Does anyone else feel utterly lost with BR Verbal?

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sully677

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I remember thinking WTF on a few passages. When I took it, some passage sets were really good and made me think critically, had inference questions, had distractors, and basically were a good indicator of what to expect on the real MCAT. Then the next set was written by someone from Mars, with crazy astronomy passages and poetry that no one would actually read.

I think the problem is that in their effort to use several different authors for their passages, they have a wide range that includes both terrible passages and wonderful passages. I respect the idea to spread out the author pool to give exposure to different styles and voices, but they need to filter out the garbage. Make like a spleen on the book! If they replaced the twenty worst passages with passages by the better writers, their book would be the best passage source available. Right now it's average, which is exactly what the reviews here say.
 
I remember thinking WTF on a few passages. When I took it, some passage sets were really good and made me think critically, had inference questions, had distractors, and basically were a good indicator of what to expect on the real MCAT. Then the next set was written by someone from Mars, with crazy astronomy passages and poetry that no one would actually read.

I think the problem is that in their effort to use several different authors for their passages, they have a wide range that includes both terrible passages and wonderful passages. I respect the idea to spread out the author pool to give exposure to different styles and voices, but they need to filter out the garbage. Make like a spleen on the book! If they replaced the twenty worst passages with passages by the better writers, their book would be the best passage source available. Right now it's average, which is exactly what the reviews here say.

Can you give us a list of the passages, page number, or whatever for the TBR verbal book that are pieces of crap? I just bought the book a day ago.

Like Passage 42 or Passage 30 or whatever.

Thanks.
 

I don't really like it much anymore...the questions are not very representative. Yeah, they have some inference questions but I mean come on, some of their question stems are like huge paragraphs (I don't mind that much since I'm pretty good with my timing) but they do have a lot of left field type questions...I'm disappointed :meanie: Also, there's no score conversion table in the book either. I like EK 101 a lot better.
 
Yeh I think I may throw the material away. The question stems are nothing like EK...and I don't want to start out with low confidence because of a poor book.
 
Yeh I think I may throw the material away. The question stems are nothing like EK...and I don't want to start out with low confidence because of a poor book.

Sell it! The only thing that it's really good for is timing, since it has long passages and long question stems.
 
Yeh I think I may throw the material away. The question stems are nothing like EK...and I don't want to start out with low confidence because of a poor book.

Be careful thinking that EK question stems are the premier example, because I made that mistake on my first MCAT. Nothing simulates the question stems like the AAMC materials. I was thrown for a serious loop when my EK strategies only worked on some of the passages on my real MCAT. They don't work on everything, so have a backup plan.

And I wouldn't throw your BR book away. I'd use it for the sixty or so passages in the book that are realistic and then line my neighbor's bird cage with the rest. Seriously though, I didn't think it was that different than PR passages or EK passages. I just hated reading through some of the answer explanations.
 
I don't really like it much anymore...the questions are not very representative. Yeah, they have some inference questions but I mean come on, some of their question stems are like huge paragraphs (I don't mind that much since I'm pretty good with my timing) but they do have a lot of left field type questions...I'm disappointed :meanie: Also, there's no score conversion table in the book either. I like EK 101 a lot better.

i swear my book had a conversion chart. 👍
 
LOL, I'll keep looking!

If I get a chance, I will dig out my box in my closet and look through it...I know I converted my scores....

because I scored less on BR than the others....my AAMC and EK verbal was the same.
 
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