Plovdiv Biology Entrance Exam: the 6 Task Types, the Syllabus and Practice

Twenty questions, each with a single correct answer; the sample test gives four options, a to d, and a point for each question. They range over all 51 topics, so this task is where broad, even revision pays.

Worked example. Which vessels carry blood away from the heart? a) veins b) arteries c) capillaries d) lymphatic vessels. Answer b: arteries are defined by direction (away from the heart), not by oxygen, which is why the pulmonary arteries carry deoxygenated blood. A good habit for this task: rule out what you know is wrong before you choose.

Twenty statements, exactly ten of them correct. The trap is that a false statement is usually one word away from a true one: 'lysosomes have a double membrane', 'glucagon comes from the beta cells'.

Worked example. Mark the correct ones: (1) Mitochondria have their own DNA. (2) The cerebellum controls breathing. (3) Skeletal muscle is voluntary. (4) Red blood cells keep their nucleus. Correct: 1 and 3. Statement 2 belongs to the medulla oblongata, and 4 is false in humans. Read every word: the change that makes a statement false is often a number, a direction or a cell type.

Six definitions, and a list of terms with more terms than you need (twelve in the sample), so you cannot get the last ones by elimination. One point per correct match.

Worked example. 'The membrane that covers the lungs': choose from peritoneum, pleura, pericardium, meninges. Answer: pleura. Learn the paired terms the programme invites confusion between: arteries and veins, ADH and aldosterone, tendon and ligament, rods and cones.

A diagram from anatomy, molecular biology or cell biology with numbered parts, labelled from a list of options (twelve options for six parts in the sample), followed, the programme says, by questions on the diagram. The sample marks the labels, one point each.

Worked example. A diagram of the heart with six numbers: the left ventricle is the chamber with the thickest wall at the lower right of the drawing (the heart's left is your right); the aorta arches up from it; the pulmonary trunk leaves the right ventricle in front. Practise by drawing the structures yourself: the cell and its organelles, the heart, the nephron, the eye and the ear, the digestive tract.

Two processes, molecules or structures compared feature by feature; the sample has four rows and two columns, a point per cell. One wrong cell costs one point, not the row.

Worked example. DNA and RNA: sugar (deoxyribose / ribose); bases (A, T, G, C / A, U, G, C); strands (two / usually one); where found (mainly the nucleus / nucleus and cytoplasm). Pairs worth having ready: mitosis and meiosis, DNA and RNA, somatic cells and gametes, arteries and veins, sympathetic and parasympathetic, prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.

A short text with wrong words to find and replace, then questions on the text. The programme says 4 words; the Admission Guide's sample has 5 errors and a list of 10 possible replacements, 2 points each. Expect a list of replacements to choose from.

Worked example. 'Urine passes from the kidney to the bladder through the urethra.' Wrong word: urethra; replacement: ureter. Read the text once for sense, then sentence by sentence for single words that break a fact you know.

Each task carries a set number of points, and the total converts to a grade from 2.00 (poor) to 6.00 (excellent); 3.00 is the minimum pass. MU-Plovdiv does not publish how points convert to grades, so no one outside the university can turn a raw score into an exact grade.

The grade is tripled in the competition score (3 × Biology + 3 × Chemistry + English, out of 42), and a Biology grade below 3.00 keeps you out of the ranking whatever your other results.

MU-Plovdiv publishes a free book of Biology questions on its admission page: 89 pages in six sections that match the six task types, with the right answers in bold and no explanations. The authors say they may revise it, so download the current version.

Use it after you have learned a topic, not instead of learning it: answer a section without looking at the bold answers, then check, and for every miss find the reason in your textbook. That is the part the book leaves to you, and the part our practice paper's explanations cover.