Verbal Advice

[dassy]

**Disclaimer: I normally wouldn't be putting up any advice since I don't know if my studying habits would work for anybody else, but after posting my score (14), I've been getting a lot of messages asking me for tips. So this is for everyone that's asked...take from it what you will**

 

First off some stats: MCAT Verbal=14, Practice Tests: Avg=10 (Ranged from 9-11), so don't be discouraged if you aren't breaking 10 on the tests...I think there is a certain amount of luck involved when writing the real MCAT, such as what kind of passages you get, how everyone else does compared to you, etc.

 

1) READ FOR FUN!! I've always been an avid reader (I mean I was a big nerd...when I was a kid, at the start of the summer I would go to the library and take our 2-3 bags full of books). So everyone always gives you the advice that you should read hard books/articles to get used to the difficulty of the MCAT passages. While I think this is a good idea, I think that you should also just be reading for fun. Most of the books I read are those beach holiday type books. If you have fun while you're reading you get used to reading quickly, which is a key aspect to doing well on the MCAT.

 

2) Study Materials I personally took a Kaplan course, and bought the EK books as well. I had a really great teacher for Kaplan (which I've heard can be hit or miss depending on who you get) who helped improve my score. However, I think their method of identifying questions is stupid and time-consuming. I didn't waste my time memorizing what the specific advice for each question. The strategy that I did take, however, was jotting down a sentence for each paragraph quickly right after I read it. That way I knew easily which area of the passage to go back to if I needed info after reading a question (**on the actual test however, I was unable to do this...which really stressed me out...the test center gave me PINK paper and a wooden pencil, so I could barely see anything I wrote down...so I'm not sure if this changed how I did on the test, or was a fluke). On another note: I hated EK. I mean everyone here praises it and says its the most wonderful thing (which for them it may be), but I found it to be the most worthless thing I have ever spent money on. I did one of their tests and found the questions/answers to be completely ridicoulous. A lot of it was logic questions (like in the passage: Mary started working for the family on xxx.....Mary then worked for their neighbours on yyy....How long was Mary working for her first family). So I don't reccommend these books personally, but hey, everyone studies differently.

 

3) START PRACTICING EARLY By the time I wrote the MCAT, I had probably done about 7 Kaplan Tests and another 9 AAMC tests. The only way you're going to improve on Verbal is to keep doing those practice tests. It's important to do as many as you can to get used to the questions they are going to ask. If you don't have time to do a full test, atleast do the Verbal section (I did this for a couple of the AAMC tests so that I could get more practice). On other note of which test I found best: I started off doing about 5 kaplan tests before I started AAMC, which I think are a good starting tool to get to know the verbal section (avoid the extra verbal tests outside the actual practice test...I found them to be useless and not accurate of the real thing). However, once you start getting high marks (~10) I would start switching over to AAMC, which is really a more accurate tell of how you'll do on the MCAT. Don't be discourage by an inital drop in score. You just have to get used to a slightly different way of answering questions.

 

3) LOOK OVER YOUR PAST TESTS I would always write my tests the afternoon of one day and then spend half the next day looking over all my answers and finding my weak spots. Really take the time to go over the wrong AND right answers for Verbal and understand why you got them correct/wrong. Sometimes its stupid mistakes, other times you realize that your strategy isn't working for you. Near the end of the summer I actually got my Dad to go over a test with me to see if he could figure out what I was doing wrong (**FUNNY STORY: I asked my Dad to read over all the passages and go over the questions before hand so that I wouldn't have to waste my time waiting for him. I come down a while later and asks him if he's reading. He goes "Yup, I've read all of them except the last passage", so I said cool and we started going over them together...we get to the 4th passage and he goes "Right, so this is the one I couldn't get to on time", "BUT DAD this is only the 4th passage, there are seven of them!!", "THERE'S SEVEN PASSAGES!?!? I wouldn't even be able to READ seven passages in an hour, let alone answer all these questions!!!" and this is when I finally got respect from my Dad for having to write all these tests lol)...It really helps to go over a test or two with an unbiased member (go for someone like a parent, or a friend who IS NOT in science). They can really help you when it comes to picking the correct answers. They can possibly find a pattern of what you keep doing wrong (for me it was always choosing details from the passage instead of inferring for myself) and can help you come up with tips for picking the right answers.

 

4) Overall Advice when Writing the MCAT VERBAL

• Waste as little time as possible
  
• Do not look through every passage first to determine which is the easiest/toughest. You are wasting time that you don't have --> You still have to do every passage anyway. And you never really know if it's hard or not from the first sentence, the questions asked may in fact be really easy for a hard passage.
  
• Allocate your time so that you can do every passage. Do not leave the last passage blank/guess the questions (the way Princeton suggests) --> I usually worked at a 7-8min limit per passage and was usually left with 5 for the last passage, so I had to rush.
  
• If you are stuck between two answers, take a little bit of time to think about it...if you still can't get the answer, don't waste anymore time and just go with your gut (which is usually correct)
  
• Don't get stuck on a sentence!! You have to read quickly and get the general idea of each paragraph. What's the point in wasting time if no question is even going to be asked on it. If you see that a question asks about it, you can easily go back and try to understand it then
  
• Answer every question for a passage. Don't count on leftover time to go back and double-check answers.
  
• When they ask you to infer, DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT look for actual details in the passage. I would always pick an answer when I was like "HEY, they use this exact wording in the passage, it must be correct" and then I ALWAYS got it wrong. We're science people, we like to look for hard evidence from a passage to confirm our hypothesis. This isn't a science test people, they want you to think for yourself. I know it's hard, it took me like 2 months to figure this one out, but once I did I was always getting more correct answers on tests.
  
• Sometimes, even before looking at the actual question, you can weed out "stupid answers" (I say this because when I was working with my Dad, he's like this is such a stupid answer for the question, it could never ever make sense regardless of what they are asking). So think of the answers separately from the passage for a moment, and see if they could ever be a possibility. A lot of the time you can weed out one or two answers before question. Saves a lot of time.
  
• Don't stress/panic, just have fun with it. This section will be over before you even realize the time as gone by!
  

 

 

My family/friends who have heard my mark have always told me that it wasn't luck, but that I was smart to begin with. However, I still maintain that a large part of it was luck: good passages and I believe that people didn't do well with my test because the last passage was RIDICULOUSLY long..I mean you had to scroll like 4 times to even get to the end. In the end, what I'm saying is just have fun with it, don't stress to much about it when studying...just aim to get above that 10 line and you should be fine. You really only need an 11 for verbal for Western and then you're Golden everywhere

 

I hope this helped everyone. If you have any more questions feel free to PM me

[bored]

thanks alot

 

I messaged someone else you got a 14, but they were no help at all. Went in to no detail, just gave random commen sense, one sentence replies..

I guess they are afraide of sharing their secret and then regretting it if they don't get in. Very Horrible People..

 

anyways,

 

Thanks alot for this. I'll definately use it for this summer..

[holiday1001]

I'm going to made a small opinionated remark here: I thought the EK were gold. The EK verbal technique is great.

A few bullet points that I found helped me:

 

-Read critically and actively

- never pick the absolute answers

- if you can, try to disprove the answers that you didn't pick as the answer. this boosts confidence that your answer is indeed correct.

- this test is about READing, not answering. focus on your reading technique, but on your answer-questioning technique.

- I found doing EK passage by passage , reviewing answers and identifying why I went wrong, then immediately applying these to the next passage. I didn't want to waste the AAMC vr using this technique. I found I built up confidence, even though my scores didn't really go up. They stayed static, but I used less and less time, and double guessed myself alot less.

- on the final test, the best thing you can do is be confident.

 

for reference, I was bascially in the same boat as Dassy: 11s on practice, one 12, one 10. 14 on real one.

 

also.. some of the other verbal is pure garbage. Kaplan, I would get 50-70% of the questions right. TPR, I took the free diagnostic. I scored a THREE. 3. Took AAMC 3 vr the next day, scored a 10.

[Pearl.4]

Thanks for the advice!! I'm really struggling. I haven't seen an improvement after 7 practice tests. I'm averaging a score of 7 getting about 21-24 questions right. I will take everyones advice and hopefully will improve by May.

 

This is really helpful!

[jp3]

where can i get EK stuff from?

thanks!

[dassy]

where can i get EK stuff from?

thanks!

 

I ordered it off their website. You might be able to get it off Amazon. If you're in Toronto I'd be more than willing to sell it

[charmer08]

thanks alot

 

I messaged someone else you got a 14, but they were no help at all. Went in to no detail, just gave random commen sense, one sentence replies..

I guess they are afraide of sharing their secret and then regretting it if they don't get in. Very Horrible People..

 

anyways,

 

Thanks alot for this. I'll definately use it for this summer..

 

The person I asked said that they didn't follow any strategy... just read lol

Some people are just naturally good at it... they start with an above average score in VR on their first practice test

[medoc]

where can i get EK stuff from?

thanks!

 

Hi, I got an EK verabl passages 101 book (2nd edition)...if you live in Vancouver, I can sell it to you.

[jp3]

@ Dassy

 

how much are you selling the ek books for?

i am mostly interested in the verbal one.

 

thanks!

[jp3]

i am in toronto

sorry :/

[dassy]

I have the Complete Examkrackers MCAT Study Package (7th Edition) which I bought for $174.95+$20 shipping. And it's all brand new except for the first test in the Verbal Book. So I'd be willing to part with it for ~150. I'd rather not split up the set.

 

I never bought the 101 Verbal Passages. You can also purchase straight from their site http://www.examkrackers.com/store/view_Category.aspx?c=2

[TheBookWorm]

Hey Dassy thank you so much for the advice. For some reason, I am not able to PM you, so I am just gonna write my msg here.

 

My situation is that I wrote the MCAT last summer and I received an 8 in verbal. I have started practicing passage by passage un-timed since mid-February. I know I CAN improve to a 10. I know I can because I initially started around 4-5 in tests and I improved to 8-9. So I know it will need some work and I am willing to put to do it.

 

Now I plan to re-write in mid-July. That gives me about 4 months. However, my problem is that my mind is so jumbled. I almost want to re-start fresh with verbal, forgetting how I usually do this section. I am doing passages un-times and sometimes I'll get 5/5 correct but sometimes I'll get 3/5 or 2/5 correct and that just depresses me so much.

 

So how do you think I should approach verbal again? Should I keep going like this or should I try another strategy?

 

If you can give any advice, I'd really appreciate it.

[dassy]

Just bumping this thread, because I've been getting a lot of PMs lately about verbal advice. Hope this helps some of you

[dassy]

BUMPING this thread again this year because I'm getting emails about Verbal strategies. Good luck