how many VR passages did you do?

[nassir]

Just wondering to see how many others didn't get to do all nine. I skipped the last one with 5 Qs and just bubbled in C.

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[Sol Rosenberg]

Did them all....

 

[Mr. Tee]

All 9 with about 10 minutes left to go back and check answers.

 

[the12thmd]

10 not an answer choice?

 

[tennisguy896]

Finished with about 6 or 7 minutes, reviewed, but felt good about my answers.

 

[Mr. Tee]

10 not an answer choice?

Was there a form with 10 passages?

 

[tennisguy896]

Was there a form with 10 passages?

Dang, that would have been kinda odd.

 

[humerus]

At least I think I only really did 7 (skimmed/wild guessed on all others). Verbal should've been my highest section, but blew it by getting stuck on a notorious passage. Seemed like time literally flew by. Guess I'm the only one in the poll. I'm already strategizing for August.

 

[DF38]

Finished them all. My form had two 10 questions passages, that was kind of evil.

 

[PBandJ]

finished all of them (this time)...had about 2 minutes to go over my answers.

 

[oxeye]

Finished them all. My form had two 10 questions passages, that was kind of evil.

My form and every AAMC practice test I took had two 10 question passages. I think it is standard.

 

[oxeye]

Oh - and I finished all the passages with time to go back and review some answers I was iffy about. That adrenalin was good for making me think quickly (hopefully accurately too - we'll see in June!).

 

[DrVanNostran]

I got to 8 and half unfortunately grrr :/

 

[j-med]

All 9 with about 10 minutes left to go back and check answers.

What do you do or you just in general read quickly that got you 10 whole minutes left in the VR section?

i'm just curious that's all.. being a ESL, I congrats myself that this time I actually finished them all except for 3 questions, the last VRs I did I usually have 1 whole passage left, I guess exam situations made me more focused helped too..

 

[tennisguy896]

I really hope my gut feelings were right in verbal b/c I definitely answered a lot of qs based on my gut b/c I didn't think I had too much time after those 2 back to back 10 q passages. Then with my extra time, I wasn't really sure what to review.

 

[meister]

I didn't have time to finish. I did 9/10 (I think mine had 10). On the 10th passage I skimmed and did it quickly and guessed completely on the last 2 questions.

I had never before not finished the VR, on all the practice tests I got 12's. I'm expecting a 10 now (or lower even).

 

[Mr. Tee]

What do you do or you just in general read quickly that got you 10 whole minutes left in the VR section?

i'm just curious that's all.. being a ESL, I congrats myself that this time I actually finished them all except for 3 questions, the last VRs I did I usually have 1 whole passage left, I guess exam situations made me more focused helped too..

read at a moderate pace...not too slow to get bogged down in details but fast enough to get a feel for the main idea and major points in the passage, but not too fast to prevent me from understanding the passage.

That and you have to learn how to answer the questions quickly and efficiently (ie. spotting all the tricks they throw at you).

 

[humerus]

I'll take that advice too for Aug.

 

[heeseop]

did 8, last passage i skimmed and did 2 prob, guessed 5...
happened to me thruout the practice exams, so i didn't panic all that much..

 

[medschool22]

I usually get 10's in VR just by doing the following:
1) Go directly to the question and read the answer choices
2) Find the answer in the passsage, skimming to find the answer (usually an answer is in one paragraph, sometimes spaced out in two, and that's for those "I only, II only, I and III, etc type).
3) For "global" questions on a passage (big picture, what's the thesis etc) I look to where your most likely to find these answers anyways (thesis = first two sentences or last two sentences of the passage, etc)

4) For the 10 question passages, I use this method as much as I can. Sometimes I will resort to reading the passage and then proceeding with the method I just layed out

I usually do just fine. It helps when you're running out of time too. During some of the practice exams I would just read the last 2 sentences of the last paragraph, and I would get 4/5 or 5/6 of the questions right for that passage.

I'm not saying this will work for everyone, but if you're not scoring what you'd like to, I'd say give it a shot.

 

[peanutbutterfly]

I finished the VR section about 15 minutes early so I had time to review a few of the "iffy" questions. There was a guy sitting close to me who finished way before I did- I have no idea how he did it.

 

[shantster]

Finished them all. My form had two 10 questions passages, that was kind of evil.

What was evil was getting them back to back. Definitely screwed my head with timing since they took so long.

 

[PBandJ]

i wasn't too surprised to see them back to back. i did the first few passages to build up some momentum, then i attacked both 10 question passages, and then did the rest. it helped me to keep on pace (on AAMC 9 i did the 10 q passages first, and it didn't work out all that great, so i tried something different).

 

[HunterGatherer]

I agree. I liked the idea of doing the two 10 question passages early so I could feel like I could coast through the rest of the exam. I definitely did not want my last passage to be 10 questions.

My form and every AAMC practice test I took had two 10 question passages. I think it is standard.

 

[Mr. Tee]

i wasn't too surprised to see them back to back. i did the first few passages to build up some momentum, then i attacked both 10 question passages, and then did the rest. it helped me to keep on pace (on AAMC 9 i did the 10 q passages first, and it didn't work out all that great, so i tried something different).

Me neither. I did all of the passages up to the first 10-question one in order, then did the first 10-question one. Skipped the next 10-question passage and saved it for last. I had 30 minutes for the two passages at the end (one was the skipped 10-question passage) so I was comfortable with doing this. YMMV.

 

[albaniandoc]

I did all of them.
On the last one the proctor called "five minutes left" I panicked, so I went straight to the answers and tried to find them on the passage. Three minutes later she says, wait, now you have 5 minutes. So we really had 8 minutes, which is the amount of time I spend on a passage anyway. Well, needless to say that threw me off and could not focus to read the passage and answer the questions correctly. I hope I did ok. On practice exams I did very well on the first three or four passages and slowly declined as my focus diminished, so it was not a huge loss I'd say. Will see when the scores come out.
Is it f*%&ing June yet ???

 

[EddieIndy]

I did all 9, but the last one I started with about 7 minutes left, so I had to rush through it.
People who finish way early - they might be using the extreme version of the EK method: not going back to the passage at all. I tried it once on a practice test and finished 30 minutes early, but I got a 7. What they really suggest is to try it once on a practice test without going back, and then use the time left to go back to the passage on the real test. This method has brought my practice score much higher. So don't be stressed if you see others finishing early, maybe they're just not going back to the passage at all...

 

[snowkhat]

Ufff, dah! I counted my passages at the beginning and saw the big letter X. I had 10 passages!! Holy frijoles! I freaked out but then settled down and hopped to it. The 5 or so social science/history passages almost killed me....but strangely I had 20 minutes to spare at the end! I was like wuh? I guess all those Kaplan passages helped! Let's pray it did anyway. I also had 11 passages in each of the sciences....Ay dios!

 

[humerus]

oooh, oooh, there are 6 others on the poll with me in the [7] range. misery loves company.

 

[kevinp2]

wow I'm surprised so many people don't get to finish the VR....I wonder how they can afford to make the curve so brutal for that section when so many people don't have the time to finish....

the section is kind of a blur to me at this point....does anyone with form CK remember 2 10 question passages. I think I had 2...

 

[clubescape]

I was doing the 8th passage as 5 minutes was called. I thought the VR was really hard. I definitely choked on it and feel like I was guessing most of the time. I hope the curve is generous although I have a feeling it won't really be.

 

[twofish]

I finished 8 and have 6 minutes left for the 9th. I skimmed through the last passage and guessed quite a few Qs. I felt the verbal is the hardest section and felt terrible after the test. But I hear everyone with the same form say verbal is hard so I'll see if the curve helps. I just hope a miracle happens and I get a > 8 on verbal.

I decide from now on to start reading stuff that's really convoluted and academic from certain magazine and books, just in case I have to retake =(
BTW, I tried almost all the strategy I know (EK, TPR), none really helped in raising my verbal score. I was almost desperate.