IQ ™
Member
Hey,Hey, first thing I'd like to say is great job for how you've improved last year - really shows your determination and hard work. I hope your performance in VR doesn't demotivate you too much, because it sounds like you're a more than worthy candidate for medicine.
VR has notoriously been one of the most difficult sections in the UCAT, and for most candidates it will be their worst section. I feel, however, that you have spent most your preparation focussing on ways to improve your speed (as you've mentioned), which is fine of course as the exam is very time-pressured.
Given your situation, my advice may be this: I feel like there isn't any point moving onto methods improving speed unless you've mastered the fundamentals of the verbal reasoning test. What do I mean by this? Well, basically you should sort out your accuracy. Look through how to approach any T/F/C problem, and go through the basics of answering a reading comprehension problem. Make sure every question you answer - regardless of the time you are taking - is correct, and you know 100% the rationale behind answers. You mentioned that under the time pressure of the exam, you fail to process the question and stem properly. In this case, slow down - don't pressure yourself with time for the time being - and really hone in and process what each question asks you. Perhaps, once you've fixed your accuracy, ramping up the speed could limit the numbers of errors you make.
If that doesn't help, I tell people a lot to use the Flag button - it's very underused in VR in my opinion. Personally, I found T/F/C questions were the easiest to answer, and any reading comprehension about history were also generally not too difficult. So, I would do these questions first, then I begin to answer the rest, flagging any question my instant intuition tells me will take too long. This way, I was able to cut down on errors, and increase my speed.
I apologise if this post was a bit long haha, but I really hope this helps.
To be honest you are right that from the get-go I have focused on answering the section with time-pressure (even while doing untimed I try do it as quick as I can). I guess that's a by-product of the work I had put in for the other sections, where I was already familiar with the question types and solving them but needed to focus on doing it within a time constraint. I'll definitely start adopting a different approach to this section using your advice and some of the others in this thread in the hopes that I can get some form of consistency going.
Thank you so much for the help!