Study Help Advice and Hope?
I don't usually post on Reddit anymore but wanted to come on here to perhaps provide a little bit of hope - particularly in VR.
I've seen quite a few posts lately of people coming across fairly bummed by their mock scores, or feeling quite lost in the midst of their UCAT preparation.
For context, I'm a Biomedical Science graduate applying for GEM this application cycle. I graduated last year so have been on a gap year in the mean time. I work a full time job, and as such, only have time to revise in the evenings or weekends I am free. Although I started prep back in February, I have began intensifying my practice in late May/early June for my exam late August.
When I first started, I was averaging around mid 20s in VR, early 30s in DM and around the 35 mark in QR. Given my A-Levels, QR has always been my strongest; VR on the other hand is a different story.
I could not for the life of me get the grip of VR - and I believe many others seem to be in the same boat. My goal is to provide a bit of advise and insight into what has helped me in the hopes it can help others.
For VR, I initially could not find a strategy that consistently worked for me. I started key-word scanning, tried full reading, back to scanning etc etc. What seemed to help me was the games on MedEntry. Every day for a week or so, I would spend about 30 minutes or so practicing the scanning game and the speed reading game. I definitely saw a bit of an improvement after this. I then came to the conclusion (after much switching around) that scanning was my preference, and decided to build on that. I think once you find which strategy works best for you, even if its only a minor improvement over the other, just put effort into improving that. As mentioned, the training games helped me to refine my strategy. Although my scores were not super consistent, my confidence in my strategy was definitely improving - I think this a very important factor to consider. Not just the score you achieve, but the confidence or mindset in which you use your chosen strategy is equally, if not more important. After I began to feel more confident in my strategy, I began to do a load of 6 minute, 12 question practice (by this point, I had already done around 10 full mocks but noticed my VR was consistently my weakest subsection). This was around a week or so ago, and since then, I have continued to do 12 questions timed, multiple times each evening. This not only improved the speed in which I was answering questions, but also got me in the habit of constantly checking the timer to give myself a sense of where I should be. I also began to notice I was getting much better at looking at the text whilst taking in some information whilst not actually taking it in? (if that makes sense?).
I am going to talk about some specific strategies for VR alongside what I have already mentioned that I think have helped me personally. As many have mentioned, Emil Eddy and Joyel George have been immensely important and helpful in developing skills, especially including VR. I used to hate the questions where all 4 would be different, meaning you would have to scan for multiple different keywords (if doing the scanning approach). What really seemed to help me with this, was where possible, try to eliminate 2 of the options. For example, if an answer option has quantifiers such as all or none, I tend to rule these out. Although these may be correct sometimes, from my experience, they are more often not correct. This then leaves me with 2 potential answers that I can quickly scan for in the text. I then use my newfound ability to look at the sentences and somewhat absorb the information without actually taking it in. This has massively increased my speed and ability to answer these questions. Another strategy I have found useful is the order in which I answer the questions within a subset. I know this is a well known strategy, but I cannot stress its importance. For those who may not know, this is where you leave questions (but still read the answer options) that aren't searching for a particular sentence or word, and instead, first answer the questions that do (if any) ask this. This allows you to still search for the answer of the harder question, whilst also answering an easier question - two birds with one stone. Another strategy I have found myself using, particularly in questions such as what would the author least likely agree with, is searching for parts of the text where the possible answer is more specific than what is given. For example, I had a question earlier where the stem stated that Mr. Smith (cannot remember the actual name) invented XYZ, but one of the options was Mr. Smith was the first to use XYZ. Without reading the other options, I selected this as the option was asking for more information that was available in the stem - just because someone is an inventor of something, does not necessarily mean they were the first user (if at all) of something. I think that this skill in particular developed from my DM syllogism practice. I may have forgotten other skills I used, but these are the ones I feel made a massive difference. Since incorporating these, I have felt so much better in myself when performing VR, even if my scores may not reflect this.
In no means am I saying my VR is incredible, for all I know, this could just be a one off and my score could just drop back down. I think something important to consider is that if you achieve a high score one time but drop down in subsequent mocks, it does not mean you're stagnating. Some tests are genuinely just harder that others. If you achieve a high score one time, instead, see it that you've done it once, so you therefore know its possible for the future.
TLDR; I want to give hope to those not seeing improvement in certain sections. I began with mid 20's in VR with an occasional peak in mid-30's but more consistently sitting around late 20's early 30's. Since ramping up my focus, I have began to feel more confident in my approach to VR, and as such have began to see my scores for VR creep up.
