need advice on whether to rewrite MCATs

[Guest machprime]

Hi

 

I wrote the MCAT this year for the second time. I'm in my last year at UT and my MCAT this year was LOWER than my MCAT from the year before. Last year I had less than 30 and this year, I am a much farther from it.

 

How screwed am I ? I mean, in all honest, I'm probably screwed now. Any options you guys can think of? Should I go and rewrite a 3rd timne ? What schools take the best marks?

 

I have a decent GPA (3.7+) and I'm very involved in my community but those damn MCATs !!

 

Me and standardized testing don't get along.

[Guest ezaholic]

Hi there,

 

Well, you could definitely write it again, but before you do that perhaps you should try to determine why you did worse ths time - did you study less/differently, were you sick the day of the MCAT...

 

How to improve? practice, practice, practice, practice. For example, with the VR section, while reading the passage you can almost start being able to tell what the questions will be.

 

I don't know if this has really answered your question - but hopefully it has been of some help.

 

ez

[Guest Jeesing]

Hey Machprime,

 

I just wrote my third MCAT and got a 35Q after first getting 29N, then a crappier 28M. To my knowledge most schools take the best set of MCAT scores so for those schools you can only improve or stay the same. I know U of C and U of M use the best set of scores for sure. I havent really looked too indepth into ontario or the other eastern medical schools but i think most of them would take the best set of scores. You are definately not screwed.

 

Like ez said, practice is the key to improving. I dont how well you did in your individual section but for me VR was my weakest so I worked on my VR the most and it helped me read the PS and BS science passages better.

[Guest ckim01]

Hi Jeesing,

I wrote my mcat for the first time and did terribly on VR (below 5). I haven't been big on reading and obviously i suck with VR too.

 

I am just wondering how you boosted your marks up so much? Did you take any of the MCAT courses or what books did you study from??

 

Thanks

[Guest dopetown]

The first time I wrote, I got 22M, with a 5 in VR. English ain't my first language, and I'm a relatively slow reader. However, I scored a 9 in VR a year after, which isn't a great score, but it's enough.

 

I went through the same grief as you people did. After I scored a 5, and bad scores on practice exams thereafter, I thought there is just something inherently wrong wth the way I read and think. I thought I was simply too retarded to do well in VR. However, I stand by the simple philosophy that if one man can do it, another can do better. So I held back the tears, and the suicide note, and decided to take the advice to practise reading-- A LOT. Obviously, it paid off big time.

 

So don't give up. You just have to decide to do well in VR no matter what, and I'm convinced that practising is the best route.

 

By the way, 40% of students who take the MCAT score a 10 or higher. That's 12 000 students who score 10's across North America. If 12 000 students can do it, so can you.

[Guest Yangzie]

listen carefully to dopetown, he's also a love doctor.

[Guest ckim01]

mr love doctor~~~ ahaha

 

so for those who improved on verbal, what kind of things should i be reading? I figured that if i'm reading, i might as read something that will help me with VR.

 

I'm guessing novels aren't as good as ... articles??

 

Gosh, I hate mcat and VR... i feel like i should take a long term approach to this.

[Guest dayne67]

The first time I took the MCAT, I got a 7 on verbal. I also knew that there was something inherently wrong with my reading style. It took me a while to fix it. IMO, it requires a long term approach to fix verbal if one's score is that low. It's not something that can easily be corrected in a few weeks. I worked really hard and when I wrote the MCAT again this past August, I increased my verbal score to a 10.

 

The key is to figure out where you are going wrong. Do you read too slowly? Do you have trouble with dense and wordy text? Do you gloss or skim too much through the passages? Do you have trouble staying focused on the passages, and even find yourself drifting away elsewhere?

 

IMO, one should practice fixing these specific problems with articles from respectable magazines (i.e. The New Yorker) and verbal passages from as many sources as possible. However, it's important to be sure that you are actually improving in these areas as you practice.

 

As for good verbal passage sources, use AAMC practice tests 3-8. Also, try to get your hands on all of Kaplan's Verbal Reasoning Tests. I am not talking about the Full Length Kaplan Tests, but the individual Kaplan Verbal Reasoning Tests. These tests are much more closer in difficulty to the AAMC practice materials and the actual MCAT, than the passages on the full lengths.

 

As for other sources, I read a lot of The New Yorker. Among other things, I would read reviews and critiques of plays, musicals, classical music concerts, art exhibits, and architecture. These always tended to be very wordy and helped me improve my reading.

[Guest dopetown]

Yes, love doctor my tush. Don't listen to Yang.

 

I got a subscription to The Economist, which I read every week for about 2 months. During the couple of weeks before test day, I also got my hands on some Scientific American, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. I didn't read ALL day, but I did read for at least 5 hours every day. Out of all those magazines, I recommend The Economist. Although you can benefit from reading any one of them, The Economist has relatively short articles which were great for my short attention span.

 

Oh, I read philosophy too. Damn that sh1t is hard. If you think VR makes you feel like a tard, read philosophy. Read the big names.

 

I'm not sure whether or not novels are a bad idea. I do know that reading in general will help. And you're right, improving on VR will take a long time. It took me 3 months to improve from scoring 4-6 to scoring 7-9 in VR.

 

Reading critiques is a good idea.

[Guest kaymcee]

Although reading a lot can improve your VR score over a long period of time (humanities majors do on average a point better than everyone else in the VR section), I don't think people read articles in the New Yorker or The Economist in the same way they would when writing the MCAT.

 

I had success using the ExamKrackers method and lots of practice passages. I don't read much outside of school, so my VR scores when I first started were miserable. Much of what the MCAT tests is your ability to write the MCAT, not necessarily your aptitude in any discipline or skill. As such, to prepare for the MCAT VR section, you should practice the MCAT VR section rather than read articles for that purpose.

[Guest Jeesing]

Hey, ckim01

 

Sorry for not reseponding for so long, havent checked this area for a while. Most of these guys have basically described what i did to improve my scores. I also did poorly on my first outing in VR. It seems to be one of the hardest sections because 0.0% of the testers got 15 and only 0.1 % of the testers got a 14.

 

I focused on VR the most during my studies because it was the weakest. I would try to figure out your weakest part of verbal is, like dayne said, and focus on that area of verbal. For me its was time and comprehension of passages. I started reading more magazines and newspaper. I found the economist to be the best overall magazine, It had many passages of comparable difficulty and length to the MCAT passages and it had a variety of subjects within it, ie arts, science, technology, etc. I started doing about 3 passages at a time and trying to see what type of questions i made the most mistakes on, ie, if i just misunderstood a small part of the passage or question, or if it was more of a complete misunderstanding of the whole passage, which should be more of a concern. After a while i could predict some questions. This helped bump me from a 7 to a 10, I even guessed the last 4 question because i ran out of time. I found the VR to be more difficult to comprehend than usual (i had DK) which took more time for me to read.

 

I used the Examkrackers 101 verbal passages and verbal tests from Kaplan and aamc. I highly suggest EK 101 passages, that was the most helpful material. The only thing about EK is that almost all the passages have 6-8 questions where as the AAMC verbal tests can have great fluctuation in the number of questions per passage. Ive had as little as 4 questions in a passage and as much as 11 in one passage. I find that VR is the area that requires the most time to improve, but with practice it can be done. I found that working on VR can help your overall MCAT, helped me read my science passsages quicker and more detailed and also helped me with my essay writing skills, your grammer mistakes seem much more obvious the more you read, so putting the time in VR is worth the effort. Good Luck on retaking the MCAT, hopefully this has been hepful. I also did take more humanities before re-writing my MCAT as Kaymcee suggested (not to sure if it helped though cause i did poorly those courses lol)

[Guest NRC boy]

I like Jeesing advice since he is a MCAT jebus. And yes he did do quite poorly in those humanity courses