damn VR

[Sutler]

10/6/R/12 = 28R

 

please tell me how to make that damn VR go from 6 to a 10 atleast

 

I tried everything

 

EK 101

economist

novels

AAMC

etc

etc

etc

 

are there any other good sources of VR passages? aside from EK 101?

 

Thanks.

[md2be]

I can tell you what helped me I feel your pain!

 

I wrote the MCAT once, without studying very much for VR: 7

 

Wrote the MCAT again, spent the entire summer studying for VR using the Princeton techniques: 5 (what the..!?!)...and I was getting double digits on princeton practice tests.

 

Decided to write it one last time, and NOT use any of the techniques from Kaplan or Princeton. The Exam Krackers technique was really helpful...

 

They recommend to:

 

1. Read the passage critically (attack it like you are a professor reading a student's work)

2. Take a 5s break before each passage, including the first one. This helps you to maintain focus on the passage.

3. Read every word.

4. Try NOT to go back to the passage so much (they recommend doing a few passage questions without reading the passage at all, to show yourself that you can gain a lot of info from the question stems and answers themselves)

5. Do the passages from start to finish. They say if you want to get double digits, you have to read every single passage and attempt to answer them.

6. Don't get caught up on the hard questions - if you aren't finishing on time, then you have to learn to give up and move on.

 

I think that's it from me I haven't gotten my mark back yet from this round of VR, but I felt so much more comfortable. You need to do a lot of practice, but I think it's the best way to get through the entire section and do well. Good luck!

[md2be]

oops, sorry I didn't read that you had tried EK. I think the best source of practice are the AAMC tests themselves! (or just to do as many passages as possible from princeton, kaplan, ek, aamc...)

[grad001]

I know exactly how you feel. I got precisely your score on my Aug 15th test. I too did the EK 101 practice questions. But i didn't get their strategy book last time. I have ordered it and am going to try passages entirely with their strategy, ex. trying to find clues from the question stem itself which i didn't do before. Hopefully this will work.

[dizzle]

i found what really helped me get from a 6-11 was to use my own techniques. don't follow TPR or EK to the last word. take what works for you and toss the stuff that doesn't. how do you find this out? unfortunately by doing tons of passages and thinking critically about each one.. what did i do that helped? what did i do that screwed me over?

 

another factor is timing.. but i found that first and foremost learning accuracy was the most important. when you can get 0-2 wrong on a passage with time taken, you're probably ready to speed up a bit. --- i really appreciated the post of one individual on premed101 who emphasized trying to finish each passage in about 7 minutes. it totally kept me on track with my passages and served as a key indicator when i was dwelling on questions and not even realizing it.

 

EK makes a good point about dwelling on difficult questions - don't do it. it wastes time that you could be nailing ez questions on.

 

when i got accuracy and timing down, i worked on different techniques. i tried reading the passage before answer questions, looking at question stems before reading the passage. try different ways of tackling the passages and see if your score goes up.

 

on the real thing, i ended up highlighting almost every line on my passage as i read it. For me PERSONALLY, i found that it helped me to keep track of what i had read and by highlighting it after reading it, it was clear to me that i understood that sentence. i kept flipping to question stems as i moved along the passage to see if there were 'specific' questions that wanted an answer from the part i was reading from. i saved all the main idea questions for the end when i had finished reading the entire passage.

 

with my experience, i would recommend not feeling bad if you're doing something that test-prep people tell you NOT to do. EK says not to highlight because it distracts you from the main point... but hell, if you can score an 10+ with highlighting the whole passage, then just do what works for you. (this applies as well with my TPR verbal teacher ridiculing me for not skipping a passage and guessing a letter of the day on it.)

 

good luck!

[sbrugby]

I think the best thing at this point is to find someone who has done really well in the VR section, and have them do some passages with you, and explain their reasoning for waht they do.

[Shadowplay]

I was getting 9/8's on practices, until I switched to a sort of Kaplan strategy - summarize each paragraph.

 

I honestly didn't re-read my summaries, though (they recommend that you answer the questions from the summaries, and I just reskimmed the paragraph that was concerned instead). So it didn't matter what I wrote down, but the action of thinking about what words I would use to summarize the paragraph as I read it solidified it's point in my mind. I read really fast though - so I had enough time to actually write down the paragraph summaries, and re-read paragraphs when I wanted to for a specific question.

 

Started getting 11's once I did that, and ended up with an 11 on the actual test.