AAMC practice test verbals

[novawildcat]

Anyone else finding them to be all over the place? If you look at the break down, the amount of hard questions on them can range from only 3 or 4 hard questions, up to 14. I got absolutely destroyed on the verbal for tests 4 and 5 (which both have 11 hard questions), but did decent on the other practice tests. Anyone else having difficulty trying to gauge how good their verbal skills are? Do different MCATs have extremes on the number of 'hard' verbal questions like the AAMC practice tests do?

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[extremophile]

it seems the degree of difficulty is variable on the real test from one setting to another. that's just the nature of the exam. don't worry about it though, they will scale the exam accordingly, so the important thing is to not freak out and get discouraged if you end up getting a difficult section.

 

[Longshanks]

I felt the determination for what was the difficulty of a question, while accurate in the sciences, seemed rather erratic for VR. Sometimes I'd do 2-3 points better on VR with nearly a dozen "hard" questions and struggle to stay at 10 for those with just a few. Ignore the distinction of what's "hard" or "easy" in the VR solutions. Focus on understanding what the test is looking for and your patterns of logic through the section. Understand why you get VR questions right or wrong, and how to distinguish between the ambiguity that is sometimes in the answer choices of this section.

As extremophile said, it'll be scaled properly, so on test day just get through it with your best attitude and focus, knowing you've practiced this plenty of times and choose the best solution confidently. Don't let a passage intimidate you.

 

[Marcus Brody]

There are only 40 questions. If they AREN'T "all over the place" it is pretty much a mathematical miracle. The idea is to get yourself to the point where a good score is simply more likely than a bad one. That's really all you can hope for.