My test is in a 2.5 weeks, and I scored 63% of the verbal aamc SA which is 1 % under the average. I honestly did not understand a lot of the passages they had (maybe 70-75% of them I did not understand) and was guessing on the majority of the questions (maybe like 80% of them). I've been scoring 7-9s on third party exam companies but haven't taken an AAMC FL yet. My goal is to get 8-9 on the VR section so 63% is okayish for me, but it worries me that I could not comprehend most of the passages which in turn made me guess on the majority of the questions. I did the test under timed conditions by the way. For those who took the VR SA and scored around an 8 on the real deal, how did you think of the passages and should I be concerned if my target score is 8-9?
Took verbal AAMC SA couple days ago, should I be worried?
- Thread starter camng22
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Take an AAMC practice test. If you do NOT score in the range you want, postpone if possible. (AAMC practice tests are the most reliable predictor of what your actual score will be.)
Re-use those SA questions to get to know AAMC's style, why questions are right/wrong, etc.
"Guessing" on the majority of questions IS A PROBLEM. If you can afford it, get a tutor who scored well in VR to help you with those SA questions. (And make sure your tutor is "up to snuff" by not revealing the correct answer too soon - let them tell you their reasoning and let them choose the right answer. If they are wrong more than a couple times, you might want to find a different tutor.)
"Not understanding passages" may or may NOT be a problem, depending on the passage: It's fine to sometimes not fully understand certain complex passages as long as you can get the questions right. There are quite a few verbal reasoning passages where the main idea will get you through most of the questions, and the rest are detail questions where you can quickly re-skim a paragraph and get the answer (not verbatim* but after minimal reasoning). The question becomes whether or not you understood enough to get the questions right.
*AAMC doesn't do verbatim (or maybe only does so very rarely).
Re-use those SA questions to get to know AAMC's style, why questions are right/wrong, etc.
"Guessing" on the majority of questions IS A PROBLEM. If you can afford it, get a tutor who scored well in VR to help you with those SA questions. (And make sure your tutor is "up to snuff" by not revealing the correct answer too soon - let them tell you their reasoning and let them choose the right answer. If they are wrong more than a couple times, you might want to find a different tutor.)
"Not understanding passages" may or may NOT be a problem, depending on the passage: It's fine to sometimes not fully understand certain complex passages as long as you can get the questions right. There are quite a few verbal reasoning passages where the main idea will get you through most of the questions, and the rest are detail questions where you can quickly re-skim a paragraph and get the answer (not verbatim* but after minimal reasoning). The question becomes whether or not you understood enough to get the questions right.
*AAMC doesn't do verbatim (or maybe only does so very rarely).
Thanks for the reply. I will definitely be studying the SA questions again and become familiarized with their questions. I got 80% of the easy questions right, 61% on the medium, and 20% on the hard. I did a few aamc practice tests like a year ago, and I don't remember them being this difficult to understand. Either way, I'll definitely be retaking them and see how I do.
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