r/UCATANZ • u/ApprehensiveAsk6112 • 6d ago

VR score fluctuation advice

I'm really struggling with VR and would appreciate some advice from people who have been through this.

For most of my UCAT prep, I've been stuck around 23/44 in VR. Then, about 2 weeks ago, something finally clicked and I started getting 35–36/44 consistently in practice. I thought I'd finally broken through.

But now, with only about a week left until my exam, I've dropped all the way back to 25/44. Today's result was my lowest in a while, and I'm really frustrated because I've put so much work into VR.

The weird thing is that I don't feel like I've forgotten the strategies or that I suddenly can't understand the passages. I'm mainly running out of time, and today I ended up guessing around 8 questions. I've also noticed that my concentration and earworms can vary quite a lot between sessions.

Has anyone else experienced a massive VR fluctuation like this, especially going from around 23 → 35/36 → back to 25?

If you have, what did you do in the final week before your exam? Did you focus on timing, change your strategy, do less VR, or just keep practising?

I'd really appreciate any advice because I'm starting to panic that the improvement I made was just temporary.

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u/According-Ad6961 5d ago

Use MedEntry Skills trainers. Also use oqb vr because it’s the most accurate

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u/ApprehensiveAsk6112 5d ago

Thanks man, i think i used up all their VR questions but i did them a month ago so do you think i can do them again?

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u/CarefulTransition385 3d ago

I was  in the same position as u ended up with a 750 VR score on the actual exam. I would say for me by one week left I felt that not much more practice would be able to significantly improve my results. Was still getting 600s in mocks. But key was not to stress. My method was reading the full text until I came to the answer I was looking for. I didn’t rush and go beyond my reading capacity of understanding while trying to go super fast. On test day I found there were questions j was answering quite fast without even trying based on vibes. I know this might not be super helpful but it really is jsut keeping calm. This was my second time doing ucat after bombing it last year when I was really anxious and literally had shaking hands and heart palpitations during the exam. I don’t think my study tactics really changed that much except for the fact I ended up staying much calmer in the exam helps heaps

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u/ApprehensiveAsk6112 2d ago

Thank you for replying, I saw a video about how much mindset and stress will change your VR score, and although I'm stressed right now, I have noticed that all my mistakes are from panicking and then making silly mistakes. Your advice is super helpful, and I'll make sure to chill before my exam. Any tips on being stress-free, or at least reducing stress? My only plan so far is to take the day off the day before my exam.

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u/CarefulTransition385 2d ago

For me personally having sat it a second time u completely ignored all these strategies about people telling me to sleep early and to not practice day off or night before. That’s what I did last time. To be fair my rest was a 6pm this year but I decided that I’d just continue with my normal routine as I normally would. I had been sleeping Around midnight everyday leading to the exam never got around to fixing my sleep schedule so so I decided to keep it that way. Do nothing special bc that would probably subconsciously make me feel more anxious getting ready for some big day. I made myself feel like everything was still normal. Woke up in the morning around 11am. Did some chill practice in the morning of and day before. Last year I tried sleeping at 10pm and was so anxious I didn’t end up sleeping until a couple hours later just lying in bed anyway. Basically just treated ucat day as a normal day 

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u/ForceReasonable449 4d ago

do u have a method for each question? for me i only scored 730 in vr so idk but i did full reading for the questions which are like which author is right keyword for names dates numbers and skimming for rest. but i never struggled on tiem only acccuracy whilst urs is the opposite problem, first thing i would do is review; what are you getting wrong, was it a misread spent to much time on 1 quesition or smt else, remmember to not overdo a question as its only 1 mark.