A VR strategy that's working really well for me

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PanRoasted

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While my verbal score is not astronomically high, I think it's pretty good compared to what it was when I started studying (started around a 7, now 11/12). Also, since I've gotten some PMs based on just one comment I made in a thread a while ago, I've decided that maybe other people in MCAT Discussions would at the very least be interested in reading something for 5 minutes if there was even the slightest chance it would increase their VR.

One of the biggest things I've realized in all my time studying VR is that the #1 reason that I'll flop on a passage (like getting 75%...wrong) is because I just didn't understand the passage as a whole. Not that any particular questions "got me," or "seemed confusing". Those are all secondary to not understanding the entire passage and internalizing it. That led me to perusing the MCAT forums or the EK book for guidance, but these sources mostly failed me because the only advice I would get for better reading comprehension was "read a lot" or "act like you're interested in the material" or some other vague, unhelpful drivel. After some experimentation, this is what I came up with (and I quote this from a PM I sent).



Here's how I break it down:

Spend 1~ minute reading and internalizing the first paragraph of a passage. Understand it as if it were an idea that you came up with on your own. Every passage is written so that it follows a logical progression of ideas. Starting out I realized that I would read an entire passage and not really get the gist of it because I didn't fully understand the first paragraph and couldn't connect each subsequent paragraph to the entire passage as a whole. That's the first thing.

After you understand that first paragraph, read the next one carefully, but don't spend as much time on it. I like to take a 5 second scan of a paragraph to get the general idea of what it's going to be talking about. Then I do a closer read for about 30-35 seconds, connect the idea of that paragraph to what was said in the previous one, then I move on. And by connecting, I mean asking yourself the question "what does this paragraph add to the last, or how does it support the last paragraph, or if the idea in this paragraph conflicts the last one, what does this imply about where the author is taking his train of thought". Etc. Paragraph-by-paragraph. Once I'm done with the passage, I have a very clear picture of what the author said, why he was saying it, what was the purpose of each paragraph, and I also have a good idea of where to go look for something that comes up in a question. The brain is a lot better (well my brain is anyway) at internalizing ideas and concepts if they are attached or correlated to something else. The "something else" has to be rock solid though, which is why understanding that first part of the logical train of thought the author is on is so important. If you read each paragraph in relation to the previous one, you *should* find that you have a much easier time recalling and whatnot when you're doing the questions. I also find that it's easier to do something like this, where I concretely know what I have to accomplish when I'm reading a passage, than to blindly follow some vague strategy like "pretend a friend is telling you a story" or "just act like you're really interested and somehow you will be."

As far as the questions go, that's something you have to learn to do on your own. Just do a lot of practice tests, get familiar with what kinds of questions AAMC likes to ask on VR, and come up with a strategy for doing them that makes the most sense to you.

After adopting this strategy, I've used it on ek101 with a huge amount of success. I literally just kind of "discovered" this strategy a few days ago, and before I had a big problem with finishing a passage on time, now for some reason I'm just zooming through questions and finishing passages with 1-2 minutes to spare (with 100% accuracy). Now this is starting to sound like an infomercial, but I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I'm not asking for money, or offering any guarantees. I'm mostly just kind of excited and was hoping to validate this method by seeing if anyone else could get anything from it. I also realize this has probably been stated by someone elsewhere in MCAT discussion at some point in time in one form or another. Well, here it is again!

Cheers.

EDIT: Edited to address some of the questions brought up in the topic, as well as some things that I have realized about this method. Also, some comments to address common problems/questions are found below.

Also, as far as TIMING goes, yes, you may initially find yourself losing a little time with this method. It is not unlikely that you will spend 4 minutes just reading the passage. However, this is offset by being able to complete questions much faster (Say about 15 seconds to read through each answer and pick out the right one just off the top of your head, and maybe another 15 seconds to confirm it by looking at the corresponding paragraph in the passage). Getting used to reading like this combined with getting used to answering questions with less reliance on digging through the passage for clues will contribute to faster times.

It WILL still be difficult to tackle those hard artsy passages with crappy language, because lets face it, nobody in real life writes like that and it's a little unreasonable for AAMC to ask a bunch of science majors to read an article about the cubism movement written by the author equivalent of a hipster.

A common problem a significant number of people seem to encounter with this method is that it can be very mentally draining. I don't know exactly why this is, though I theorize that having to read for complete comprehension of ideas is much more taxing on your brain than is doing a superficial reading and painfully making your way through each question. You might find yourself running out of steam midway through a VR test. Be aware of when this happens, take a quick 5-10 second breather and try to empty your brain, then go back to the questions/passage. It's better to recognize when you've begun to lose focus and take a step back than to just keep trying to push through it, then finishing the entire passage while realizing that you have not 1) actually understood any of the words you just read and/or 2) did not focus on connecting the ideas.

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WOHOO, nice to hear that. And thats a phenomenal score :D

The super artsy/horrible philosophical passages get me, I have to read them even slower than usual but I am hoping to increase my reading time without loosing comprehension, and overall decrease time usage.

I took EK #8 today, I got a 9, 1 question away from a 10! So badly want that 10 :xf: Edit- I was going over the test and the answer key was wrong but the explations had the answer I choose SO I got a 10 :) I know its only by 1 question but still!
(watch out for #15 on EK8 the answer in the answer box is incorrect!)
Timing, about the same around 65 minutes, checked my time 3 times, I am going to give myself 30 seconds back, I had to unlock my phone, that took up time ;) !

That's really awesome, looks like you're seeing some consistent improvement here. Going from ~7-10 is a monstrous jump, good job! :D
 
I JUST did AAMC 3 (yeah, and the first thing I do to cool off from it is go on SDN LOL)... and this is what I got:

PS: 10
VR: 7
BS: 9

Pretty unexpected. I had a good gut feeling coming out of the BS. As for VR, well... the pressure kinda got to me, and I felt my composure kind of faltered even though I was trying to use my new method. Same mark in VR as I got in AAMC 7 that I took a couple of weeks ago.

Da heck is this! My AAMC 3 CS is 1 point lower than my AAMC 7! Arrrrgh. Back to the drawing board with 2 weeks left exactly.
 
Add me to the list of believers amongst the early adopters!

A couple of days ago I was asking in the EK 101 thread if anyone knew of a method to move from the 10 range to 12/13+. I had been stuck at 10s with some 11s for months using TPRH hyperlearning verbal workbook and in my first couple of EK 101 tests:

TPRH: 164/201 overall 30 passages - 81% (10)

EK 2: 31/40 (10)
EK 3: 32/40 (10)


Just finished scoring EK 4 and moved up to a 12! :cool:

EK 4: 35/40 (12)


I felt really comfortable timing-wise throughout the exam. I started off really slow but ended up having close to 25 mins left to complete 2 passages. There's nothing necessarily groundbreaking about this strategy and I was already using this approach to an extent during certain passages here and there. However, after seeing the positive feedback in this thread I tried to sustain PanRoasted's method across an entire exam. It was a bit tiring at first as someone mentioned but after a couple of passages, I started developing a rhythm with reading and connecting the passages. Also, it really started speeding up my answering of questions. I will take a few more tests to see if this really works but from early results and just from the comfort level in taking the exam, this approach certainly looks promising. :)

Thanks PanRoasted for taking the time out to write out this approach as it seems a lot of people are having success using it! :thumbup:
 
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Same as nycsoul87, I'm a believer. I did 3 passages and got 16/18! I hope to continue to see this progression! PanRoasted you're the man!!
 
I JUST did AAMC 3 (yeah, and the first thing I do to cool off from it is go on SDN LOL)... and this is what I got:

PS: 10
VR: 7
BS: 9

Pretty unexpected. I had a good gut feeling coming out of the BS. As for VR, well... the pressure kinda got to me, and I felt my composure kind of faltered even though I was trying to use my new method. Same mark in VR as I got in AAMC 7 that I took a couple of weeks ago.

Da heck is this! My AAMC 3 CS is 1 point lower than my AAMC 7! Arrrrgh. Back to the drawing board with 2 weeks left exactly.

Sorry to hear about the results of FL3 : / No single strategy can work for everyone, I'm sure there's something else out there that will work for you. If there was something you could tweak with your existing strat, that could help, too. I came to the strategy I'm currently using by getting fed up with the lack of progress I was making and experimenting around with different techniques. Don't just repeat what you did on your last exam for every future one that you do, try something new even if it seems dumb or a waste of time. You never know what might just stick for you.


@PlasmodiumVivax and nycsoul8: Really great to hear that you were able to make serious headway on your VR scores. Good job, hopefully you guys can keep up the momentum until your test date :D.
 
hey OP just thought I would let you know, my AAMC FL scores before doing this were like 7


now they are 10 :)
 
hey OP just thought I would let you know, my AAMC FL scores before doing this were like 7


now they are 10 :)

Congrats :) I know from reading your other posts you've been working hard to increase your VR, glad I could help you out a bit. Hopefully you can bring the same performance on your real test day :D
 
I tried this strategy, and I find myself breezing through several practice passages! This method is bloody brilliant!

My only question about your advice is...why isn't it stickied???
 
Do you scan first each subsequent paragraph or just the 2nd? And how long does it take you to read the avg passage 3min or closer to 4?
 
I really don't do any scans at all... it's not terribly important nor does it seem to help a lot of people. I was debating removing it from the OP but I didn't know whether some people benefitted from it. Also, my average time spent lies reading lies closer to 3 minutes, but that's with a lot of practice using this method.

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EDIT:

I tried this strategy, and I find myself breezing through several practice passages! This method is bloody brilliant!

My only question about your advice is...why isn't it stickied???

Hah! That's very flattering. Good to hear about your success :D
 
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gonna try to focus on doing this more on my verbal sections. i find it kind of hard to pause in between paragraphs though because i am so used to just reading straight through. i do briefly think about why the author is saying things in the paragraph while i am reading but i don't explicitly pause after a paragraph and review. guess i just need to be more disciplined about it
 
You should write a book! I started making 50% on Kaplan verbal and now, 3 days later, I'm at almost 70%. If I keep this up, in a week I'll be at 90%! Thanks dude!


"No one cared who I was...'til I put on the mask...." -BANE-
 
You should write a book! I started making 50% on Kaplan verbal and now, 3 days later, I'm at almost 70%. If I keep this up, in a week I'll be at 90%! Thanks dude!


"No one cared who I was...'til I put on the mask...." -BANE-

If I did publish anything on VR strategy, it would probably be less of a book and more of a one page pamphlet with the OP printed on the front, lol. Glad to hear the great progress you've made in such a short time, though. 90% is a high mark to hit, but hopefully you'll get there with practice. :)

@ Triplehelix: Yes, concentration is key with this kind of strategy, more than the more obvious strategies out there (aka reading straight through). Once you get enough practice under your belt, though, it becomes more natural and you can make less of a point of stopping between paragraphs while connecting them subconsciously as you read. That's what my experience has been, at least.
 
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If I did publish anything on VR strategy, it would probably be less of a book and more of a one page pamphlet with the OP printed on the front, lol. Glad to hear the great progress you've made in such a short time, though. 90% is a high mark to hit, but hopefully you'll get there with practice. :)

@ Triplehelix: Yes, concentration is key with this kind of strategy, more than the more obvious strategies out there (aka reading straight through). Once you get enough practice under your belt, though, it becomes more natural and you can make less of a point of stopping between paragraphs while connecting them subconsciously as you read. That's what my experience has been, at least.

What goes through your mind during some questions. Any tips on what to look out for on the different types of questions.
 
This method has helped me focus so much more and get a better understanding of the passages! :D The only problem is that I'm taking too much time reading through the passages. :(
 
What goes through your mind during some questions. Any tips on what to look out for on the different types of questions.

Sorry, I've found there aren't really any helpful tips for how to generally approach questions. Maybe at some point in the future I'll have another moment of great insight and share the results, but as of now, learning to answer the questions is a battle you'll have to bear alone. Personally, I just look through the answer choices and if I've read the passage well, the right one should just "make sense." There are few tricky questions AAMC throws at you; if you know the passage well, they are fairly simple and straightforward. Of course, I don't always read a passage and understand it completely (otherwise I'd be getting straight 15s), or the question may ask for straight details, so I will have to refer back to the passage at times.

If I do get something wrong, though, I realize it is because I missed an important part of the passage because I didn't read well enough. Some questions where two answers seem like they might be able to both work generally only occur because one of the answers is an "intuitively" correct answer, but doesn't get any support from the passage. For example, on a passage about a doctor who thinks that health care technology makes things better and supports increased spending on research, you might narrow down a "what would the author support" question down to two answer choices, one which states he would probably not support the euthanasia of patients (for example). A prejudice in my brain would say "of course a doctor would be against the euthanasia of patients (I don't know if this is true of most doctors, but this is just an example)," and I'll confuse the fact that the answer seems to make sense with having read it in the passage. That's one of the bigger issues I personally have right now, but I'm sure others will say differently.
 
I second, well everyone. I got a 9 when I took the real deal. Nothing special, but I feel like after taking a TPR course I could get at least a 10. After incorporating the TPR methods, I sank to 7's on verbal. I'm done with methods of how to "map the passage" answer the questions and all of the junk. I'm simply going to read the passage and insure that I understand it, the rest should be easy. There are no secrete ways to do this in my opinion. I just tired this method on a TPR practice verbal, which usually have unreasonably long passages and questions stems. I did exceptionally better using this method, and maybe incorporating a few tips from the TPR class but not their method. I'll keep in touch because I feel this method is really helping me, especially considering I have become very frustrated with the TPR method, and feel this method has helped a lot.

Thanks PanRoasted!
 
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EK1: 6
EK2: 7
EK3: 9
EK4: 8
EK5: 7
EK6: 6
EK7: 10
EK8: 7
EK9: 5 (lol...)
EK10: 10

I've been actively fixing where I am going wrong with my strategy. I can still attribute some of your tips with the 10 I got today, along with what I've been doing for a long time. I did not think EK10 was an easier among the others, but it did not have the kind of passage that I am weak on. I read the passages at my pace that I usually use to read a book (it's slow because I'm not an avid reader), but I had about 4 minutes of extra time after completing the last passage. I didn't feel rushed on any parts. I'm going to try this modified way with the VR for AAMC 8 I'm taking tomorrow.
 
I second, well everyone. I got a 9 when I took the real deal. Nothing special, but I feel like after taking a TPR course I could get at least a 10. After incorporating the TPR methods, I sank to 7's on verbal. I'm done with methods of how to "map the passage" answer the questions and all of the junk. I'm simply going to read the passage and insure that I understand it, the rest should be easy. There are no secrete ways to do this in my opinion. I just tired this method on a TPR practice verbal, which usually have unreasonably long passages and questions stems. I did exceptionally better using this method, and maybe incorporating a few tips from the TPR class but not their method. I'll keep in touch because I feel this method is really helping me, especially considering I have become very frustrated with the TPR method, and feel this method has helped a lot.

Thanks PanRoasted!

Great to hear that you're doing better again. It seems that quite a few people are coming out of TPR with much lower verbal scores as opposed to higher, so it's good that this method is at least helping them get back on track. You're definitely right that there is no secret way to do well on VR. You actually do have to read the passages well and understand all the ideas presented. I think my method just makes it easier to do this by giving a systematic approach to reading rather than a vague stem of pointers. Keep up the good work! :)

@Vertwous: Merging your own skills and methods with the one I presented is definitely the way to go. Everyone reads/tests differently, so it would be a bad idea to only follow one person's advice while neglecting the way you feel most comfortable doing VR. I posted this to help others get started with what I believe should be your core focus on VR - reading the passage WELL. A lot of test prep companies go wrong with this by telling you that you have to follow their method to a tee, or else you will not get the guaranteed results. I think this is less of a service to their students than it is to their bottom-line. "If you aren't getting better with our method, it's because you aren't following it exactly! (A.K.A. no refunds)". Hopefully your scores will be more consistent now that you're finding your own way of doing things. :D
 
I've been trying out this strategy and although I'm still getting 2ish wrong per passage, I think with some more practice I could get back to a 10 again. I definitely understand the passages much better and questions are getting a little easier/faster.

The ones I get wrong now are either (1) I let my own bias in or own assumption influence my answer or (2) (This I hate the most) is that despite understanding passage and author's arguments, I still got the question wrong because I interpreted the argument slightly (emphasis slightly) differently than the author did. On those, I usually still think my answer was not completely wrong or that their answer explaination just didnt make sense to me. But that's a minority (I'd say 10-15% of my mistakes). Man looking back, I wonder how I ever gotten so few wrong in verbal in teh past.

Anyways, I'm almost done with EK101 and with my VR avg still hovering around 8ish, what is the next best possible recommended Verbal source? I finished TPRH but I got murdered on the last Test......I might redo it since I got so many wrong on that one (20 wrong out of 7 passages). I also have TBR and Kaplan VR books. Which should I tackle next?
 
EK101 is a bit of a crapshoot with some of the questions and answers. I wouldn't worry too much that you're getting answers wrong for a slight misinterpretation. I find that AAMC is more forgiving and more...right (don't know how else to describe it). I like EK101 mainly to practice reading and interpreting passages, and if I get the general idea of it down, I consider that passage to be a minor victory. I've only done EK101 and TPRH, so I can't really say which source you should move on to.
 
Completed AAMC 8 just now!

PS: 12
VR: 5.
BS: 10

I don't get it... I used what I was going to use, and I ended up rushing on the last two passages, and in between the 4th and 5th passage, I was choking my way through the verbal section. I had the crappiest gut feeling coming out of VR.

EK101 being one of the more similar in passages as the AAMCs... is a lie! I felt that the AAMC passages are at times longer and harder to break down... this is embarrassing. I had the hope of breaking a 30 this time with the PS being swiftly and easily done and all, but once again, VR trumps as my rapist.
 
Completed AAMC 8 just now!

PS: 12
VR: 5.
BS: 10

I don't get it... I used what I was going to use, and I ended up rushing on the last two passages, and in between the 4th and 5th passage, I was choking my way through the verbal section. I had the crappiest gut feeling coming out of VR.

EK101 being one of the more similar in passages as the AAMCs... is a lie! I felt that the AAMC passages are at times longer and harder to break down... this is embarrassing. I had the hope of breaking a 30 this time with the PS being swiftly and easily done and all, but once again, VR trumps as my rapist.

Very sorry to hear this :(. EK101, like I said above, is really not the best indicator for how you'll do on AAMC. TPRH is leagues above EK101, in my own opinion. The passages are more similar in wording and difficulty, and the questions are more similar as well. Best of luck, hopefully you can turn this around.
 
I can't break the stupid ****ing 11 barrier. Literally, no matter whether I feel like I did horribly or did extremely well, I get an 11.

I would also LOVE some timing tips pleeeease. I run out of time every time. It's slowly getting better, but I still haven't been able to finish a full length within 60 minutes (recently averaging 63-65 minutes), and I want to be able to finish it with at least 5 minutes to spare in case I'm struck with a freakish VS on the real deal.

( I feel like my timing has been getting better since I've been skipping questions and returning later on (went from averaging 67-69 min (n=3) to 63-65 (n=5)), and what's weird is I answer these questions quicker than I would normally upon returning, and from the last 5 full lengths my percentage correct on returned questions is ~70%. )
 
You might be doing this already, but I try to find shorter/more interesting passages to tackle first. For example, I despise the verbose and or archaic humanities passages, but really enjoy sciences and politics. So, I avoid the former and tackle the latter first. Sort of like going after the discrete questions in PS/BS first.
 
Nice. Same here, even tho my scores are similar no matter the passage type, it takes me longer to find the often-flamboyant humanities authors' viewpoint thru the battle of reading the damn passage. I haven't been doing that actually, but I'll def give it a whirl tomorrow. Thanks!
 
i just got a 10 on TBR 5 VR (but 13 wrong total in the VR =/)....I hope it's because of this strategy.

What I did slightly differently was write down important stuff in simple terms of the FIRST paragraph only while using this strategy....and then followed the rest of PanRoasted's strategy. I think it worked? I'll see later w/my other VR practices or practice test. It helped with some of those super dense passages in TBR 5....like that one passage about Buddhism sects vs Hinduism and Vaidaka or whatever.
 
Nice. Same here, even tho my scores are similar no matter the passage type, it takes me longer to find the often-flamboyant humanities authors' viewpoint thru the battle of reading the damn passage. I haven't been doing that actually, but I'll def give it a whirl tomorrow. Thanks!

I actually tried out skipping the passages with really dense language for last, and it worked out really well (for timing). There was one passage on the practice I took this morning with some really hard language about philosophy, and I saved it for last and managed to have a whole 15 minutes to spend just pondering the passage. I ended up getting a perfect score on it! Overall, I got about a 12 on the test. Hope this helps! :)
 
It's basically what I do and it works well. I still have trouble with timing. it can take more than four minutes to read for understanding. I sparingly annotate.. Very seldomly .
 
I actually tried out skipping the passages with really dense language for last, and it worked out really well (for timing). There was one passage on the practice I took this morning with some really hard language about philosophy, and I saved it for last and managed to have a whole 15 minutes to spend just pondering the passage. I ended up getting a perfect score on it! Overall, I got about a 12 on the test. Hope this helps! :)

Zingggggg tried the skipping passages thing today and got my first 12. Very happy. The passage that I left for last, the densest one, I ended up getting all the questions right on. So thanks, to you and Donald :)

Unfortunately I finished this section in 69 minutes...but I think my time will get better as I get better at actually doing the skipping thing. All a matter of practice...I hope.
 
Zingggggg tried the skipping passages thing today and got my first 12. Very happy. The passage that I left for last, the densest one, I ended up getting all the questions right on. So thanks, to you and Donald :)

Unfortunately I finished this section in 69 minutes...but I think my time will get better as I get better at actually doing the skipping thing. All a matter of practice...I hope.

For me, it works better if I am confident in my ability to quickly and accurately tackle the easier topics. If you second-guess yourself a lot on the easier passages, the timing bonus may be negated... Just trust that you can move a little faster than you think you can on your stronger passages, and still maintain a good score.

Congrats on the 12 VR score! :thumbup:
 
Anyone know what %tile on Self Assessment AAMC verbal roughly correlates to a 10 or above? I got a 78% on the verbal self assessment and I'm not quite sure if it's good or bad since it said I scored 14% above average but average test taker gets like an 8.
 
I took my first full length with this strategy (AAMC 11) and broke the 10! Who would have thought that a simple strategy that focuses on reading the passage intently and then answering the questions would be extremely beneficial. Kaplan, PR, etc strategies are marketable, but don't seem to be efficient to me.
 
PANROASTED YOU CLEVER SOB

I took AAMC 4 (first full length following content review) and got a 12 ON VERBAL. Last year I took some aamc tests and never got past an 8! I follow your strategy and I get a 12!

You deserve to be a god among men, a true savior to all of those in dire need of VR skills. The true VR hero.

Excuse me while I continue to laugh hysterically
 
PANROASTED YOU CLEVER SOB

I took AAMC 4 (first full length following content review) and got a 12 ON VERBAL. Last year I took some aamc tests and never got past an 8! I follow your strategy and I get a 12!

You deserve to be a god among men, a true savior to all of those in dire need of VR skills. The true VR hero.

Excuse me while I continue to laugh hysterically

:cool: Thanks for the endorsement! I'm sure your improvement was in large part due to your hard work as well.
 
Thanks so much for posting this!!!!! I've been having a difficult time trying to break 8 on my VR. My score continually fluctuates within the 6-8 range, and I've been trying to find out a method to break that. I tried Princeton's, but I realized that it's total crap...EK's method didn't work either for me. Your method of reading actively and asking yourself questions really helped me to understand passages better. It is a little longer, but you're absolutely right about it saving time on the questions. Instead of getting 2-3 wrong per passage, I'm now getting at most 1 to 2 wrong..and 2 is rarely.

Anyways, tried this method on EK 101 today and increased my score to an 11!!!!! Thanks again! Will continue to use this method!
 
I have been tutoring the MCAT verbal reasoning section for three years now and I totally approve this strategy. The general theme / main idea is KEY to doing well on this exam.

I also believe you should spend most of your verbal studying time looking at the verbal section of the AAMC exams. Developing a pattern to answer these questions is critical.

Here's a good tip I tell my students: visualize everything you read. For example, if you read, "a pink elephant flying in the air." You will probably visualize this automatically, with little effort. Not only will this help you understand what I just typed but you will probably remember it for quite some time. Enough time to remember it when you see a question on it. MCAT questions target certain ideas (as the OP also suggests). So if a question on the MCAT discusses an elephant, you will quickly remember the idea, "a pink elephant flying in the air," allowing you to answer the question correctly.

But there's a catch. The idea I just presented is very easy to remember. It's a funny idea, not to mention you are reading it at the comfort of your home/library. Now, imagine if the MCAT gave you 10 different ideas in a passage that you probably find very boring/uninteresting and you had to process those ideas in a tense situation like a timed standardized exam. It becomes way harder to do.

Skype me and I can give you some more general tips on how to tackle the questions.
 
I have been tutoring the MCAT verbal reasoning section for three years now and I totally approve this strategy. The general theme / main idea is KEY to doing well on this exam.

I also believe you should spend most of your verbal studying time looking at the verbal section of the AAMC exams. Developing a pattern to answer these questions is critical.

Here's a good tip I tell my students: visualize everything you read. For example, if you read, "a pink elephant flying in the air." You will probably visualize this automatically, with little effort. Not only will this help you understand what I just typed but you will probably remember it for quite some time. Enough time to remember it when you see a question on it. MCAT questions target certain ideas (as the OP also suggests). So if a question on the MCAT discusses an elephant, you will quickly remember the idea, "a pink elephant flying in the air," allowing you to answer the question correctly.

But there's a catch. The idea I just presented is very easy to remember. It's a funny idea, not to mention you are reading it at the comfort of your home/library. Now, imagine if the MCAT gave you 10 different ideas in a passage that you probably find very boring/uninteresting and you had to process those ideas in a tense situation like a timed standardized exam. It becomes way harder to do.

Skype me and I can give you some more general tips on how to tackle the questions.

Why can't you just post the tips? I , for example, am in serious need for the best tips I can get regarding the verbal.
 
I just did two passages on PR Hyperlearning (In-class Compendium) and I got 5/12...Not working for me so far; however, I will continue to do it until it clicks. I just need a strategy to get an 8 in VR...If anyone can give that strategy, I will give him/her a 1000 bucks... LOL.
 
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I'm pretty sure most people already use this method without realizing it when they read or converse. This is very "intuitive" advice isn't it? The whole point of reading and writing is exchanging and understanding new ideas. That being said, I am taking this advice as an implicit backhand to the face of the Kaplan and Princeton mapping strategies.

I think what would really help is to get a better idea of who authors the questions and how. Because arguably the easiest part of VR is interpreting the main idea of the passage written by the original author. That hard part is interpreting the question author/editor's interpretation of the main author's passage... The question author gets to (subjectively) emphasize which parts of the passage are more important than others according to their own personal biases. Because when you think about it, in literature, just like in music, or any kind of art, there are an infinite amount of interpretations possible.

So perhaps and exercise to help in breaking the 12+ barrier is the author some multiple choice questions yourself. Thoroughly read an article in the New Yorker and write some of your own ball-busting-hair-pullingly-ambiguous multiple choice questions, and test them out on your friends an family. This way, at least, you can get an idea of what kind of nuances the test-maker is expecting you the catch on to.

Of course this idea may just be me blowing smoke up my own ass. But what verbal strategy out there isn't???

My scores are actually on a downward trend as I lose more and more confidence and begin to second doubt myself with every passage I take... lol or maybe it is just regression to the mean... Or maybe above a certain score it's just luck and probability?

AAMC3: 28/40 (9)
EK1: 30/40 (10)
EK2: 30/40 (10)
EK3: 32/40 (10) Oh my god I'm improving!
EK4: 31/40 (10)
EK5: 28/40 (9) Haha nope!
EK6: 15/23 (on track for an 8)

Makes me wonder why I'm even practicing if there isn't any improvement!
 
"It's better to recognize when you've begun to lose focus and take a step back than to just keep trying to push through it, then finishing the entire passage while realizing that you have not 1) actually understood any of the words you just read and/or 2) did not focus on connecting the ideas."

Very true. But how do you make your breaks effective?

I usually take 10 seconds and force myself to think of something else such as humming a 10 second tune to keep my mind from going back to the exam. I'm not sure my breaks are serving their purpose.
 
It's different for everyone. I found that looking away or closing my eyes and just taking a brief time to just let my thoughts wander a bit (brief as in <10 seconds...don't get carried away, haha) and then going back to the passage was enough.

@JLeBling: It's very difficult to improve, I agree. It can seem like there is a lot of variability in each test...but you'll begin to see that certain types of passages will always show up, and you just need to know exactly what works best for you to tackle these passages. For example, I would always leave the one passage that's about some terrible, artsy topic and that uses arcane language for last. I would usually have like 10+ minutes for it, so I could go through the passage extremely slowly. That way, I would maximize my chances of doing well on this passage. Try to leave any and all guesswork out of what your plan of attack should be on test-day.

I've said it many times, but there is no magic bullet to making the VR section easy. If you were born with a great mind for this kind of stuff, that's really good for you and you're one of the lucky ones. If not, then you have to work at it and be SMART about how you are using your VR material. Don't just blindly keep doing them and hope that you get better by the sheer number of VR passages you have done. Develop different strategies every time! I wrote this post just as a way of letting people know what strategy I eventually settled on, and it just so happened that it worked for other people, as well.

Good luck!
 
i'm curious...when you were struggling before switching to this strategy, did you not understand the first paragraph or...did you understand but then forget the first paragraph? i can come up with a good topic sentence for each paragraph but then i forget it when i move on to the next paragraph. i don't have time to write down the topic sentence for each paragraph - takes too long.

so when you slowed down for the first paragraph, is it to improve your comprehension or is it to memorize the topic sentence?
 
A little bit of both. Slowing down to really internalize the first paragraph allowed me to really permeate my thoughts and when I read the next paragraph, I would be reading it and relating it back to the first one consciously and subconsciously. It's just so easy to read the first paragraph and believe that you have memorized the topic sentence and understood it, when in fact you have not. Spending more time on the first paragraph allows you to do both.
 
passages range in length from 55 lines to 75 lines (10 words each) so 550-750 words...how long does it take you to read each passage? ~ 4 minutes or has your speed increased?
 
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