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Did anyone perform poorly on your practice tests for Verbal and got a much better score on the real thing? I feel like verbal is so hit and miss, sometimes I'll do well and sometimes I won't.
Took the MCAT in 06. My last practice exam with Kaplan was a 10 and on the real thing I got a 13. I think the test-day made a big difference. I also read a socio text book between PS and VR sections, which I had never done before.
you read a humanities textbook in between? that sounds like a good idea
I had never finished the verbal section without putting guesses down prior to test-day. The first couple of passages had taken me much longer because I had to initially switch mental gears. By reading in between PS and VR, the first couple of passages took me half the time... no, really... and I ended up with 5-10 minutes at the end of the section to go back over and re-read questions and chill. I'm not sure if it was just a psychological thing or if it's legit, but it was a Kaplan suggestion that I had never taken seriously.
I thought you weren't allowed to "study" during breaks. Wouldn't picking up a textbook look like studying to the proctors? Or did you just use a novel or something?
That, and some test center proctors do not care if you read stuff in between probably.That might have changed since I took it. We were allowed to do whatever the hell we wanted, if I recall correctly.
I never got over a 10 on any practice test (maybe 11 once...maybe), but I got a 13 on the real thing. And I finished the VR in 48 minutes, while I never finished more than a minute or two early on the practice tests. I was just extra-ordinarily focused on test day!
Oh god that must have felt so amazing LOL!!! I hate verbal and always get 10 it seems, with the occasion 11 and one 9.
at least some of you are getting 9s and 10s on your practice verbal... I am not even getting 6, mostly 5s... Yep if anything stops me from getting into medical school, its going to be my verbal
Stupid section IMO. There's enough reading comprehension in the sciences. Just put another science section lol. I hate how verbal boosts the scores of people who suck at science but were like art majors. Its like wow you can get a 13 verbal but get 7's on the science...wtf.
not necessarily. I understand the rationale behind having a verbal section, since a good deal of medical school, as well as medicine in general, is reading and analyzing. I'm not great at verbal either, but I can at least understand why it's there. There's certainly more irrelevant things on the test (physics).
I understand what your saying, but I can read a biochemistry passage or anything biology related MUCH better than I can read about Immanuel Kant's 600+ word passage followed by some ridiculously irrelevant-to-medicine questions that ONLY pertain to how the author's thoughts are organized to convince us of whatever the hell he or she were trying to say.... I am sorry, but reading humanities, arts, histories and such proves nothing of what kind of a clinician I am going to become....
I am not complaining about why the verbal is there, I am just complaining with the thought process that went into thier heads when they said "hmmm, how do we weed out more students? I KNOW, LETS TAKE A BUNCH OF SCIENTIFIC-MINDED FOLKS AND MAKE THEM READ NON-SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE...." Sorry I am having a bad practice day with verbal today