VERBAL Question - Regarding various Online Journals

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ilovemcat

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Hey guys,

How would you rank the following online journals in terms of helpfulness in improving Verbal Reasoning on the MCAT (ie. which resembles the MCAT format most):

- The Economist
- The New Yorker
- Wall Street Journal
- New York Times
- Harper's Magazine
- Scientific American

Should I avoid reading any of these from your personal experiences?

Also, should I focus on a specific section for each Journal (Opinion, Business, etc.) or is any passage type acceptable?
 
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ColeOnTheRoll said:
Better than any of those IMO are actual verbal passages with associated questions. Work practice tests, do the EK passages... all of that.
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Yeah, I agree. I just don't wanna drain those passages until two months before my scheduled MCAT date though. I have EK 101 and TPR Verbal Workbook.

In the meantime, I wanted to read a passage or two every other day.
 
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Of those you've posted, I've reading everything except for Harper's Magazine, and I think all of them are fine.

I would spend most time on reading about subjects that you have a hard time understanding.
 
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To be perfectly blunt, reading journals is a complete waste of time in regards to improving your verbal score. Even if you don't want to use the verbal practice passages yet, do something else with your time (even relaxing!). Read through the science review books if you want, but don't bother doing this.
 
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NYR56 said:
To be perfectly blunt, reading journals is a complete waste of time in regards to improving your verbal score. Even if you don't want to use the verbal practice passages yet, do something else with your time (even relaxing!). Read through the science review books if you want, but don't bother doing this.
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To be even more perfectly blunt:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY[/YOUTUBE]



Sure, verbal ability won't change overnight BUT reading is THE best (and ONLY) way to improve them. Being as the VR section is testing verbal ability, once you get past the initial accustoming yourself to the VR section process, it is solely your verbal ability that will get you through. In other words, IF the OP has the time, reading is THE BEST way to improve. Now if the OP is taking the MCAT in 3-6 mos, it's probably not going to make much of a difference, but if the OP has a good 6-12+ mos., some improvement could almost certainly be made.
 
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apumic said:
To be even more perfectly blunt:

Sure, verbal ability won't change overnight BUT reading is THE best (and ONLY) way to improve them. Being as the VR section is testing verbal ability, once you get past the initial accustoming yourself to the VR section process, it is solely your verbal ability that will get you through. In other words, IF the OP has the time, reading is THE BEST way to improve. Now if the OP is taking the MCAT in 3-6 mos, it's probably not going to make much of a difference, but if the OP has a good 6-12+ mos., some improvement could almost certainly be made.
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Well you're entitled to your opinion, but I wholeheartedly disagree, and stating I'm am "wrong wrong wrong" is, well, wrong! Doing well on verbal does NOT mean you're an avid reader, but rather that you have learned how to extract the kind of information the MCAT is looking for from a short passage. Please tell me how pleasure reading will do this? Are there questions at the end of a journal to test your understanding? Now, reading for 2+ years MAY help, but anything less than that most definitely will not. 6-12 months? No way. Until you are scoring 15s in PS & BS, reading journals is an absolute waste of time. The skills needed for VR are unrelated to casual reading and will only be improved by critical reading with some sort of testing being done at the end.

In the end, neither of us can call the other person wrong, because I don't believe there are scientific facts to prove such a statement. That said, I tutor the MCAT and I would absolutely NEVER tell my students to do something as unproductive as casual reading.
 
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NYR56 said:
Well you're entitled to your opinion, but I wholeheartedly disagree, and stating I'm am "wrong wrong wrong" is, well, wrong! Doing well on verbal does NOT mean you're an avid reader, but rather that you have learned how to extract the kind of information the MCAT is looking for from a short passage. Please tell me how pleasure reading will do this? Are there questions at the end of a journal to test your understanding? Now, reading for 2+ years MAY help, but anything less than that most definitely will not. 6-12 months? No way. Until you are scoring 15s in PS & BS, reading journals is an absolute waste of time. The skills needed for VR are unrelated to casual reading and will only be improved by critical reading with some sort of testing being done at the end.

In the end, neither of us can call the other person wrong, because I don't believe there are scientific facts to prove such a statement. That said, I tutor the MCAT and I would absolutely NEVER tell my students to do something as unproductive as casual reading.
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Haha, I really just found that video funny. No disrespect meant.

I agree reading casually is unlikely to make much of a difference; HOWEVER, reading difficult material AND checking your understanding of it (i.e., analyzing tone, author's opinion, etc.) would likely have some positive effects. Keep in mind that students in reading types of majors generally do quite a bit better on VR than do science majors. This is likely due to having done a lot of reading of those types of material while in college (as well as the confounding factor that many of these people likely had interests in reading prior to entering college). The data are as follows:


Reading-Heavy Humanities:
Classics 10.0
History 9.9
Poly Sci 9.7
Religion 9.7
English 9.8

Behavioral Sciences (Moderate Reading):
Economics 9.5
Psychology 8.9

Natural Sciences (Light Reading):
Chemistry 8.4
Biology 8.4

Other
Art 9.2
Education 8.0


See any trends here?


Looking at your post, however, I think we actually agree but were taking 2 different things from the OP's post. I assumed the OP is reading these journals actively and using them to practice VR skills. You took from it that the OP is simply pleasure reading here. This is a critical difference and one of which the OP should take note. If you want to improve VR, you must test your comprehension. Simply reading an article will do virtually nothing for you.
 
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Sorry if I misinterpreted your video, I'm used to some other forums where people are far less polite, haha.

I have to say two things with regards to your data. First of all, the famous correlation does not mean causation - I have no doubt that the students in reading heavy humanities are naturally superior at reading than students in the sciences, and I believe there is a lot of self-selection going on here. Furthermore, studying humanities requires years of reading, which I do agree with you will improve your skills, particularly when it is for a course that you will be tested on and analyze the readings extensively in. My point was that a year or less of this is unlikely to make a significant difference when compared to other MCAT studying techniques.

Your last point I do agree with to an extent. The one problem I have with this technique is that analyzing the passages on your own is unlikely to yield many benefits, since you have no way of knowing if your analysis is correct. I would go as far as saying that if someone had a handful of verbal passages without the answer key, they still wouldn't be able to improve much. I know when I read the first few VR passages, I was convinced my answers were correct, but I was sadly mistaken. Even after the seeing the answers, I didn't always agree. The only reason I improved my score was I looked for what they wanted, thereby learning the tricks of the VR section. I have a pretty poor opinion of the section, and for that reason I tend to believe that reading skills are not nearly as important as just learning the techniques.

In the end, if you had a way to evaluate your analysis of the readings, I believe it would be useful, by more than likely the OP lacks any way of truly doing this. Even more importantly, I would venture to say that X hours spent reading journals would result in a greater score increase if spent reviewing science topics, assuming you aren't maxing out those sections already. Alas, if the OP does chose to read these articles, it is imperative that the OP reads actively as you say and makes at least some attempt to evaluate his analysis.
 
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To be completely honest, I would just try to find different things that you're interested in. Just pick an obscure topic (1800's music, women's literature prior to 1950, computer viruses, etc) and just read about the ones you find most interesting. For example I really don't care for most of these things but I'll find one person, one thing that is somewhat interesting and branch off of that.

I noticed that on my MCAT practices the ones I was scoring the best on were ones that were heavy on things I liked, or at least heard about and the ones I was lowest on were things I really didn't know about so this was the first I heard about the topics.

It's a crap-shoot either way I think, but it will make you read about things you're more interested in. I think if you spend time reading those journals you'll just read it to get through it (ie-leisure reading) instead of active reading (learning) because you won't be tested on the subject afterwards, whereas if you pick something random to learn and you're interested in it it will help you more IMO

Then again you don't have to take my advice, I bombed my verbal (7, which is bombing by SDN standards) compared to my practice scores
 
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I'm surprised some of you think that reading online Journals is a complete waste of time. For someone like me, who barely took the time to even pick up a book, let alone read convoluted articles on the internet, it's extremely difficult to just take practice tests and do well. Because from experience, I did do that and it didn't work out so great. Here's what happened: Not only was my timing off (a lot), but a majority of my answers were incorrect. I also didn't have the attention span to read 7 passages straight without feeling extremely bogged down.

A huge problem for me was getting in the comfort zone to read fluently and that's extremely difficult to do especially when you don't read much. It's hard to extrapolate information from a passage and find out what the author's talking about when you haven't practiced doing that. This is why I inquired about the journals above - to help me practice those skills in advance.

But if people keep saying that this is a waste of time, I dunno ... I might just focus on other areas instead. Has reading online journals benefited anyone? Last I recall, it seemed like everyone suggested doing that on here. Hmmph
 
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What I would do if I were you, is get the EK 101 Passages book, and start out by just doing one passage at a time. Give yourself 9 minutes to do each passage initially. Read the passage at a normal speed, don't try and rush through it, and try and formulate a main idea from it. When you get to the questions, don't spend any more than 30 seconds on any given question, and refrain from referring back to the passage while you answer the questions, which wastes a lot of time. After you're done with one passage, go check the answers, and read why every answer is either right or wrong. Everything will be fresh in your mind, so evaluate why you picked each of your answers. Keep doing this, and you will pick up on what they are looking for. Once you are comfortable with answering the questions, begin taking entire lecture exams to build your endurance and tweak your timing. In the end, you want to finish the VR section with about five minutes to spare. Once you get to this point, don't check your answers for at least a day, but still spend a lot of time analyzing the answers. Also, while taking the VR section, close your eyes for 5 seconds between each passage and clear your mind. Forget everything about the last passage, and start the next one with a clean slate.

If you need additional practice, use the TPRH Verbal Workbook, recommended by SN2ed. I've never seen it, but he says it is excellent practice as well. I think between these two sources, you'll have plenty of passages to practice without worry about running out of them. This is far more productive than reading random articles, but if you chose to do that, make sure that you read actively - determine the main idea and figure out what the authors viewpoints are.
 
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Maybe I'm just very cynical, or whatever you want to call me, but the whole post is really waste of time. Why? Let me break it down to couple points that essentially repeats what others have said.

1. You read because you want to become an educated person, who can talk to other people besides transcription and titration. As a physician, you will see patients outside of your doctor's office and no, you won't always talk about that back pain or the heart surgery that you performed (it may start that way but not always). The bottom line: reading non-science materials allows you to communicate with different types of people with unique interests. So, read! Read not because of Verbal but because it's the right thing to do... Seriously.

2. Reading critically is not always sufficient with practice materials, if someone is not used to reading in regular basis. I suppose that's what you get if you stay away from humanities or social sciences, or take those courses but rely on Sparknotes. For those people, any type of reading is beneficial.

3. The net benefit of non-MCAT practice readings is not very significant, so for people who know how to read, it's much better to just stick to the MCAT prep materials (e.g. EK 101 Verbal, TPR Verbal Workbook, etc..) because they are high-yield.

4. This is the last point at OP. I recall you from this past summer. Didn't you already take MCAT? Regardless, shouldn't you already know the answer to this type of question? I recognized your username so that's why I'm posting... otherwise, I would ignore questions like this, just saying.
 
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Silverfalcon said:
Maybe I'm just very cynical, or whatever you want to call me, but the whole post is really waste of time. Why? Let me break it down to couple points that essentially repeats what others have said.

1. You read because you want to become an educated person, who can talk to other people besides transcription and titration. As a physician, you will see patients outside of your doctor's office and no, you won't always talk about that back pain or the heart surgery that you performed (it may start that way but not always). The bottom line: reading non-science materials allows you to communicate with different types of people with unique interests. So, read! Read not because of Verbal but because it's the right thing to do... Seriously.

2. Reading critically is not always sufficient with practice materials, if someone is not used to reading in regular basis. I suppose that's what you get if you stay away from humanities or social sciences, or take those courses but rely on Sparknotes. For those people, any type of reading is beneficial.

3. The net benefit of non-MCAT practice readings is not very significant, so for people who know how to read, it's much better to just stick to the MCAT prep materials (e.g. EK 101 Verbal, TPR Verbal Workbook, etc..) because they are high-yield.

4. This is the last point at OP. I recall you from this past summer. Didn't you already take MCAT? Regardless, shouldn't you already know the answer to this type of question? I recognized your username so that's why I'm posting... otherwise, I would ignore questions like this, just saying.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input, but I'm not really sure I understand what you mean. At first I thought you were suggesting that one should read to become familiar with unfamiliar topics but you seem to conclude with something entirely different.

To answer your last question, yes I did take the MCAT. However, during my examination, I experienced a technical issue which made me lose 10 minutes during the last section of the exam. This ultimately caused me to void because part of my exam was incomplete. I intended on rescheduling shortly afterwards, but because of a family related issue, I had to go out of the country for two months. Seeing as it was a late July exam, it would have been impossible for me to retake it this year.

Because of that, I'm stuck in a difficult situation where I have to re-learn all the concepts I prepared for earlier this year. Hopefully while doing that I could improve my verbal reasoning score. How about you? Regardless, I'm sure you did fine considering you always gave constructive advice about what one should and shouldn't do when preparing for the exam. :laugh:

In case you or anyone is curious, I was averaging anywhere in-between 7s and 10s on verbal (11 being my highest - I think was due to luck). I was hoping that with practice, I could maintain consistent 10s or higher so I can gain confidence going into the exam.

Regardless, shouldn't you already know the answer to this type of question? I recognized your username so that's why I'm posting... otherwise, I would ignore questions like this, just saying.
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The question I posted was mainly meant to get an outside perspective meaning I wanted others input on how they felt about reading journals and which if any they felt were most helpful from their personal experiences. Unless I asked this in the past, which I haven't, I really don't see how I would have a way of knowing this.
 
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NYR56 said:
What I would do if I were you, is get the EK 101 Passages book, and start out by just doing one passage at a time. Give yourself 9 minutes to do each passage initially. Read the passage at a normal speed, don't try and rush through it, and try and formulate a main idea from it. When you get to the questions, don't spend any more than 30 seconds on any given question, and refrain from referring back to the passage while you answer the questions, which wastes a lot of time. After you're done with one passage, go check the answers, and read why every answer is either right or wrong. Everything will be fresh in your mind, so evaluate why you picked each of your answers. Keep doing this, and you will pick up on what they are looking for. Once you are comfortable with answering the questions, begin taking entire lecture exams to build your endurance and tweak your timing. In the end, you want to finish the VR section with about five minutes to spare. Once you get to this point, don't check your answers for at least a day, but still spend a lot of time analyzing the answers. Also, while taking the VR section, close your eyes for 5 seconds between each passage and clear your mind. Forget everything about the last passage, and start the next one with a clean slate.

If you need additional practice, use the TPRH Verbal Workbook, recommended by SN2ed. I've never seen it, but he says it is excellent practice as well. I think between these two sources, you'll have plenty of passages to practice without worry about running out of them. This is far more productive than reading random articles, but if you chose to do that, make sure that you read actively - determine the main idea and figure out what the authors viewpoints are.
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I'll try this out. Great advice, thank you. 👍
 
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ilovemcat said:
To answer your last question, yes I did take the MCAT. However, during my examination, I experienced a technical issue which made me lose 10 minutes during the last section of the exam. This ultimately caused me to void because part of my exam was incomplete. I intended on rescheduling shortly afterwards, but because of a family related issue, I had to go out of the country for two months. Seeing as it was a late July exam, it would have been impossible for me to retake it this year.

Because of that, I'm stuck in a difficult situation where I have to re-learn all the concepts I prepared for earlier this year. Hopefully while doing that I could improve my verbal reasoning score. How about you? Regardless, I'm sure you did fine considering you always gave constructive advice about what one should and shouldn't do when preparing for the exam. :laugh:

In case you or anyone is curious, I was averaging anywhere in-between 7s and 10s on verbal (11 being my highest - I think was due to luck). I was hoping that with practice, I could maintain consistent 10s or higher so I can gain confidence going into the exam.
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That's unfortunate. I've heard about technical difficulties as a word on the street on SDN, but you are the first one who actually had this. That sucks. Sorry to hear that.

I am actually re-taking. I was one of those people who took the exam with rather harsh curve (at least that's what I got out of in SDN compared to other dates) so I scored about 4 points lower than my averages. Oh well, I took after my sophomore year, and I'll be studying again for it... soon...just got to do that.
 
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Silverfalcon said:
That's unfortunate. I've heard about technical difficulties as a word on the street on SDN, but you are the first one who actually had this. That sucks. Sorry to hear that.

I am actually re-taking. I was one of those people who took the exam with rather harsh curve (at least that's what I got out of in SDN compared to other dates) so I scored about 4 points lower than my averages. Oh well, I took after my sophomore year, and I'll be studying again for it... soon...just got to do that.
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Yeah. If you care to know what my technical issue was - my computer froze. The proctor had to reboot my computer, all the while the clock was running and I lost 10 minutes. Something I didn't expect going into and it disrupted my momentum while taking the test. I had to readjust myself. But anyways, I'm sure these situations don't happen very often so I wouldn't worry about this.

When do you plan on re-taking? And do you plan on doing anything differently this time around (ie. materials and such)?
 
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Silverfalcon said:
I am actually re-taking. I was one of those people who took the exam with rather harsh curve (at least that's what I got out of in SDN compared to other dates) so I scored about 4 points lower than my averages. Oh well, I took after my sophomore year, and I'll be studying again for it... soon...just got to do that.
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Not to say you scored lower than expected for other reasons, but I would be very hesitant to believe that one test had a "harsher" curve than another test. If the curve was indeed harsher, it should mean the test itself was easier. They use extensive statistical models to make the date of examination irrelevant. Far more likely is that the test concentrated on topics you were weaker on than other tests. The tests are so short, many topics are not covered, so if you get a few topics that are in your weaker areas, your score will suffer significantly. The stress of the test day may also have affected you.

I only tell you this so you can prepare with this in mind, and not just assume you got a 'hard test date'. People were posting in my MCAT date thread that they thought it was the "hard" exam. After looking at other threads, this is pretty much what is posted every time. Considering none of us have access to the curve or take multiple exams under the same conditions, it's really flawed for people to assume the date of the exam matters much just because it "felt harder".

Best of luck to you both of you on your retakes.
 
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NYR56 said:
Not to say you scored lower than expected for other reasons, but I would be very hesitant to believe that one test had a "harsher" curve than another test. If the curve was indeed harsher, it should mean the test itself was easier. They use extensive statistical models to make the date of examination irrelevant. Far more likely is that the test concentrated on topics you were weaker on than other tests. The tests are so short, many topics are not covered, so if you get a few topics that are in your weaker areas, your score will suffer significantly. The stress of the test day may also have affected you.

I only tell you this so you can prepare with this in mind, and not just assume you got a 'hard test date'. People were posting in my MCAT date thread that they thought it was the "hard" exam. After looking at other threads, this is pretty much what is posted every time. Considering none of us have access to the curve or take multiple exams under the same conditions, it's really flawed for people to assume the date of the exam matters much just because it "felt harder".

Best of luck to you both of you on your retakes.
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I second this post.

While people talk about "harsher curves" on some tests and "more difficult" tests, the curve is going to be appropriate to the difficulty of the test. The percentile rankings of the tests stay fairly consistent from one to the next. While there probably is at least some variation, I'd be pretty hesitant to blame it on that. Assume you screwed up for some reason and work to correct your weaknesses.
 
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NYR56 said:
Not to say you scored lower than expected for other reasons, but I would be very hesitant to believe that one test had a "harsher" curve than another test. If the curve was indeed harsher, it should mean the test itself was easier. They use extensive statistical models to make the date of examination irrelevant. Far more likely is that the test concentrated on topics you were weaker on than other tests. The tests are so short, many topics are not covered, so if you get a few topics that are in your weaker areas, your score will suffer significantly. The stress of the test day may also have affected you.

I only tell you this so you can prepare with this in mind, and not just assume you got a 'hard test date'. People were posting in my MCAT date thread that they thought it was the "hard" exam. After looking at other threads, this is pretty much what is posted every time. Considering none of us have access to the curve or take multiple exams under the same conditions, it's really flawed for people to assume the date of the exam matters much just because it "felt harder".

Best of luck to you both of you on your retakes.
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I'm quoting only NYR56, but this is directed at apumic as well. Even before both of you guys commented, I am perfectly well aware of the concept of "curve," which is pre-determined by the previous year's examinees and set via statistical measures that 8 on one date is equivalent to 8 on another date (this is, in fact, exact wording from AAMC). What I implied via "rather harsh curve" compared to other dates referred to Aug. 19 and Aug. 24, mainly because at least on SDN, people seemed to find those test easier ("easy/hard" is subjective term depending on topics, obviously). Of course, there were people who scored well on my date as well, but compared to these two dates, more people in my date scored worse than their practice ranges. Again, this statement only refers to the individual thread on SDN.

Anyway, I'm only posting this to clarify what I know. I've been around SDN long enough and researched sufficiently not to complain about my score because of so-called "curve." I'm not. I just thought it was mildly interesting how two of you jumped onto this matter when it is clearly not related to the OP's topic. But then, it's SDN. Not all discussions in threads are always relevant to the original question anyway.

No offense taken, and I hope no offense taken to both of you as well.
 
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No offense taken, and I know it's a touchy subject with many people so I wasn't trying to be brash. I jumped on it because claiming a test is easy/hard seems very prevalent on this site, and I think it is based on very flawed arguments. I don't know anything about the exam you took or the ones in August, but I'd be surprised to hear that one date had much lower scores than another. Perhaps the self-selecting group on SDN did worse, but across the country, the scores should be nearly identical to the other dates. Unfortunately there is no way of proving either side, but I have to give the AAMC the benefit of the doubt and cast my skepticism on the people who are unhappy with their scores.

There is something to be said about noticing more people doing poorly when that is what you are looking for as well. Our minds are naturally biased in what they notice, as exemplified by learning of a company nearby that always existed but you had never heard of. Afterwards, you will notice their trucks and ads FAR more often, even though nothing changed.

Again, I really don't mean to be telling you personally that you're wrong. I'm of the belief that taking a different version of the MCAT can result in a drastically different score for an individual, since the topics covered are not nearly broad enough. I just have significant doubt that one date is statistically different from another.
 
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NYR56 said:
I just have significant doubt that one date is statistically different from another.
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This. I agree completely. Anyway, glad we are on the same grounds. I guess the most non-thrilling fact for people like me and ilovemcat is that we have to study again for this beast. :meanie:

Going back to ilovemcat's question, the major difference I'm making the second time is to adequately prepare myself with background information before I study for MCAT. I did this by taking three sciences in fall (Physical Chemistry, Experimental Neuroscience, and Intermediate Organic Chem). I was surprised how much of information are solidified by taking upper-level courses.

This is, of course, not required, and not too helpful to you at this point. I'm also using new sets of MCAT books than old ones, if that helps. 😀
 
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Silverfalcon said:
This. I agree completely. Anyway, glad we are on the same grounds. I guess the most non-thrilling fact for people like me and ilovemcat is that we have to study again for this beast. :meanie:
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Heh, good to hear. And I do wish you both the best of luck, preparing for a retake requires a lot more motivation than the first time around, so props for that. Probably harder than relearning the material is keeping the high level of drive needed to succeed, so keep that up.
 
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