UPCAT – The UP Diliman Connection

Last weekend about 70,000 high school students took the University of the Philippines College Admission Test or what is popularly known as the UPCAT. The UPCAT is the toughest college entrance examination in the country. Aside from the grueling subtests on language proficiency, mathematics, science and reading comprehension, the UP, as the premier state university, is just very selective in terms of admitting students. Statistics from the Office of Admissions shows that out of 70,000 hopeful examinees, only about a tenth is admitted into the different campuses of the University. UP Diliman, the flagship campus, only admits 3,000 students each year. These figures alone would terrify an applicant.

When I took the UPCAT in 2004, I was lucky to be one of those who received that elusive admission notice from the Office of Admissions. Before taking the exam however, I was not that confident to pass it because I had only about some months to review for it. I applied during the summer of 2004. My sister accompanied me to the Office of Admissions because I was not familiar with the UP Campus then.

The UPCAT is usually administered on the first week of August, a month known for heavy rains and strong typhoons. It was raining when I took the UPCAT at Malcolm Hall of the UP College of Law. There were about 200 fellow examinees in the room chilling like me because of the unmoderated air conditioned room. I did not know that the room is air conditioned because I thought all rooms in UP are like the ones in public high schools.

The first part of the exam was language proficiency. It was an easy part. I did not feel any pressure answering all the items in this subtest because they were relatively easy questions. The next part is Science. This was a challenging part of the UPCAT. Most questions came from chemistry, an area in Science I am not good at. However, there were questions from Physics and Biology that were easy to answer. Some say that a regular question in the Science part that comes up in the UPCAT is about the food chain. Very vivid in my memory, a food chain diagram was there asking which part of the food chain suffers the most when one group acting as primary consumers will peter out.

The last two subtests, Mathematics and Reading Comprehension, were not easy to answer as well. However, the math part was relatively easy. It consisted of basic trigonometry questions and algebra. Surprisingly, there was one question from Geometry. The Reading Comprehension was also a challenging part of the UPCAT. You should know how to read between the lines and deduce the answer from premises stated in the selection. Some parts of this subtest were in Filipino. There was also a comic strip about social drinking.

After the exam I was emotionally and intellectually drained. I was exhausted. The exam started at seven in the morning and it ended five hours later. I was also hungry as a wolf after the exam because I forgot to eat my cookies during the exam. After we were dismissed, I went straight to the jeepney station only to find out that all jeepneys headed to Philcoa were all jam-packed with fellow examinees and their companions. I waited for an hour under the waiting shed across the UP School of Economics, the college of my would-be college sweetheart.

After some months the results were out. I was notified by my sister who is based in Makati about the positive result. I was in the province during that time because a cousin of mine died of heart attack. I was baffled with the result because the exam was really really difficult. According to a survey conducted among UP Diliman students, 7 out of 10 UPian consider hearing the good news one of their most unforgettable moments in life. I am one of those seven UPians.

Tags: University of the Philippines College Admission Test, UP, UPCAT, UPCAT Review, UPCAT Tips