A MIR practice exam is worth an afternoon only if it copies the three things that make Spain's medical residency exam hard: its length (200 questions plus 10 reserve questions), its clock (four and a half hours in one sitting) and its marking (+3 for a right answer, −1 for a wrong one, 0 for a blank). A 50-question quiz with no timer tells you what you know. A full practice exam tells you what happens to that knowledge in the third hour, when the penalty starts deciding your net score. This guide explains what to demand from any online practice paper, whether it comes from the Myndaq MIR course or from other material, how to read the result, and how to turn each attempt into a concrete change to your plan before exam day.
The exam figures on this page come from the MIR call published in Spain's official gazette (BOE) and from the scoring rules of the annual orders, linked at the end - last verified 20 September 2026.
The MIR exam in brief
Before the method, the fixed points. Every call is convened by an order of the Ministry of Health published in the BOE, and the order sets these out afresh each cycle - the figures below are what has held steady across recent calls:
- A Saturday in late January - exam day, set by that cycle's order. Candidates are called and identity-checked from 13:00 (12:00 in the Canary Islands), and the exam starts from 14:00 (13:00 in the Canary Islands).
- 200 questions plus 10 reserve questions - four answer options each, with only one correct.
- Four and a half hours - the whole paper in a single sitting.
- A little over nine thousand places for Medicine, a figure that has risen from one call to the next.
- A ten-working-day application window in the early autumn, both days inclusive, with no late or extraordinary window. By the time a practice-exam plan matters, that window has usually closed, so this page assumes you have applied and are preparing for the paper itself.
- A fee of around €31, with exemptions for victims of terrorism, members of large families, people with a recognised disability of 33% or more, and unemployed applicants who meet the conditions in the order.
For the exact date, fee and place count of your own call, read that call's order - the MIR exam date, places and fee guide explains how to read it and how the working-day periods around it run.
The order also lists image booklets (cuadernillos de imágenes) among the official exam materials, so some questions are answered from images. For the wider picture of eligibility, results and post allocation, read the MIR Spain exam guide.
What a practice exam must have to count
Check five things before you give an afternoon to a practice paper:
- 210 questions, not 100. Fatigue in hours three and four is part of the exam. A short paper flatters you, because you never reach the stretch where most mistakes happen.
- A real four-and-a-half-hour clock that you cannot pause. If you can stop the timer, it is a study session, not an exam rehearsal. Four and a half hours for 210 questions works out at about 77 seconds per question, and that pace is learned only when the clock does not forgive.
- Official marking and an explicit net score. The result should show right, wrong and blank answers and the net figure (right answers minus wrong answers divided by 3), not only a percentage correct. Under +3/−1, two attempts with the same number of right answers can sit 20 net answers apart if one of them has 60 more wrong answers.
- Image questions. Because the real paper comes with an image booklet, a practice exam without images leaves out a skill that has to be trained on its own.
- An explanation for every question, including the ones you got right. A right answer reached by elimination and one reached by knowledge need different follow-up, and only a proper explanation makes you check which one it was.
Reading the result - net score, not right answers
The number that matters is the net score: right answers minus one third of wrong answers. Multiply it by three and you have the raw exam score, out of a maximum of 600 across the 200 scored questions. The MIR net score calculator, which is in Spanish, does this arithmetic from your right and wrong answers and explains the scaling that follows.
Read the result in parts:
- Total net score. This is your current level under real conditions. Compare it only with your own earlier attempts, not with figures quoted on forums, because every year's paper is different.
- Wrong answers. Each one costs a third of a net answer. A high count usually means you are answering questions where you could not narrow the options down, and the next section shows when that is worth it and when it is not.
- Blanks. Many blanks with few wrong answers points the other way: you are leaving questions where you had already ruled out one or two options, and the arithmetic was on your side.
- Net score by specialty. This is the figure that turns a practice exam into a plan. Two or three specialties well below your average usually explain most of the distance to your target.
- Score by stretch. If the platform allows it, compare your net score on questions 1-70, 71-140 and 141-210. A sharp drop in the last stretch is a stamina and time-management problem, not a knowledge problem.
When to answer and when to leave a blank
With +3 for a right answer and −1 for a wrong one, the arithmetic is short. In raw points per question:
- A pure guess among all four options has an expected value of 3 × 1/4 − 1 × 3/4 = 0. Guessing blind gains nothing on average and only adds risk.
- One option ruled out, three left: 3 × 1/3 − 1 × 2/3 = +1/3 of a point.
- Two options ruled out, two left: 3 × 1/2 − 1 × 1/2 = +1 point.
Put another way, the break-even hit rate is one in four: if you are right on more than a quarter of the doubtful questions you answer, answering adds points. So answering pays on average once you can genuinely rule out one option, and pays clearly once you are down to two.
The catch is the word genuinely, and a practice exam is where you test it. During the paper, mark every question where you were down to two options, then count afterwards how many of those you got right. Clearly more than half means both your elimination and your final pick are working. Around half means the elimination works but the final pick is a coin toss: still worth answering, and a signal to study the distinctions between those pairs. Well below half means you are often ruling out the right answer, which is a knowledge gap to close well before exam day rather than a reason to answer more boldly.
Net score and rank - what a practice exam cannot tell you
No practice exam can give you a reliable número de orden (your rank), and it is sensible to distrust one that promises to. The score that ranks candidates is not the raw score out of 600. Under the rules in this call's order, Orden SND/854/2026, the Ministry takes the arithmetic mean of the top 10% of raw exam scores for each degree, makes that mean worth 90 points, and multiplies every candidate's raw score by the resulting correction factor (90 divided by that mean). The academic record is scaled the same way, with the top-10% mean worth 10 points, and the two components together give the total used for the ranking. Candidates who do not reach the minimum exam score set in the order (a final exam score above zero) are listed as eliminated and are not ranked.
Because the correction factor depends on how the whole cohort performs that year, it is known only when results are published. What you can do is set your net score against earlier years as a rough guide, knowing that both the number of places and the spread of scores change from call to call.
Fitting practice exams into the months to January
From the close of applications in early autumn to exam day in late January there are roughly nineteen weeks. A split that works across that block:
- A baseline paper at the start of the block, sat without specific preparation, to record your net score by specialty and by stretch.
- Study blocks of three or four weeks by specialty group, working through questions from past papers, each closed with a full practice exam. The aim of each attempt is not the total but to check whether the specialties you worked on have moved and whether your wrong answers are falling.
- Weekly full papers in the last six or seven weeks, always started at the same afternoon time as the real exam (14:00 peninsular time), to settle your pacing, meals and rest.
- No full paper in the final week. Review the errors you keep repeating and the image questions, and rest.
Each practice exam should end with a short list: three specialties to strengthen, one decision about your answering rule (bolder or more cautious, depending on how your two-option questions went) and a note on the stretch where your score dropped. If that list does not change from one attempt to the next, the problem is method, not knowledge.
Prefer to read in Spanish? The Spanish version of this guide covers the same ground, and the MIR course page in Spanish is the Spanish-language entry point.
Quick answers
When is the MIR exam held?
On a Saturday in late January, fixed by that call's BOE order, starting from 14:00 peninsular time (13:00 in the Canary Islands). Applications close in the early autumn before it, in a window of ten working days. Check your own call's order for the exact date.
How is the MIR net score calculated?
Net score = right answers − wrong answers ÷ 3. Each right answer is worth 3 raw points, each wrong answer takes 1 away and blanks score nothing. The raw score is the net score × 3, up to 600 across the 200 scored questions.
How many net answers do I need?
There is no single figure. The rank depends on scaling against the top 10% of that year's papers, so use your own practice exams as the benchmark and past years' figures only as a rough guide.
Should I guess or leave a blank?
A blind guess among four options has an expected value of zero. Once you can genuinely rule out one option, answering gains on average, and once you are down to two it gains clearly.
How often should I sit a full practice exam?
One at the end of each three- or four-week study block in the autumn, then one a week in the final six or seven weeks, at the real exam time. Skip full papers in the last week before exam day.
