seeking anecdotes from VR 13-15 scorers

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felixfelicis

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Dear high VR scorers,
How many questions did you feel unsure about? How did you feel after VR in general? This is for entertainment purposes only.
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I've scored two 12s, a 13, and ab14 in 4 AAMC FLs. I felt just as clueless as when I scored a 9...lol
 
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Person0715 said:
I've scored two 12s, a 13, and ab14 in 4 AAMC FLs. I felt just as clueless as when I scored a 9...lol
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I scored from 8 to 12 range in my AAMC FL. It wasn't sequential improving either. I agree that I felt equally clueless.
 
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instead of a new thread im just gonna hop on here

ive taken 4 aamc's and my test is this thursday

on all four of them ive gotten a 10 on verbal.... ranges from 30 to 32 correct


any tips to hone in on a few more answers? of the ones i mark about 50% of those tend to be wrong as well
 
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Ncognito13 said:
I was just talking to my friend about this. He took the exam on May 30th and scored:

10PS 15VR 11BS ---> 36

His practice tests were mostly 13-15 and I asked him the same question as you. He said that he was completely sure on 75% of them (30/40) so on the other 10 questions he was in between two answers and luckily picked the right one all 10 times. I think he's being a bit humble because he hit a 15 on AAMC 10 and 11 as well so I would say it's more genius than luck.
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I would strongly disagree and say that "genius" has little do with with getting every question correct in VR. The question-answer logic is simply inconsistent. Also 10-11 in the sciences is not reflective of "genius."
 
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If someone had to guess on 1/4 of the verbal exam, how would that make them a genius? It would just show that he/she was lucky... Also, 10-11 on sciences is too low imo for someone to be classified as a genius.
 
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Ncognito13 said:
He studied for four weeks so call him whatever you want. I even told him, if he put in 3 or 4 months like the rest of us he would've easily hit 40+. He still did what most people can't do in a years worth of studying, achieve a 36 on the MCAT. And I said he was being humble saying that he knew only 75% of them. If he hit three 15s in a row I'm pretty sure he only struggled on 3-4 questions.

I'm sure most schools will look at his score and think: damn, 15 in VR? This guy is really smart. But 10-11 in the sciences? This guy is a bit lazy.

Edit: Forgot to mention one thing. Another thing I found odd is that he still remembered all 7 passages from his exam in vivid detail...three months later. I can barely remember two and my exam was a couple weeks ago.
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Do you think being seen as smart makes up for being seen as lazy? Personally I would think that's a horrible impression to give an adcom.
 
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gettheleadout said:
I would strongly disagree and say that "genius" has little do with with getting every question correct in VR. The question-answer logic is simply inconsistent. Also 10-11 in the sciences is not reflective of "genius."
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Someone that consistently scores 15 on verbal probably is a genius. Every now and then there will be a highly debatable AAMC verbal question. But I agreed with every correct answer on AAMC 10/11. The level of subtle reasoning and logic needed to get every question right is extremely high.

10-11 on the sciences just means that they aren't very familiar with the material.
 
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Platonic said:
Someone that consistently scores 15 on verbal probably is a genius. Every now and then there will be a highly debatable AAMC verbal question. But I agreed with every correct answer on AAMC 10/11. The level of logic needed to get every question right is extremely high.
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I'll have to say I disagree. Just my opinion.
 
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gettheleadout said:
I'll have to say I disagree. Just my opinion.
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The foundations of the reasoning behind the Verbal section of the test is based on absolute Bull-crap. Why? Because the section has absolutely no correlation to the way people actually read and interpret written language. In other words, the "critical reading" ability that the section is trying to measure does not exist outside of the testing environment itself. Case and point: Whenever you read something, say a book on bioethics or chaos theory or dog breeds, you're supplying your own internal knowledge as a lens to understand the work. Essentially, this means that the process of writing is rhetorical since it is subjective process - what the writer means may be something that all readers interpret completely differently. This has been the prevailing notion in English Studies for at least the last 200 years, and it's puzzling to see why tests such as the MCAT and the SAT still believe in this hermetically-sealed world in which passages are objective entities that can stand by themselves - and how the test writers can be so divorced from the world of actual Rhetorical Textual Analysis.

That's why GTLO is right in saying that there are multiple ways of logically reaching the questining stem - it's just that the subjectivity of the test writers plays a big role in which answer is the correct one, and they themselves ignore this subjectivity in favor of their belief that the test itself is "objective".

If you still don't believe me, think about just how many interpretations there are out of there of big works such as Hamlet and Macbeth. And these various interpretations are being propounded by English professors, who we would likely assume would be critical reading experts.
 
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When I took the MCAT VR I wasnt sure about the questions on the real deal when I walked out. However during the AAMC practice tests alot of times i was fairly confident about most of them except maybe 3 or 4 questions. Sometimes however the ones I was confident about were wrong and the ones i was iffy with were right. It's probably the hardest section to gauge just by feeling. I think a major aspect is to not let any section mess with your head and totally clear your mind of uncertainties before the next one. I think thats why VR is in the middle of the test.
 
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@gettheleadout:
I wrote "for entertainment purposes only" to keep people from telling me that the topic of this thread is not useful, because I already know that. Reading what people have to say about this is "entertaining" to me in the sense that I thought it would please my curiosity to hear about what other people have to say about their VR experiences.

The reason for this thread is that I am feeling a bit anxious about how I did on VR. It's really the only skill that isn't consistently high for me. I just wanted to see for fudge's sake whether other people felt like VR wasn't so great but were pleasantly surprised. I'm not very worried about my score overall because I'm fortunate to have always been a solid 14-15 on PS and BS, but I can never tell what I get on VR, which has consistently been 11-13 on FLs (which isn't too shabby, I think). The margin of error is so small to get >=13, and I'm just so unsure about so many questions.

To be more specific, I'm curious to know if there exist people who score highly on VR consistently and can pretty much predict their score in the same sense that I can pretty much tell if I got a 14/15 on PS/BS.
 
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felixfelicis said:
@gettheleadout:
I wrote "for entertainment purposes only" to keep people from telling me that the topic of this thread is not useful, because I already know that. Reading what people have to say about this is "entertaining" to me in the sense that I thought it would please my curiosity to hear about what other people have to say about their VR experiences.

The reason for this thread is that I am feeling a bit anxious about how I did on VR. It's really the only skill that isn't consistently high for me. I just wanted to see for fudge's sake whether other people felt like VR wasn't so great but were pleasantly surprised. I'm not very worried about my score overall because I'm fortunate to have always been a solid 14-15 on PS and BS, but I can never tell what I get on VR, which has consistently been 11-13 on FLs (which isn't too shabby, I think). The margin of error is so small to get >=13, and I'm just so unsure about so many questions.

To be more specific, I'm curious to know if there exist people who score highly on VR consistently and can pretty much predict their score in the same sense that I can pretty much tell if I got a 14/15 on PS/BS.
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To a degree, I could. I never had more than a handful (<3) questions I felt unsure about on my practice tests. Granted, sometimes the ones I got wrong were not the ones I was unsure about! But then, on my actual test day, I had what I thought was the easiest verbal section I'd ever taken. I doubted NONE of my answers. I didn't get a 15, but I was damn close.

I didn't study for verbal except for taking the practice test sections. I read extensively and am a very 'active' reader, and I consider my verbal score a result of years and years of activity, not 'studying'.

If you're consistently hitting 11-13 you should be fine. I think that verbal actually has the least potential to surprise people on the MCAT, and some of those AAMC practice passages are HARD (I'm thinking specifically of the ones that deal with philosophical questions....if I didn't have background in the field I would have been cursing at my screen). If you're doing ok on the AAMCs it's fairly unlikely you'll get something worse on the test itself.
 
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felixfelicis said:
^Just wondering, how'd you do on SAT CR?
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Lol, well I'm old folks. I took the SAT back when it was scored out of 1600, so I'm not super familiar with the current version of the test. But I've always killed standardized tests. Did high 90-something percentiles on SAT Verbal, SAT Writing (I think that's what they were calling it those days) and GRE Verbal.
 
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felixfelicis said:
^Just wondering, how'd you do on SAT CR?
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Let's see:

80 twice on PSAT (equivalent of 800)
760 on SAT Verbal
770 on GRE
11 on MCAT Verbal

The MCAT is weird, man. It's a different style of reading altogether. It's definitely more detail-oriented and really hurts you for making inferences outside of the passage. Just thinking of it makes me queasy.
 
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Good to see there are others in my boat! I have a very similar background. I feel quite confident in my ability to think critically about written work, but the MCAT doesn't seem to think so.
 
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felixfelicis said:
Good to see there are others in my boat! I have a very similar background. I feel quite confident in my ability to think critically about written work, but the MCAT doesn't seem to think so.
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If you're scoring reliable 11-13, the MCAT DOES think so. Take a look at the percentile scales for verbal--they're harsher than for the sciences. Scoring 11-13s on practices is roughly equivalent to scoring 12-14 on the sciences. And you aren't going to get above a 13 on the MCAT verbal with anything other than pure luck. 14 is generally one question wrong. ONE! 13 is only two.
 
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SN12357 said:
If you're scoring reliable 11-13, the MCAT DOES think so. Take a look at the percentile scales for verbal--they're harsher than for the sciences. Scoring 11-13s on practices is roughly equivalent to scoring 12-14 on the sciences. And you aren't going to get above a 13 on the MCAT verbal with anything other than pure luck. 14 is generally one question wrong. ONE! 13 is only two.
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This implies that the scale is what makes high VR scores a matter of luck; I would disagree and say its a matter of question ambiguity and dubious answer keying. Certainly 15 on PS or BS isn't (necessarily) luck.
 
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I never understood why the scale is so much harder though. If each section is weighted equally shouldn't there be an equal percentage of people scoring 15's on each section? Is there statistics for the number of people who get a specific score on a specific section.

I always hear people scoring 14+ in PS/BS. The highest I have ever heard of someone getting consistently in VR was a 13, on practice tests. It's annoying that the section that has so much ambiguity and subjectivity has the tightest curve. Even if there are less questions, I don't think the curve should be harsher unless there are an equal number of 15s 14 13s on a national average of scores on each section.
 
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shrey93 said:
I never understood why the scale is so much harder though. If each section is weighted equally shouldn't there be an equal percentage of people scoring 15's on each section? Is there statistics for the number of people who get a specific score on a specific section.

I always hear people scoring 14+ in PS/BS. The highest I have ever heard of someone getting consistently in VR was a 13, on practice tests. It's annoying that the section that has so much ambiguity and subjectivity has the tightest curve. Even if there are less questions, I don't think the curve should be harsher unless there are an equal number of 15s 14 13s on a national average of scores on each section.
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The test isn't made to ensure an equal percentage of people getting a given scaled score in each section.
 
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gettheleadout said:
This implies that the scale is what makes high VR scores a matter of luck; I would disagree and say its a matter of question ambiguity and dubious answer keying. Certainly 15 on PS or BS isn't (necessarily) luck.
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But that ambiguity and dubious answer keying is exactly what makes it luck. On any given verbal section there are 1-2 questions that are legitimately ambiguous to the point where no one but the test-writer could be certain. Getting them right is luck. The fact that the scale is so much more aggressive is then what makes the highest verbal scores a matter of luck.

Note that I definitely only think it's that very small handful of questions that are luck-based. Scoring 12-13 reliably doable, through whatever combination of natural skill and studying is necessary.

The luck in BS or PS is a little different--many people COULD study so thoroughly, and so comprehensively, as to pretty much guarantee a 14 or 15 based on that. But the diminishing returns required to reach that point are just not worth it to the majority of people due to opportunity cost. The luck in BS or PS if you are well-prepared is mostly in getting the topics that are your own personal favorites/easiest, so that you don't get tripped up on a question or three.

This is why I think people who are reliably getting 12s on verbal and 13s on the sciences should just back off studying, be happy, and go do something more useful to their life. I recognize that this opinion is not shared around here, since we're all supposed to be rabidly gunning for a 45, damn the consequences and all that.
 
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