Slowing down the Mcat

[akellish1028]

Looking for some help here...
Little bit of background: I have always been a "fast" test taker, not on purpose it just is what it is, on in class exams I go through the entire exam twice normally just to double check.

I have been studying for the mcat for a couple months now, test is in January, and one of my biggest problems is that I feel like I am not using my time efficiently. I changed my verbal strategy to take notes after each paragraph and summarize at the end (little short notes) and slowed down on going from finishing in under 45minutes to taking almost the entire time and my score did increase.

For my bio/chem I typically finish in about 50minutes, for psych I typically have gone through in 30minutes. I feel like it is a stupid question and really just looking for any strategies people have used to utilize the whole time. I kind of feel like I am short changing my self leaving so much time on the table but not sure how to change it besides just trying to take notes on everything as I go?

(my practice test are nothing exceptional low 500's, all below 510 so really not bragging genuinely need help)

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[Slave to the Game]

I'd suggest after your first run-through, read over each question very carefully - read every single word in the question. I tend to skim and skip things, especially on topics that I was overly comfortable with, and this helped me a lot. FYI I took it last April, got a 33. Verbal was my weakest, so I won't make any suggestions there.

 

[akellish1028]

Verbal is my weakest too, just isn't my thing I guess but working on fixing that. A 33 is a great score though! Thanks for the tip, I am going to try it when I take a full length friday night.

 

[deleted714452]

I got a 10 the first time then a 12 the second time on the Verbal, so I don't know if I qualified enough to help you but I'll give you some of the tips I used to improve my score.

1) Slow down and highlight key sentences from the passage.
2) Drown out prior knowledge and go strictly based on what the question asks and what's in the passage. Refer back to the key sentences
3) After finishing all the questions, take a breather and recheck your answers.

Of course this is much easier if you read fast like you seem to do.

I also read significantly faster than other students but sometimes I read too fast and miss some details, so a bit slower works better for exams. I don't take notes like you seem to do, I just reread the passage again really fast, searching through my highlighted sentences for the answer. For me, the biggest issue I have is not getting the info required to make an answer but trying to get the right answer for what the question is asking. Once I switched to searching for the answer the test maker wants instead of what I thought, I did better.

 

[mcatfever]

slow down, and take your time with passages. you have 90 min. read question, and option carefully. and what testing FLs are you using?