How to improve a VR score of 5?

[jdla]

I planning to take the MCAT in April.

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[jdla]

Should I read Atlantic Monthly Wall, Street Jounral, and the Economist? Are these are good read for the MCAT.

 

[jdla]

Any advice? My score has been hard to improve. The EK 101 book was not helpful. I voided my Sept exam. Is it okay if I do the EK 101 passage timed 8 mins one at a time than start doing full lenght until I see improvement in the amount that I get right? What should I do?

 

[BloodySurgeon]

Try Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and your local newspaper for outside reading. This is helpful but I suggest constantly doing practice passage and map out every passage. This is crucial, I started with a 4 and now hitting 10-11s on all my practices. Really the point of outside reading is to just get you familiar with topics outside of our pre-med scope of knowledge. If you know a little about Van Gogh painting and you get a passage on him, your background knowledge will get you far.

Most people will argue otherwise and everyone has their own way of studying. This worked best with me, I say try it out and see if you like it yourself.

**HINT** Know when the author is giving his own opinion!!! VERY IMPORTANT **HINT**

 

[Blade28]

Please be patient. You posted three separate times in this thread, all within a span of 14 minutes.

Especially on a Friday night, you should know that the SDN boards aren't quite as busy as in the middle of a weekday, for example.

 

[SDN2013]

Please be patient. You posted three separate times in this thread, all within a span of 14 minutes.

Especially on a Friday night, you should know that the SDN boards aren't quite as busy as in the middle of a weekday, for example.

typical of many pre-meds lol, sad but true

 

[BeatrixKiddo]

lol 5

 

[littlealex]

There is no magic formula. Reading a lot helps, but it is far from a guarantee and I don't think you'll get anywhere near a 5 point improvement. Reading skills is something you learn in a span of, I don't know, five years?

Reading the OpEd on Wall Street Journal, reading research papers on PubMed both helped in my case. Read those articles specifically for the information they are conveying. Be skeptical, notice the style, and learn to quickly extract information.

 

[Profligate]

my thought is to read up on some philosophy. it will give you ideas on how to have a more than knee jerk reaction to a topic and how to be more thoughtful and thorough. remember most newspapers aim for the 6th grade reading level. you want to do better than that.

 

[spoudaios]

To Bloodysurgeon...

What do you exactly do when you read? That was an incredible achievement from 4 to constantly scoring 10 to 11.

All keep saying read this and that but you have to keep asking yourself at the end of each paragraph and at the end of the whole article, what is the author's purpose? Since you don't have a way of checking whether you're right or wrong, how do you confirm whether you're doing the right thing?

What did you do on the real thing? How do you map and annotate? Can you give examples?

 

[osli]

All keep saying read this and that but you have to keep asking yourself at the end of each paragraph and at the end of the whole article, what is the author's purpose? Since you don't have a way of checking whether you're right or wrong, how do you confirm whether you're doing the right thing?

Unfortunately, the advice to "read, read, read some more" is great advice for someone asking years out (at least one full year, hopefully several) from the exam time. The point is to develop an actual interest in reading... about any subject! Look at every passage, every article, every magazine, every ingredients list on the back of every deodorant can when you are "on the throne" as an opportunity to learn something that you didn't previously know (no, I'm not kidding... everything around you with words on it gives you an opportunity to learn something). By reading and cultivating that thirst for knowledge, you will intuitively pick up a sense of the author's purpose, tone, etc.

But if you are trying to pull up a score with a few months of "preparation" in VR, I'm not sure what to tell you. Read as much as you can, make sure you have found at least one "strategy" from one of the prep guru's that you seem to like and think has a chance of working for you, and devote plenty of time to practice passages.

What did you do on the real thing? How do you map and annotate? Can you give examples?

I read the passage and then answered the questions. On rare occasions I looked back at the passage to find a specific detail needed to give the correct answer. No mapping, no strategy. That is because by and large the answers to the questions should be obvious. Disheartening, I'm sure, but the truth is that VR is something you can't "cram" for with a "winning strategy" despite what Kaplan and Princeton might tell you.

 

[BloodySurgeon]

Yea, I know... I'm surprised myself, especially since people constantly told me it would be impossible to improve that much without prior reading experience. I do a combination of many thing and it seems to work so far.

I don't necessarily question what's the author's purpose is in each paragraph, but just write quickly (1-3 words) the topic of each paragraph. I only refer back to my outline if the question needs me to and usually it does.

You know when the author is inputing his/her own voice with key words. Like when she says however or but. This should be red flagged and written on your outline. Or when the author is trying to describe 2 or more peoples opinions I make columns to separate them. Knowing if the author is trying to be informative or opinionated is very key and will always give you an extra point or two.

Also, extreme answers are usually wrong.

When I get a passage about a topic I have no clue about, I read a little more about it after the test. People and topics reappear a lot and just knowing a little background of it takes you a long way (a paragraph more is good enough).

There are more than just these hints, and its hard to tell em all because its more like an art than a strategy. I got use to the type of questions the test maker gives and became more aware of sentences that could be questioned later

Another thing that may of helped me is that my classes require me to read a lot. So I don't know how much each contributed to raise my score, but something i did sure worked and I hope to do even better in the near future.

To Bloodysurgeon...

What do you exactly do when you read? That was an incredible achievement from 4 to constantly scoring 10 to 11.

All keep saying read this and that but you have to keep asking yourself at the end of each paragraph and at the end of the whole article, what is the author's purpose? Since you don't have a way of checking whether you're right or wrong, how do you confirm whether you're doing the right thing?

What did you do on the real thing? How do you map and annotate? Can you give examples?

 

[Rotinaj]

Ugh, the biggest problem with VR is they usually find some pompous verbose author that should have been executed a long time ago and quote them. Seriously, I have 10 times the writing skills as some of the authors of the sample questions I read on a practice VR section (took it for fun). A good author doesn't make you waste your time trying to understand what they're saying, he makes it clear in a concise way with an overall flow. Still, since it's very high-level vocabulary and a lot of it is borderline jargon, it makes it difficult to interpret everything without having to think. So yeah, it's a good test, it's just that bad writing really pisses me off.

 

[swifteagle43]

P R A C T I C E

Lots and lots and lots. Make sure you REVIEW as well what you got wrong...

if you are getting a 5 figure out why...

issues include:

-Timing?
-Comprehension?
-Difficulty with a particular type of passage(I HATE NATURAL SCIENCES)?
-Reading speed?

EK 101 kinda does suck- think it is over rated.... but their strategies in the thin book and the audio are good. HIGHLY recommend the KAPLAN topicals and subjects for the verbal. I ran through them....all of them... i got a 10 which is not great but I got a solid 10 and I started out with a 6 or a 7.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Unfortunately, the advice to "read, read, read some more" is great advice for someone asking years out (at least one full year, hopefully several) from the exam time. The point is to develop an actual interest in reading... about any subject! Look at every passage, every article, every magazine, every ingredients list on the back of every deodorant can when you are "on the throne" as an opportunity to learn something that you didn't previously know (no, I'm not kidding... everything around you with words on it gives you an opportunity to learn something). By reading and cultivating that thirst for knowledge, you will intuitively pick up a sense of the author's purpose, tone, etc.

But if you are trying to pull up a score with a few months of "preparation" in VR, I'm not sure what to tell you. Read as much as you can, make sure you have found at least one "strategy" from one of the prep guru's that you seem to like and think has a chance of working for you, and devote plenty of time to practice passages.

I read the passage and then answered the questions. On rare occasions I looked back at the passage to find a specific detail needed to give the correct answer. No mapping, no strategy. That is because by and large the answers to the questions should be obvious. Disheartening, I'm sure, but the truth is that VR is something you can't "cram" for with a "winning strategy" despite what Kaplan and Princeton might tell you.

Brilliant advice! In many years of doing this, the people who actually improve over a few short months are ones who aren't looking for a "trick". It's the ones who learn from their mistakes and develop their Own stragegy. This strategy may be influenced by the techniques they read about in whatever soruces they use for preparation, but none of them blindly take strategies at face value. There are certain techniques you can and should employ, but no one single technique works for everyone nor does one strategy work on every type of passsage. Experiment and learn what works for you!

Doing comes with a shift in your attitude. This applies to the whole test. An enthusiasm for learning and understanding how things work goes a long way to doing well on all sections of this exam. A love for critical thinking and a positive attitude go a long, long way.

Any advice? My score has been hard to improve.

Nearly everyone will tell you to read more and they'll recommend specific magazines. This is a good start, but you need to do more than just read piles of material to improve. You must reason through many questions, especially ones you contemplate as you read, so you learn how to answer questions.

To get better at answering questions, you have to first learn from your mistakes. Evaluate what types of errors you make and what type of questions you find most difficult, and work on those.

However, before you do too much, you need to determine if timing is a problem. Break a set of passages into two equal halves. For one half, give yourself an unlimited amount of time to finish. On the second half, give yourself a time restriction. Do this a few times to get balance. Compare your scores. If you are lucky enough to discover that you do better with no time limit, then you know you need to speed up. Reading on a regular basis will help.

However, in the likely event that your score with unlimited time is not much different than your score with time constraints, then it comes down to how you are processing questions. There are many ways to improve how you process questions, but they all start with evaluating what type of questions you miss. You need to categorize questions according to your perspective. It is really important that you use your categories rather than any suggested by a prep company, because your style of test-taking will benefit from your analysis, not a general analysis. Also, you will likely want to experiment with strategies from multiple courses, so you don't want to lock yourself into a mentality that one persepctive is better than another.

After this, tabulate where most of your mistakes are occurring. For me, inference questions were the tough ones...

Ugh, the biggest problem with VR is they usually find some pompous verbose author that should have been executed a long time ago and quote them. Seriously, I have 10 times the writing skills as some of the authors of the sample questions I read on a practice VR section (took it for fun).

Yeah, those pompous authors who think they are so great at writing can be annoying.

 

[onemoreyear]

Take many timed practice tests... and review your answers carefully after the test. Figure out why your answers were incorrect. Did you not understand the passage? Did you run out of time? Did you lose focus? Did the passage use words that were new to you?

If you give us a better sense of why you are answering questions incorrectly we can offer more useful suggestions. If you take a few practice tests and carefully review your answers you may notice a pattern on your own, or get a better sense of what "correct" answers look like...

 

[MamadP]

There is no magic formula. Reading a lot helps, but it is far from a guarantee and I don't think you'll get anywhere near a 5 point improvement. Reading skills is something you learn in a span of, I don't know, five years?

Reading the OpEd on Wall Street Journal, reading research papers on PubMed both helped in my case. Read those articles specifically for the information they are conveying. Be skeptical, notice the style, and learn to quickly extract information.

I went from a 5 on my diag to an 11 on the real thing. I was never a big reader and growing up I usually spent my "reading time" playing video games instead. All I did was practice, practice, and more practice to raise my score. Did every single TPR passage, all the Kaplan VR section tests, and the entire EK101 book. It takes great effort, but it can happen...

 

[littlealex]

Bleh. People always say practice makes perfect, but I started with a 10, after 16 FULL LENGTH verbal test practices, I ended up with a 10. AND I was only scoring between 10-11 on my practices.

What was I doing wrong =(

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Bleh. People always say practice makes perfect, but I started with a 10, after 16 FULL LENGTH verbal test practices, I ended up with a 10. AND I was only scoring between 10-11 on my practices.

What was I doing wrong? =(

Wrong? Probably nothing at all.

The statistical reality once you hit a 10 or higher in verbal reasoning is that the exam you get will likely impact your score more than your abilities. The right test gets you a 12, but the wrong test gets you a 10.

The only suggestion I'd make would be to see if you make careless errors, and if you do, there is your room for improvement. But hopefully with a VR10, you won't be taking this little quiz ever again.

 

[Howzat]

Brilliant advice! In many years of doing this, the people who actually improve over a few short months are ones who aren't looking for a "trick". It's the ones who learn from their mistakes and develop their Own stragegy. This strategy may be influenced by the techniques they read about in whatever soruces they use for preparation, but none of them blindly take strategies at face value. There are certain techniques you can and should employ, but no one single technique works for everyone nor does one strategy work on every type of passsage. Experiment and learn what works for you!

Doing comes with a shift in your attitude. This applies to the whole test. An enthusiasm for learning and understanding how things work goes a long way to doing well on all sections of this exam. A love for critical thinking and a positive attitude go a long, long way.



Nearly everyone will tell you to read more and they'll recommend specific magazines. This is a good start, but you need to do more than just read piles of material to improve. You must reason through many questions, especially ones you contemplate as you read, so you learn how to answer questions.

To get better at answering questions, you have to first learn from your mistakes. Evaluate what types of errors you make and what type of questions you find most difficult, and work on those.

However, before you do too much, you need to determine if timing is a problem. Break a set of passages into two equal halves. For one half, give yourself an unlimited amount of time to finish. On the second half, give yourself a time restriction. Do this a few times to get balance. Compare your scores. If you are lucky enough to discover that you do better with no time limit, then you know you need to speed up. Reading on a regular basis will help.

However, in the likely event that your score with unlimited time is not much different than your score with time constraints, then it comes down to how you are processing questions. There are many ways to improve how you process questions, but they all start with evaluating what type of questions you miss. You need to categorize questions according to your perspective. It is really important that you use your categories rather than any suggested by a prep company, because your style of test-taking will benefit from your analysis, not a general analysis. Also, you will likely want to experiment with strategies from multiple courses, so you don't want to lock yourself into a mentality that one persepctive is better than another.

After this, tabulate where most of your mistakes are occurring. For me, inference questions were the tough ones...



Yeah, those pompous authors who think they are so great at writing can be annoying.

I just wanted to say BerkReviewTeach: EXCELLENT POST! Some great advice.