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SUBSET OVERVIEW KEY TIPS FOR MASTERING THIS SECTION

•11 passages
•4 questions/passage
•44 questions
•21 mins
•28 secs/question
SUBSET PURPOSE
To test your ability to critically analyse
information and ability to draw
conclusions from written text. Being able
to understand complex information
quickly and relay that in a simple manner
to patients is vital in both Medicine and
Dentistry!
THE 2 TYPES OF VR QUESTIONS:
1. You are given a statement and asked
to determine whether it is “true”,
“false” or “can’t tell” based on the
information in the passage. For each
passage, you’ll be asked 4 questions.
2. The stem is an incomplete statement
or a question, followed by 4 options –
you will pick the most suitable
option. This is known as a “single best
answer” set and for every passage
you’ll have 4 of these statements to
go through.
The second type of question is generally
thought to be harder as takes longer and
time is of the essence with VR, a good
portion of the VR is made up of these
types of questions so make sure you don’t
put off practicing them.
• Practice speed reading
• Don’t read the passage first - read the question
stem first!
• Learn to identify keywords
• Make a mental note of the subject of each
paragraph when skimming
• Ignore any prior knowledge on the topic
• Be aware of mild/extreme words;
qualifiers/absolutes
APPROACH FOR VR QUESTION TYPE 1:
1) Read the question stem first and find keywords.
2) Scan the text looking for the keywords and read
the relevant few sentences
3) Consider skimming over the adjacent sentences
to those containing the keywords
4) Look out for any ”qualifiers” or “mild/extreme”
phrases
5) Select answer
Example: For this example please refer to Q17 of
the UCAT’s VR Practice Subset
On reading the question stem the keywords you
may choose could be: ”law banning drinking”,
“1961”, Sundays.
You’d then skim the text looking out for any of those
words, make sure you’re not reading the whole text
properly as that will take too long, instead look for
the words then read the sentences around it.
These words come up often, but you need to
quickly decide in which context it’s relevant. For
example, the first occurrence of the word “Sunday”
is not relevant because that’s making reference to a
different year to what the question is asking of you.

HOW TO IDENTIFY KEYWORDS

Unique words: tends to be nouns, dates, the main “subject” of the sentence. A keyword shouldn’t be
the generic topic of the passage as that’ll appear too often. Instead you could try picking a group of
words such as the “law banning drinking” above and try and see if there’re any
combinations of these words you can see at a glance of the text.

You can also look for easy to spot words and use them as keywords.
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Easy to spot keywords would include dates, capitalised words (e.g. abbreviations), words beginning
with a capital letter (places, names of people) – this can help because you’ll be able to find these
faster and hence skim the passage faster.
One thing to note with dates is they can be written in different formats so you need to consider the
alternative ways a time period can be written if you do decide to use a date as a keyword e.g. 1961
from the earlier example could have also been mentioned as the ”late 1900s” or “the 20th century”.
Extra tip: If you feel like you’ve got the answer
or you get an indication that the statement is true
for example, just move on – don’t finish reading
the passage, this wastes time!
FALSE vs CAN’T TELL
It’s common for you to be trying to decide
between these two answer options. It has to
actually be negated in the passage to be “false”
and ”can’t tell” can mean it’s not mentioned at all
or is made very vague. Try not to deliberate about
this too much because it wastes time – just go
with your gut!
DIFFERNT FORMS OF VR TYPE 2 QUESTIONS:
Though these question types are often regarded
slightly harder, there is a limited range of
questions you can be asked which means you can
approach it with more tact. All the stems tend to
fall in one of the below categories:
1. Keyword containing questions e.g. Using the
information in the passage, which of the
following are reasons against
cryopreservation?
2. Which of the following is most likely to be
true?
3. Which of the following is most likely to be
false
4. Which of the following is unlikely to be true?
5. Which of the following is not true?
6. Which of the following can be deduced from
the passage?
Learning to quickly identify which stem the
category falls in will help you to skim the passage
with more purpose.
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IDENTIFY THE STEM CATEGORY
An easy way to identify what type of stem
you’re working with is by categorising it
under the headings of “true”, ”false”, “can’t
tell” or “conclusion”.
• True = stem 2
• False = stem 3, 4, 5
• Can’t tell = 4
• Conclusion = 6
After doing this you can then go through
each of the answer options and see which
one matches with being true or false as the
stem requires accordingly.
APPROACH FOR VR QUESTION TYPE 2:
1) Read the question stem first and identify
the stem category
2) Read each of the answer options and
pick keywords from them
3) Skim the text looking for the keywords
4) Decide whether the statement is true,
false, can’t tell or an appropriate
conclusion based on what’s in the
passage
5) You have to do this for each of the
answer options so this is what makes
Type 2 VR questions very time
consuming – you have to make sure
you’re skimming very quickly and
ruthlessly eliminating options.
6) If you find an answer option which
seems to be correct, you still need to
quickly skim over the other options
because for this category you’re looking
to choose the most suitable answer.
Option A may be correct, but option D
may be more right.
7) If you’ve tried going through 3 answer
options and had to eliminate them all,
select the remaining one as your answer
and move on – the fact that you
eliminated the 3 before means you
shouldn’t need to check the last one so
just move on, it’ll save time!
SPEED READING
This is key to this section, here are 3 ways you
can do that for each passage:
1. Use keywords to jump from one place in the
text to another – anchoring on keywords is a
good method as that will make sure you’re
able to understand the important parts of the
text.
2. Move the cursor across the screen and keep
up with it – “the pointer method” has been
proven to increase your ability to read faster.
If there are any sentences adjacent to your
keyword that you’re reading drag the mouse
along as that will help you to read faster and
save some seconds.
3. Take a step back – it’s a lot easier to skim text
if you physically move back and slightly
away from the screen
4. Block out part of the screen using your hands
– use your palms to block out a column of
text from the left and right side of the passage
giving yourself a narrower passage that you’ll
be able to skim through. This way you’ll be
able to retain comprehension as you go
through the text
5. Use online Speed Reading tests to practise
getting through a passage quicker – Reading
Soft is an example you can use
NEGATIVE QUESTIONS
It’s quite easy to make a mistake when answering
questions which require you to choose the
statement that ”contradicts” the passage or uses
the word “not”. You might spend a while going
through the passage looking for the relevant parts
but then forget the negative element of the
question.
A tip is to use scratchpad/whiteboard to make a
note when you’re on a negative question.
Alternatively, I used to cross my fingers when I
was on a negative question. Whatever reminder
you use, do it consistently through your practise
so the it can remind you that this question is
negative and you won’t make the mistake of
forgetting.
If you’re having to guess the answer to a negative
question, the answer option with
the most extreme language is
likely to be correct – so go for
that one!
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If you are really stuck on a question and
you’re going to go for a guess, this little trick
might help you score a point with your
guess:
MILD PHRASES TEND TO BE TRUE
Might, Could, Sometimes, One of…
EXTREME PHRASES TEND TO BE FALSE/CAN’T TELL
Will Always, Definitely, Every time, Biggest,
smallest…etc.
QUALIFIERS
These are words that make a statement less
bold meaning statements using these words
are less likely to be definitely true or false.
e.g.
• Most, many, numerous
• Some, a minority, a few
• Sometimes, commonly
• Rarely, infrequently
• Likely, possibly
• Unlikely
Notice how there’s a lack of certainty with
these words. A statement may say “the
student is likely to do well in the UCAT”.
However is asked whether the student will
do well in the UCAT your answer would be
Can’t Tell due to the use of the word likely.
Look out for this disparity between the
question stem and the passage text.
ABSOLUTES
Are words when used make a bold
statement:
• All
• None
• Always
• Never
• Impossible
• Definitely
Compare this with the list above – each line
corresponds to an equivalent
qualifier/absolute in the above list.
Looking out for absolutes being used in the
text can help clearly define something as
being true or false.