaled score. Basically, the NMAT is not just about how well you did, but about how well you did in comparison to everyone else that took the test that test day.

It’s worth taking a look at the top three schools you want to apply to before anything, because the NMAT cut off scores vary. From what I can recall, schools such as Ateneo and St. Luke’s require a +90th percentile. But for other schools, such as mine (OLFU), they didn’t really have a strict cut off. In fact, some people didn’t even take their NMAT until midway through our first year.

My original plan was to apply to UST, St. Luke’s, and DLSU, but ultimately decided that OLFU was the best choice. As an incoming second year, I can say with confidence that Fatima was the best choice coming from an international student standpoint – I’ll elaborate more later. Cheers!