MCAT Verbal Dilemma

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Satire5Texul

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Notoriously, verbal-type sections have been my weak point throughout standardized testing.
I read slow. I second guess myself. Main idea points sound enticing and I always take the bite on a wrong answer choice.

My MCAT timeline is 2 years away.

The verbal is not something you can increase in short amount of time. So I should:
Read books daily, bi-daily, particularly try to read fast
Read New Yorker, Times and other passages suggested on SDN
Read boring scientific Articles I don’t find interesting because these show up


What about using passages from other standardized tests like GRE/LSAT/etc.
My concern is exhausting my MCAT-based sources for the verbal before I take it, having little actual prep when I actually dive deep into prep material that will be a good predictor of my score and where I stand.

Is it okay to use 101 Verbal now ?

Or maybe use the material Now to get familiar with questions, because I will forget them hopefully in 2 years time when I dive deep into study (my problem is I unintentionally memorize things. I still have tests front to back from certain classes in my head I could rewrite. Not trying to brag, I just think it hinders me and might produce false higher prediction scores).
My concern. Goal. And worry. Is that I want to take the MCAT Once. And that my CARS will be extremely low.

Thank you for the advice

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Well...don't read "boring scientific Articles" because science-based essays were removed from MCAT-2015. It is now all humanities/social sciences topics (art, history, architecture, anthropology, political science, philosophy, etc.). The Times and New Yorker are okay, the Atlantic is much better to read for general practice reading challenging essays of this type. The MCAT has actually used a considerable number of Atlantic articles before. Most of their essays, however, are more like excerpts from books or theses (NOT TEXTBOOKS) within the listed disciplines. Take a peak at several of the citations at the bottom of Official Guide or AAMC 1 CAR passages and you'll know exactly what kind of literature to expect.

I wouldn't necessarily focus on reading fast unless you are a very slow reader to start. I'd focus more on reading deliberately, with purpose and focus, ensuring that you identify the purpose and function of each literary or rhetorical component. Practice identifying the author's purpose for writing the piece, his or her opinions, the tone, things that were inferred vs. overtly claimed, arguments that were well supported by evidence/example/illustration vs. those that were not. In other words, you have to learn to read far more critically than most us do naturally--we usually read fairly casually and give little thought to the purposes or intent of the author, the structure of the arguments, etc.

I would definitely save the very best practice materials (which in my opinion would be the AAMC full-lengths, the Official Guide, and the Altius set of 10 FLEs) for the very end. There's really no reason to ruin the predictive validity of good materials that are hard to come by when you have two years still to go. Getting one book/resource such might be okay (perhaps EK 101). However, most of your practice can be done just by logging the time using the correct journals/books to read from and making sure you create an accurate vision for yourself of what types of literature they are using and the types of questions they (the AAMC) are asking. Best of luck to you. You are smarter than most by getting such an early start!
 
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I second the above poster.

I also want to emphasize that learning to speed read is not going to be helpful. I'm a particularly slow reader, myself. So much so that I get complaints about it. However, I scored 93rd %-ile on CARS. For prep books, I recommend EK 2015 edition, a great 5 book set, one of which covers the verbal section.

There are no tricks or gimmicks. Well, there are plenty of the latter, which I suggest you avoid. As the above poster said, CARS is about understanding what someone is trying to tell you, and this is a skill which comes with practice. Take a world literature class sometime before the MCAT. Practice reading with a very critical, almost judgemental mindset. Also, practice listening carefully to others. Interestingly, this helps with written language comprehension, as well.
 
Thank you both so much, I appreciate the advice.

Yeah good to clear up exactly what type of passages and topics I will be encountering. Will start reading Atlantic. Kind of glad passages are humanity-based and not science. And thank you for telling me to save the material for later.

Will look into taking the class as well. Glad to hear someone who scored so high is not a fast reader - so the focus is more on comprehension. Will do my best to hone these skills as much as possible.
 
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Read boring scientific Articles I don’t find interesting because these show up

I can't imagine there isn't any medical research that interests you, given you want to become a physician. Find which field you like to learn things about, and just read a lot in that field.

Also, I found that reading a lot of political articles and skeptically reasoning through the rhetoric really exercised my critical thinking skills.
 
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I can't imagine there isn't any medical research that interests you, given you want to become a physician. Find which field you like to learn things about, and just read a lot in that field.

Also, I found that reading a lot of political articles and skeptically reasoning through the rhetoric really exercised my critical thinking skills.

I love reading about cardiology/and nutrition. I meant that I have seen people complain about extraordinarily boring articles that test your attention span on the MCAT.

but like the Altuis tutor mentioned, if they removed science-based passages and are concentrating more on the political/artsy/humanities ones, my best bet is to focus on those to gain momentum with these.

Thank you, you are absolutely right political articles are kind of meaty and do have several different layers of the cake to work through before getting to the core.
 
Just backing all of the good advice already given. If you coincidentally become a faster reader in the next two years - fantastic. If not, don't push it. Aside from trying out a few passages to get an idea of what's to come, I wouldn't burn through practice material right now. I think, for CARS especially, it helps to develop a ridiculously simple strategy that works for you and stick to it. Mine was:

a) Nail timing. I'm a slow reader, I second guess myself, and just for an extra dash of self-sabotage, I instinctively reread (why? I don't know either.). These and similar perfectionist tendencies are the perfect recipe for a horrible score. Closer to the exam, I did 5 passages per day from EK 101 and used the AAMC materials (OG, Sample Test, 2 Question Packs). I kept it simple and gave myself 10 min per passage. When I took the exam, it didn't matter whether I was ordinarily a slow reader or not. The 10 min per passage rule was like muscle memory.

b) Think and comprehend impatiently. My initial plan was to master every reading comprehension strategy under the sun, and then absorb everything I read in its entirety. I quickly realized this wouldn't work for me, personally, so I tried quick-and-dirty instead. In reading, in conversation with others, in watching the news - I'd think "What's your bottom line? You obviously have some sort of angle, so just tell me what it is already." This helped me in a huge way with combating perfectionism while reading, sifting through the bull, and getting to the meat of the passage. Good luck!
 
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Just backing all of the good advice already given. If you coincidentally become a faster reader in the next two years - fantastic. If not, don't push it. Aside from trying out a few passages to get an idea of what's to come, I wouldn't burn through practice material right now. I think, for CARS especially, it helps to develop a ridiculously simple strategy that works for you and stick to it. Mine was:

a) Nail timing. I'm a slow reader, I second guess myself, and just for an extra dash of self-sabotage, I instinctively reread (why? I don't know either.). These and similar perfectionist tendencies are the perfect recipe for a horrible score. Closer to the exam, I did 5 passages per day from EK 101 and used the AAMC materials (OG, Sample Test, 2 Question Packs). I kept it simple and gave myself 10 min per passage. When I took the exam, it didn't matter whether I was ordinarily a slow reader or not. The 10 min per passage rule was like muscle memory.

b) Think and comprehend impatiently. My initial plan was to master every reading comprehension strategy under the sun, and then absorb everything I read in its entirety. I quickly realized this wouldn't work for me, personally, so I tried quick-and-dirty instead. In reading, in conversation with others, in watching the news - I'd think "What's your bottom line? You obviously have some sort of angle, so just tell me what it is already." This helped me in a huge way with combating perfectionism while reading, sifting through the bull, and getting to the meat of the passage. Good luck!

I do the same thing o.o I will re-read and read again. Underline words that mean nothing. Trying to get it every angle, when I should be concerned with the bigger picture. Thank you ! Yeah I need to learn to cope with similar.

Did You read the passage I am guessing, and then look at the questions ?
Or look at the questions to see whats coming then read passage ?
 
I do the same thing o.o I will re-read and read again. Underline words that mean nothing. Trying to get it every angle, when I should be concerned with the bigger picture. Thank you ! Yeah I need to learn to cope with similar.

Did You read the passage I am guessing, and then look at the questions ?
Or look at the questions to see whats coming then read passage ?

I'm that person who has to actively stop myself from highlighting every word of every book. The struggle is real.

At first, I forced myself to read through the entire passage once, put down an answer to every question, and move on. This was a good starting point. I would've preferred to look at the questions first, but with one question per page and clicking back and forth, that wasn't realistic time-wise. I tweaked this as time went on and I practiced more, though. For instance, I always made sure to start the section on an enjoyable-ish passage and a short question. Meaning, if I glanced at the first passage and thought "I'm going to hate this one" within three seconds, I quickly clicked to the next one. Rinse and repeat until you get to one you like (but this shouldn't take more than 10-15 seconds). The momentum I gained from always starting the section off on a good note was a huge help. Plus, if they start the section off with a passage intended to give you a panic attack, it won't really phase you. Never highlighted during practice, and didn't let myself on the real thing either.
 
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If you feel that CARS will cause you trouble, attack it early on. It's essentially a reading test. So start reading more! Read anything you want and also boring stuff that you normally would not read. You'll find yourself learning a lot about different topics and becoming a better reader as a result. If you do this everyday, especially two years from the MCAT, you will be way more confident. CARS is more than reading but having the comprehension ability down will make it easier for you to improve when the time is right.
 
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I'm that person who has to actively stop myself from highlighting every word of every book. The struggle is real.

At first, I forced myself to read through the entire passage once, put down an answer to every question, and move on. This was a good starting point. I would've preferred to look at the questions first, but with one question per page and clicking back and forth, that wasn't realistic time-wise. I tweaked this as time went on and I practiced more, though. For instance, I always made sure to start the section on an enjoyable-ish passage and a short question. Meaning, if I glanced at the first passage and thought "I'm going to hate this one" within three seconds, I quickly clicked to the next one. Rinse and repeat until you get to one you like (but this shouldn't take more than 10-15 seconds). The momentum I gained from always starting the section off on a good note was a huge help. Plus, if they start the section off with a passage intended to give you a panic attack, it won't really phase you. Never highlighted during practice, and didn't let myself on the real thing either.
Ohhh that is a lovely strategy. I will try that. I think its a huge advantage to tweak the sections to your liking. Thank you !!

I scored 95th percentile on August 2013 VR, and that's with me feeling like I needed to pee half way through. What the above posters said is correct, do not focus on speed reading. Instead, focus on becoming actively engaged in the passage you are reading. You should only need to read each passage once and answer the questions based on your comprehension of the passage. This implies that you must not only read words in the passage but read the actual sentences and understand how the idea portrayed in each sentence fits in with the context of the paragraph.

This is something that you can practice in everything you read. At first it will make you an even slower reader, but your reading will be much more efficient regardless. I might even venture to say that if you only finish 5/6 passages, but you nail each of those passages because you understood everything you read, the net result will be a higher score than if you practiced speed reading for an hour daily. And there is good news, just like with athletic training, you can become a noticeably better reader in a short amount of time, especially if you are out of practice.

Yeah I did see this being even discussed. quality over quantity trying to get through them all. I think people say roughly 10 min per passage.
I think I need to train myself to actively change and shape the tone as I go along. I know and imagine it changes with time. I need to think actively and mentally about it. Good job on your score btw. my comprehension just has to increase. I need to train it like a muscle.

If you feel that CARS will cause you trouble, attack it early on. It's essentially a reading test. So start reading more! Read anything you want and also boring stuff that you normally would not read. You'll find yourself learning a lot about different topics and becoming a better reader as a result. If you do this everyday, especially two years from the MCAT, you will be way more confident. CARS is more than reading but having the comprehension ability down will make it easier for you to improve when the time is right.

Other than the Atlantic and New Yorker, what else would you suggest reading ?
 
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