Is Verbal Reasoning bull**** or what?

[pithy84]

The purpose of this thread is to crap all over the Verbal Reasoning section.

Isn't it obnoxious? On about 40% of the questions, I feel like none of the answers are true. On an additional 40%, I feel like two of the answers are both entirely true.

That said, the passages are interesting on rare occasions.

I find that the more artsy-fartsy passages are much harder than the more scientific passages. If the passage is about a painter and it was written by a painter, that is just death. The questions will be impossible. If the passage is about a scientific phenomenon, bless the stars. You can expect logical questions. The subject area is not as important as the approach of the author. I am thinking about a passage about art where the author was very analytical and presented many facts, that was a good passage. But if the passage is devoid of facts, if it is all opinions and quotes, that is bad news.

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[Doug Underhill]

VR is the hardest and most infuriating section of the MCAT. I've found that people just sort of have an inherent score while taking it that will be very tough to exceed. There are people who just can't do it, who end up with 6s and 7s. There are people who sort of get it- they get 10s and 11s. Finally, there are those lucky bastards who just show up and score 13-15, and how they consistently manage to get those scores is baffling to the rest of us.

 

[Jack Westin]

OP, yes, the right answer is sometimes not provided as one of the four answer choices. But you must realize that the MCAT does this on purpose. The MCAT does not want you to find the right answer. That would be too easy. The MCAT, instead, wants you to eliminate the three worse answers. Think about why. This takes more deduction, critical thinking, reasoning- whatever you want to call it. So instead of always looking for the right answer, try to find the wrong ones. Eliminate these wrong ones and then see if you have one, "crappy answer, left. Although it may be crappy, it is still the "right" answer for MCAT purposes.

I know what you will say next: "What if I have two answers left, how do I pick between those two?"

This is a dilemma most students face. Here's my best advice for this: Just pick the one that is most relevant to the question stem.

 

[LChristmas]

The stumbling block for most of us in VR is that we are trained to read a certain way for studying and it is hard to forget all of that for one section of one test. What helped me was to focus only on the author's opinion and tone. Details don't need to be remembered because they can be easily referred to if a question comes up. I don't need to know the subject he/she is explaining, I need to know is what the author THINKS about the subject. It doesn't matter if the passage is about art, geology, or philosophy, all you care about is the person who wrote it.

 

[jl lin]

OMG, this is like the NCLEX, which I took a very long time ago, so I can't speak to it since then. My point. It was frustrating b/c mostly the answers were suboptimal choices for specific conditions, pt presentations, and what not. That is to say, you had to find the least crappy of all the crappy choices. Many a graduate nurse from RN school would fail across the country and would be delayed from licensure, and thus working as an RN. And it wasn't a computer-pass/fail like it is today. You were scored, which is how I got job offers right and left as compared to others. Just consider that if you get a truly optimal choice, it's a gift. Mostly, these kinds test questions are about picking the least crappy choice out of other close but crappy choices. The least crappy, most relevant choice is generally the winner with these kinds of questions. If it's more pure factual information in the questioning, than this is not necessarily true. There is this whole psychology surrounding these kinds of questions. The key is to figure out what it is they are really looking for amongst less than ideal choices.

 

[Jack Westin]

I've found that people just sort of have an inherent score while taking it that will be very tough to exceed.

After helping hundreds of students on solely the MCAT Verbal Reasoning Section, I've learned that any student can attain any score. If you can practice and keep your mind open to the pattern of the section, the test becomes less of a blur and more of a thinking test.

I know the word, "thinking", throws most people off. You don't have to be a genius to be able to do this. Any person who has the will to do well can think through this test. I have helped and seen international students who can barely speak English score above a 10. So please don't use the "I'm not a native English speaker" or "I didn't read books growing up" arguments. Being an avid reader can definitely help you but it's not necessary to perform well.

 

[Jack Westin]

The stumbling block for most of us in VR is that we are trained to read a certain way for studying and it is hard to forget all of that for one section of one test. What helped me was to focus only on the author's opinion and tone. Details don't need to be remembered because they can be easily referred to if a question comes up. I don't need to know the subject he/she is explaining, I need to know is what the author THINKS about the subject. It doesn't matter if the passage is about art, geology, or philosophy, all you care about is the person who wrote it.

I agree with everything you said. Details are not important at all. Remembering details will actually hurt you. As for author's tone, it's pretty much half of the section.

 

[Gauss44]

The purpose of this thread is to crap all over the Verbal Reasoning section.

Isn't it obnoxious? On about 40% of the questions, I feel like none of the answers are true. On an additional 40%, I feel like two of the answers are both entirely true.

That said, the passages are interesting on rare occasions.

I find that the more artsy-fartsy passages are much harder than the more scientific passages. If the passage is about a painter and it was written by a painter, that is just death. The questions will be impossible. If the passage is about a scientific phenomenon, bless the stars. You can expect logical questions. The subject area is not as important as the approach of the author. I am thinking about a passage about art where the author was very analytical and presented many facts, that was a good passage. But if the passage is devoid of facts, if it is all opinions and quotes, that is bad news.

At first glance, I thought your title said, "Ver-bull." Oh well.

There's something to this.

My 2 main issues with VR:

1. VR, or much of it, doesn't correlate to anything required of a doctor or medical student. VR requires skills completely unrelated to the reading abilities required in medical school.
----Fancy literature: When are medical students required to analyze the types of fancy literature presented in VR? Never. Why not limit VR passages to more relevant types of reading? (I've heard some people refer to VR as a "classist" lofty screening device.)

2. A good deal of VR questions boil down to the egg analogy presented in the Official December 6th MCAT thread. Search page for, "egg." http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/the-official-december-6-2014-mcat-thread.1102502/page-8 I quote (see thread for full context and replies):

See if this makes sense to you, I tried to put it in the simplest terms possible but it might just come off stupid.

Since we can't discuss specifics, the topic we're concerned with is making eggs. To make a good egg you need
1. Pan
2. Cooking spray
3. spatula for flipping the egg
4. eggs

For the AAMC practice exams it's more along the lines of; you have a pan, a spatula, and eggs. What do you need to cook a good egg? You would answer cooking spray.

On the real thing, they would give you a lengthy and convoluted passage about a guy who's cooking eggs but doesn't have a spatula and uses a fork instead. How will this effect the eggs? What if he uses no cooking spray but butter? What effect would this have on the eggs?

Obviously on a topic as simple as this you could get the answer just from common sense but on topics like electrochemsitry, atoms, electrons, etc. with fancy terms and abbreviations if you don't completely understand the passage it can get pretty time consuming, which was my main problem. The passages weren't extremely different per se, but took considerably more time for me to understand than compared to the easier plug and chug AAMC exams which was my main problem.

 

[Mgod]

The purpose of this thread is to crap all over the Verbal Reasoning section.

Isn't it obnoxious? On about 40% of the questions, I feel like none of the answers are true. On an additional 40%, I feel like two of the answers are both entirely true.

That said, the passages are interesting on rare occasions.

I find that the more artsy-fartsy passages are much harder than the more scientific passages. If the passage is about a painter and it was written by a painter, that is just death. The questions will be impossible. If the passage is about a scientific phenomenon, bless the stars. You can expect logical questions. The subject area is not as important as the approach of the author. I am thinking about a passage about art where the author was very analytical and presented many facts, that was a good passage. But if the passage is devoid of facts, if it is all opinions and quotes, that is bad news.

I feel you. let me share my story;

I started off with a 7 in VR, moved to a 9 after practice and got very, very few 10s. Plateaued at 9 for a while. Two or so weeks before my test I started just reading up content on VR topics I struggled with (e.g. art history, language, philosophy, all that soft core non-science smorgasbord. in your words the artsy-fartsy passages). Now I know VR claims they test 'reasoning' ability, but, after I 'studied' these obscure topics I found the questions a lot easier (I became familiar with obscure terms and the obscure metaphor ridden language they used, so passages were easier to understand). On test day, a passage on philosophy and another one on art came up - both of which I blazed through. Score came back, 11VR. That 11 seemed impossible but it took little effort and a simple solution to break through.

 

[jamcat]

As much as I hate to admit it, and as much as the test-writers would never admit it, I do think that having a background on the subject of the passage influences your ability to do well on the VR section. I double majored the humanities and the sciences, and I don't think that simply having a humanities major is the boon most people think it is (in fact, I think it hurt me until I figured out how to speak MCAT-language).

I think the real key to success for me is that I'm pretty well-read on a variety of topics. I grew up in an academic household and took a very wide variety of classes in undergrad and am a pretty voracious reader of both fiction and non-fiction, so there's not much content-wise you can throw at me that I can't at least place in context. By this I mean I could talk to you semi-intelligently for about 60 seconds on just about any subject you can think of. (This jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none background has some drawbacks as well! And don't make me go past 60 seconds )

I find that when reading passages, since I can so easily place the passage in context, I can quite quickly figure out if something seems off or is outside the generally-accepted consensus, which really goes a long way towards getting a sense of tone. It also helps me remember details more, because the passages generally aren't littered with thoughts I'm unfamiliar with so when I see a factoid or notable assertion, it really sticks out to me more, I think, than if I didn't know anything about the subject.

Kind of like if you read a passage on, say, cellular respiration where the author describes glycolysis and then asserts that it happens in the mitochondria or something. Instead of focusing on decoding the language, all you think in your mind is "consistent with what I know, consistent, consistent, what?? the mitochondria??, okay then the Krebs cycle, consistent..." Because you have a context to place it in, the details stand out more and it will be easier for you to approach questions about both tone and facts.

 

[pithy84]

I agree that the passages are easier if you are familiar with the subject area, but I actually think the AAMC is trying their hardest to limit that effect. I must give them credit for trying.

It is easier to read and understand a passage if you are familiar with the topic, but the MCAT questions almost always can be answered with just the facts in the passage. Very rarely do you get a question that is significantly easier if you have prior knowledge.

This is in stark contrast to Physical and Biological Sciences, where questions require outside knowledge about 80% of the time.

 

[idamaster]

How should one approach verbal passages? How to read them, what to look for...etc. Its easily my weakest point when it comes to test taking, it always has been.

 

[LChristmas]

I used the Kaplan and TPR books. I found TPR to be the most helpful because it changed my outlook and way of reading the passages. My change in outlook increased my score by 3 points. Generally, I looked for words that indicated the authors thoughts and opinions as those are the fodder for the majority of the questions. Detail oriented questions can be referred to in the passage on an as needed basis. I managed to read enough passages that I could recognize and skip sentences (sometimes whole paragraphs) because they were purely detail. This is a huge timesaver.

The most important thing in the passage is the person who wrote. Focus on the author.

 

[user12]

I hate verbal

 

[htxcoog16]

Verbal could be the death of me.

 

[pithy84]

More evidence that Verbal Reasoning is bull****: Medical school admissions committees think it is. Just look at the MSAR data on median MCAT scores. At a very good med school, you will often see this:

PS: 13
VR: 11
BS: 13

In fact, I looked at 19 med schools on MSAR. Only 1 had a VR median that was not strictly less than both PS and BS. The 1 exception was the Netter School at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. The VR (10) was equal to PS and BS. In the 18 other cases, PS and BS were at least 1 point higher than VR, and often 2 points higher for the best schools (Yale and UPenn both have 13/11/13).

 

[Doug Underhill]

Sometimes, I think the MCAT is actually scored out of 39: the effective maximum scores in each section are 14/11/14. This is why the highest bracket of scores on Table 25 is 39-45. The extra points are just fluff.

 

[LChristmas]

Sometimes, I think the MCAT is actually scored out of 39: the effective maximum scores in each section are 14/11/14. This is why the highest bracket of scores on Table 25 is 39-45. The extra points are just fluff.

To further your point:

The difference between 38 and 45 is 99%ile to 99.9%ile (almost statistically insignificant)
In VR, 13 (99.7) and 15 (99.9) renders the upper scores insignificant, whereas 8 to 11 is a 44%ile increase.

https://www.aamc.org/students/download/361080/data/combined13.pdf.pdf

 

[pithy84]

There's one Canadian school (a good one) that only considers VR, not the other scores. Analytical thinking is a valuable skill.

Then that Canadian school is stupid. Just look at Stanford, Harvard, and UPenn: All 3 have a median score on the Verbal Reasoning that is at least 2 points lower than the other two sections. I strongly suspect that Stanford, Harvard, and UPenn have done this because PS and BS are better predictors of student performance than VR.

That said, VR is not a worthless section - far from it. If someone scores a 5 on VR, then something is probably wrong.

I still reserve the right to talk smack about Verbal Reasoning. It may be necessary, but it is unpleasant. It is bull****.

Also, analytical thinking is tested on the BS and PS sections, too. And the VR section probably doesn't test analytical thinking in the best possible way. I think VR rounds out the picture provided by the test, but I still don't like the section.