Advice for those of you struggling to get above a 7 on Verbal

[s48jet]

Most people on this forum whine about getting from an 11 to a 12 on verbal. But what about the rest of us just trying to get anything above a 7? That was me for almost a whole year! I took the MCAT last year and got a 7 on verbal. I was never able to finish the section either. I retook a month ago and while studying for this time I experimented with my approaches to verbal in order to improve. I finally had a method that worked for me and its very simple, I never did passages in order.

I would only do the easier passages in my first time around (this allowed me to build up momentum and rack up a lot of minutes to spend on the harder passages). Then saved the harder passages for later. I read about it in a Princeton Review book and thought it was a dumb idea, but I tried it and it worked! Its all about the attitude, and if you build momentum from the easy passages you will feel more confident approaching the harder ones.

Anyways, on my AAMC practice tests I started scoring 9-11 on the verbal. On the actual test I got a 9 on the verbal section. Its definitely not ideal, but for those of you who understand the frustration of trying to get a decent score on verbal, you know how happy I was to see that I had scored a 9!

Hope this helps, and good luck to everyone!

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[TactileReceptor]

How can you distinguish the harder passages from the easier passages in a reasonable amount of time?

 

[xoxx]

How can you distinguish the harder passages from the easier passages in a reasonable amount of time?

same question

 

[aspiringdoc09]

Yes. How do you distinguish passages? I mean you can have a hard passage but easy questions, or an easy passage and hard questions.

 

[ridethecliche]

Honestly, try this strategy.

Read the questions first and write down the key points from the question. Now read the passage, if there's something that directly answers the question, then go answer it right away and highlight that part of the passage. When you're done reading, you should be done about half the questions already.

Now answer all the questions, double checking the ones you've answered already.

Sometimes the hardest passage to read has the easiest questions to answer. You don't have to fully understand the passage to get the questions right, just the parts that it asks you about.

In the hardest passages, they usually ask on the simpler stuff. If you get bogged down trying to understand the entire passage, you'll waste valuable time.

 

[s48jet]

Well I agree that often times the harder passages have the easier questions but I spend about 30 seconds reading the first paragraph or so and glance at how complicated the questions look. It seems like wasting time but for me it ended up saving a lot of time! As for what is a hard passage it depends on the person. For example, I if I see a passage about mideival art I would skip it because those tend to be complicated. If I see one about bears Id hop on it right away. You are still doing every passage so it doesnt matter if which order you do them in. You should essentially do them in whatever order you want to, this way you are taking control of the test, its all a mental game. This is just my strategy. Try it, if it doesnt work then too bad. But if you are anything like I was then you are desperate for anything to atleast get you an 8 or 9.

 

[thelullaby99]

My strategy for distinguishing passages is...skip anything about the arts or economics or philosophies. Or anything that I can't comprehend by reading the first sentence.

But most of the time I just do them in order, because I just can't decide. My average of VR is 8-12, closer to 9. Not a native speaker.