95Th Percentile Verbal

[tavenan]

Western students, how did you manage to achieve this? 90th percetile in bio is a pretty reasonable goal for most people writing the MCAT. But I feel like the verbal cutoff  is something that isn't a realistic goal for most people. It feels so daunting to see this insane verbal cutoff before my test date in a couple months. I Just keep working and going through practice passages. really, that's all you can do... but some people will never pass this cut off no matter how much practice they do 

[snacks]

Of course, I wrote the MCAT pre-2015, but here's my take: I think the verbal section made a lot of sense to me from the get-go because I came to science from an arts background (I passed Western's cutoff on my first (pre-studying) diagnostic test). There are two important aspects I think: one is a good comprehension of what you're reading and the ability to read between the lines, the other is the ability to "push through" and not get too bogged down in individual questions. A lot of questions really are educated guessing, and you really do just have to choose the "BEST" answer, although more than one may be correct. I studied with examkrackers, and they don't really advocate any unorthodox strategies, but the advice I found helpful was to not look back: power through each passage, and don't return to it (unless for some reason you have a ton of time at the end). They offer a nice breakdown of the time you spend on verbal and it's about 2/3 answering questions and only 1/3 reading passages (and that's reading at a speed which allows you to understand everything). So that's where the most time can be saved. Allow yourself to guess and move on, and not get stuck. You'll always get a better score by hitting all the questions, not getting stuck on one that you'll probably get wrong anyway.

 

Good luck!

 

(PS: my VR score on the actual test was exactly the same as my VR on my first AAMC practice, so I can't say that my method of studying helped me improve at all haha)

[Harvestpro]

Of course, I wrote the MCAT pre-2015, but here's my take: I think the verbal section made a lot of sense to me from the get-go because I came to science from an arts background (I passed Western's cutoff on my first (pre-studying) diagnostic test). There are two important aspects I think: one is a good comprehension of what you're reading and the ability to read between the lines, the other is the ability to "push through" and not get too bogged down in individual questions. A lot of questions really are educated guessing, and you really do just have to choose the "BEST" answer, although more than one may be correct. I studied with examkrackers, and they don't really advocate any unorthodox strategies, but the advice I found helpful was to not look back: power through each passage, and don't return to it (unless for some reason you have a ton of time at the end). They offer a nice breakdown of the time you spend on verbal and it's about 2/3 answering questions and only 1/3 reading passages (and that's reading at a speed which allows you to understand everything). So that's where the most time can be saved. Allow yourself to guess and move on, and not get stuck. You'll always get a better score by hitting all the questions, not getting stuck on one that you'll probably get wrong anyway.

 

Good luck!

 

(PS: my VR score on the actual test was exactly the same as my VR on my first AAMC practice, so I can't say that my method of studying helped me improve at all haha)

Ontop of al lthat, what I found helped a lot is discussing answers and logic with some one else. Having an outside perspective allowed me to see patterns in thinking that led me astray. 

 

Verbalizing how I came to each answer helped significantly for me. 

[jlkhhylyiluh6]

nvmnvm

[_ _]

I pretty much crossed Western off my list after my first VR practice test.

 

thank you dyslexia....

[sleeping_sickness]

90th percetile in bio is a pretty reasonable goal for most people writing the MCAT. 

actually, it's a reasonable goal for 10% of people writing the MCAT

[116E118]

 

 

Western students, how did you manage to achieve this? 90th percetile in bio is a pretty reasonable goal for most people writing the MCAT. But I feel like the verbal cutoff  is something that isn't a realistic goal for most people. It feels so daunting to see this insane verbal cutoff before my test date in a couple months.

 

It's more scary if you think about it as the top 95th percentile; just keep practicing and improving. If it helps, know that in some years an 11 was only at the 87th percentile and non-native speakers have a disadvantage on this section.

 

 

 I Just keep working and going through practice passages. really, that's all you can do... but some people will never pass this cut off no matter how much practice they do

 

The fact that people who redo the MCAT tend to do better shows that most people have plenty of room for improvement. Verbal is more difficult in that it's difficult to understand how to improve but if you're able to identify your weaknesses and work on them then you'll be way ahead of the curve already.

[thehead321]

Was there an official announcement by schulich regarding individual section cutoffs for the 2015 mcat? I'm mainly wondering about the equivalent CARS and psych/soc hard cutoffs (not estimated percentiles) for non-swomen applicants? I'm guessing the 95th percentile thing was just a guess by OP, or did they (schulich) officially state this somewhere?

 

And, is anyone aware of the CARS cutoff for mac med? or did they not post this information yet?

[ShadowStar]

Was there an official announcement by schulich regarding individual section cutoffs for the 2015 mcat? I'm mainly wondering about the equivalent CARS and psych/soc hard cutoffs (not estimated percentiles) for non-swomen applicants? I'm guessing the 95th percentile thing was just a guess by OP, or did they (schulich) officially state this somewhere?

 

And, is anyone aware of the CARS cutoff for mac med? or did they not post this information yet?

 

The cut-offs for Schulich are only posted in January (when they send out interview invites). The scores and GPA are flexible and change each year based on the applicant pool. Basically the school is aiming for 400-500 interviewees, so they essentially just raise/lower the cutoffs till they get cutoff scores that can allow them to get that many interviewees. If it just so happens that your pool has only 200 people who meet the previous year's cutoffs, the scores would be lowered to get the targeted number or interviewees (or raised cutoffs if there are 700 people meeting current cutoffs).

 

123 is the minimum for CARS. You should be able to find every school's information on their website, so read through all of those because they have a lot of information available. http://www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdprog/md_program_admissions.html

[thehead321]

The cut-offs for Schulich are only posted in January (when they send out interview invites). The scores and GPA are flexible and change each year based on the applicant pool. Basically the school is aiming for 400-500 interviewees, so they essentially just raise/lower the cutoffs till they get cutoff scores that can allow them to get that many interviewees. If it just so happens that your pool has only 200 people who meet the previous year's cutoffs, the scores would be lowered to get the targeted number or interviewees (or raised cutoffs if there are 700 people meeting current cutoffs).

 

123 is the minimum for CARS. You should be able to find every school's information on their website, so read through all of those because they have a lot of information available. http://www.fhs.mcmaster.ca/mdprog/md_program_admissions.html

For mac med, I meant to ask about the average, not cutoff (like in the past, how it was 11 on average, but the unrealistic "minimum" was much lower which no one actually got in with unless they killed casper...). Thanks for the info though.

 

Any info. (guesses) on how significantly the new psych/soc section will be weighted by schulich? Trying to manage my studying time b/w verbal and soc/psych since I only have like 2 weeks left

[ShadowStar]

For mac med, I meant to ask about the average, not cutoff (like in the past, how it was 11 on average, but the unrealistic "minimum" was much lower which no one actually got in with unless they killed casper...). Thanks for the info though.

 

Any info. (guesses) on how significantly the new psych/soc section will be weighted by schulich? Trying to manage my studying time b/w cars and sociology since I only have like 3 weeks left

 

Ah I see. Yeah, I guess it's better just to aim higher since there's no information on that available yet. I do know (from the AAMC site), that since scores are centered around 125 for each section, it would be in your favour to try to get at the very least that much in each section, but I would aim for 127s as my personal minimums if I were writing it. Basically I would look at UofT's minimums and aim 1 or 2 points higher Sorry I couldn't give more insight.

 

This is complete speculation, but with the addition of the new section, one section (either CARS or Bio) will go down a bit but not by more than 2 points I believe. I'm not sure what the minimum for that section would be - but if I was going to say something on the scale from 1-15, it would be a 9 (so perhaps a 126?). Once again, I would aim for 127 or higher in all my sections though. If you find that you're particularly strong in one section, focus on grasping the material in the other sections but review the strong ones as well. CARS is something that you should practice everyday.

 

I'm not sure what your schedule is like, but if you're done with the PS and BS sections, I would say (aside from time set for review of those sections and for practice tests), you should be okay to spend 2/3 of your time on the Psych/Soc sections and 1/3 on CARS (or half-half - it really depends on how many hours you have each day). I think I used to do practice passages for VR but when I was reviewing my answers, I would go through the explanations for every question (even the ones I got correct). Since CARS is a bit longer now, that could take you 2-3 hours to do each day. If anything, try to study everything in the Psych/Soc section this week, so that you can do solid review / practice for the next two weeks.

 

Don't worry about cutoffs right now though since no school has released any information about them (beyond minimums). Just try to do the best you can and remain calm. I know people who have written the MCAT and in their practice always were 1 point or 2 points below their desired score in a section but managed to get it on the test.

 

Hope that helped a bit. Good luck

[116E118]

Was there an official announcement by schulich regarding individual section cutoffs for the 2015 mcat? I'm mainly wondering about the equivalent CARS and psych/soc hard cutoffs (not estimated percentiles) for non-swomen applicants? I'm guessing the 95th percentile thing was just a guess by OP, or did they (schulich) officially state this somewhere?

 

And, is anyone aware of the CARS cutoff for mac med? or did they not post this information yet?

 

There was no announcement. If you look at 2014's MCAT percentile rank distribution, you will see that an 11 is at the 95th percentile. In some years it is less.