Verbal improvement

[Guest AG3]

I've been studying for verbal for the past couple of months and I'm also taking the PR course to prep me. My verbal score has not been improving and I've been consistenly getting 6 on all my mocks. I've been practicing a lot by doing practice passages and whole verbal sections and reading ALOT (ie Economist, and other random journals). But my score will not nudge from a 6.

Will I be able to bring my score to at least 9 by mcat day? And what else could I possibly do to improve my score?! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest Henry]

Are you rushing the verbal passages? Tme management seems to be the real issue for the MCAT, particularly for the verbal section.

[Guest PerfectMoment]

are you using princeton's strategy? try using something else, like just reading the passage and answering the questions. any strategy that advocates skipping an entire passage is a stupid one imo.

[Guest tomparv]

Not everyone has the reading speed and comprehension abilities to get to all 9 passages, so princeton's strategy is appropriate for many students.

[Guest Icarus]

Agreed. I used the Princeton Review strategy and I managed a 10 so I guess it worked alright. I'm sure that it won't work out as well for everyone.

 

Time management certainly is the issue for many people. You might not have time to experiment with many different approaches so I recommend trying one or two alternatives and then focus on mastering the one that you're the most comfortable with. Keep an eye on the clock, but don't let it distract you from getting the passages done.

[Guest AG3]

thanks for everyones input! I certainly have issues with time management since I always end up guessing entirely on one or two passages.

 

For those who have taken PR/Kaplan courses, are you guys finding that the AAMC verbal passages are different from kaplan/PR passages in terms of difficulty. I've been getting 6's on all the kaplan and PR passage sets. Maybe I'll have better luck with AAMC. I did an AAMC mock and I found that the answers were much easier to deduct by POE compared to Kaplan/PR.

[Guest hydes79]

Hi AG3,

 

I'm in the boat as you. I'm taking PR review course now, and my VR score is around 5. I bought the Exam Kcrackers 101 passages in VR. I'm planning to do these passages for next two weeks.

 

For me, the reading speed in the main problem. I always end up guessing on 3-4 passages.

 

Does anyone has an advice about how increase the reading speed in two weeks?

 

Hyde

[Guest s sadry]

well -- examkrackers suggests reading hte passage for the main idea... read it as if you were reading a newspaper critically they suggest.

 

maybe the princeton review approach isn't working for you. maybe you are focusing on too much annotation etc, and not enough time on the questions??

 

i find all the annotation PR suggests to be time consuming. don't get too caught up in the details of the passage, and if you don't understand a line or phrase immediately, you have to move on.

 

i was using the PR strategy (ranking, annotating etc...) and i found it took up a lot of time. for me aspects of the strategy-took away from the main idea and i'd be focusing on trying to find pivitol words etc instead.

 

the PR strategy is based on the idea that you will skip one passage. now that i've loosened up on things like annotation, and i'm not wasting a couple of minutes ranking, i've been able to finish all the passages with little time to spare.

[Guest s sadry]

also-- do the practice passages in sets of 9!!

 

there is no point doing one or two passages -- i would be doing really well on them individually. and then i couldn't understand how my score would be lower on the mocks --

 

just practice, practice practice in sets of 9. it will give you an inherent sense of timing so you aren't wasting time checking your watch either.

 

as for reading speed, i'm not sure how much you can change that in 2 weeks..

 

but if its the strategy that's bogging you down (ie: careful/precise annotation), that might be easier to change.

 

just use whatever gives you the best score.

[Guest wjc83]

Last year when I was practising verbal I started off using the PR method. But I found that no matter how long I spent on a passage I always got 1 or 2 wrong. So rather than trying to get perfect scores on the passages that I did do and guess on the last one, I just tried to get through all 9. My score jumped from a 6 to a 9 and was pretty consistent for the rest of my mocks (and the real thing)... I even once got a 10! Anyways, it might be good to find out if taking more time on a passage actually increases the number of correct answers or if you're just wasting time that could be spent answering that 9th passage.

 

my 2 cents

[Guest Steve MD09]

Princeton Review still tells students to entirely skip a passage and guess? I'm a bit surprised they do that since the changes to the test format a few years ago. I suppose it was a reasonable bit of advice when there was 1 extra passage to go through (although I always aimed to do all the passages), but now that there are less, it's probably better to go through them all.

[Guest dr555]

i've found that when i actually try the last out of 9, I end up getting about only 3/8 right anyways. ( which is the logic behind PR's strategy: skip one to spend time on pasges you can get right)

 

i guess it really depends on the person, whether you are willing to sacrifice accuracy for speed.

 

Just curious, is Princeton the only one who recommends skipping one?

 

Also, what do you suggest to do when you actually can't u nerstand the Main idea of the passge? I seem to always get lost in the questions if I don't grasp it, then just end up relying on elimination ( which is a bit risky, I know)>: