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Do MDCAT Questions Repeat? A Data Study
We measured it. Across 377 real MDCAT past papers (40,659 questions, 2000–2025), 493 questions have a correct answer that recurs across 2 or more different exam years — ranked here by topic so you know exactly where repetition concentrates.
Data study · updated July 2026 · CC-BY-4.0 · methodology below
- past papers analysed
- 377
- questions in corpus
- 40,659
- exam years covered
- 2000–2025
- same-answer repeats (2+ years)
- 493
- high-yield topics ranked
- 37
past papers analysed
questions in corpus
exam years covered
same-answer repeats (2+ years)
high-yield topics ranked
Key findings
- Repetition is real but selective. 493 same-answer questions recur across 2+ exam years within 37 high-yield topics. Strict verbatim-answer repetition is a conservative floor; concept-level overlap between papers is much higher.
- Most repeats appear twice; a few run deep. 444 questions recur across exactly 2 exam years, 48 across 3, and 1 across 4+. The single deepest repeater recurs across 5 different years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015).
- Biology and Physics lead. The most-repeated topic is Coordination and Control (25 recurring-answer questions), followed by Magnetism and Electromagnetic Induction (24) and Forces and Motion (22).
- High-yield beats broad review. Repetition clusters into a handful of topics, so drilling the leaderboard below is a higher-ROI use of revision time than covering the syllabus evenly.
How deep does repetition go?
Distribution of the 493 recurring-answer questions by the number of distinct exam years each one appears in.
| Recurs across | Questions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Exactly 2 exam years | 444 | 90.1% |
| 3 exam years | 48 | 9.7% |
| 4 or more exam years | 1 | 0.2% |
Repetition by subject
Recurring-answer questions and the share of each subject’s tracked question bank they represent. “Share” reflects strict same-answer recurrence, so it reads low by design — the value is in where repeats concentrate.
| Subject | Topics tracked | Questions in bank | Recurring answers | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biology | 15 | 8,453 | 215 | 2.5% |
| Physics | 10 | 4,837 | 149 | 3.1% |
| Chemistry | 10 | 4,012 | 101 | 2.5% |
| Logical Reasoning | 1 | 547 | 17 | 3.1% |
| English | 1 | 363 | 11 | 3.0% |
Most-repeated MDCAT topics (37 topics ranked)
Every tracked high-yield topic, ranked by the number of same-answer questions that recur across 2+ exam years. Tap a topic to open its full, drillable question set with verified answers, explanations and the exact years each recurred.
Source: Premeth analysis of 377 real MDCAT past papers (40,659 core-subject questions, 2000–2025, across UHS Punjab, Sindh, ETEA, Federal and Balochistan boards), July 2026. A question counts as repeated only when the identical correct answer recurs across 2+ distinct exam years. Topic bank sizes count all hosted questions in that topic, not only repeats.
Methodology
We analysed 377 real MDCAT past papers hosted on Premeth — 40,659 core-subject questions spanning exam years 2000–2025 across the UHS Punjab, Sindh (DUHS), ETEA (KPK), Federal (SZABMU) and Balochistan (BUMHS) boards.
A question is classified as repeated only when the identical correct answer appears in two or more distinct exam years. This is deliberately strict: it counts genuine cross-year recurrence, not merely two questions on a similar topic. Because the rule is verbatim-answer based, the resulting rates are a conservative floor — looser concept-level overlap between papers is considerably higher.
Recurring questions are then grouped into their syllabus topic. Only topics with a meaningful cluster of recurring questions (that also appear across multiple exam years) are tracked, giving the 37-topic leaderboard above. Catch-all / unclassified buckets are excluded. Every figure on this page is computed directly from the dataset at build time.
Limitations: figures reflect the papers Premeth currently hosts, not every MDCAT paper ever set; board coverage is uneven across years; and strict same-answer matching under-counts paraphrased or reworded repeats. Treat this as a floor on repetition and a map of where it concentrates — not a prediction of any specific 2026 question.
Turn this into a study plan
The data says the same topics keep coming back. Drill them, in order, with the free question sets this study is measured from.
Cite this study
Premeth, “Do MDCAT Questions Repeat? A Data Study,” premeth.com/stats/mdcat-repeats, 2026. Published under CC-BY-4.0. Attribute as “Premeth (premeth.com)” when citing.
Companion machine-readable export: /llms-full.txt.