MCAT Verbal Prep

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MedSchoolBound2

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I've never had the attention span to read; I tried--a lot. I haven't read a book on my own since the 3rd grade, and I'm about to be a Jr. in college. I have the MCAT in about a year, so how do I prepare for the verbal section? The reason I mention I mention my lack of reading is because it has really affected my reading speed and vocabulary.

How can I help my reading speed, vocabulary, and passage understanding? Are there any classes that anyone could recommend e.g., Advanced Composition, Essay Writing, ect?

Thank you all in advance!
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101 passages by EK did wonders. As you get closer starting like 4 months until do 2 passages a day. It comes with practice.
 
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I had same problem as me. Trick was to read alot of passages and to find the best strategy for reading them actively and efficiently. I read the first of each paragraph and moved on to the next paragraph if I got the main idea. If not I read the next sentence, and if I still didn't get it I went to the last sentence. If that failed I read the whole paragraph. This saved ALOT of time for a slow reader like me, and it was the only way for me to get all 7 passages done.

Just try out a bunch of different reading techniques (full read, what I did, other variations). Find out what is giving the best score on your full lengths, then do that. You need to do lots of verbal practice anyway, might as well try some different strategies.
 
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A good idea would be to start reading The Atlantic, The Economist, The New Yorker, etc. Work on your active reading skills.
 
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I give all the credit for my VR performance to literature/philosophy/theology courses that I took. Really, any course where you read difficult works and analyze them will be helpful. I don't know about your institution, but the basic "English literature" or "British literature" courses were too easy.

I never agreed with reading magazine articles, but since everyone recommends it there clearly must be some value to doing it.
 
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You need to read some books. Seriously, haven't read a book since 3rd grade on your own. That is just sad.
 
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chemhead123 said:
You need to read some books. Seriously, haven't read a book since 3rd grade on your own. That is just sad.
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Such a good point... but the thing is, I have read a ton all throughout school and can't seem to crack verbal. I think I get too worried about the questions they could ask instead of reading the passage. It's super annoying because I have always done well with reading comprehension but this thing kills me.
 
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You might try reading academic journal articles in the social sciences or humanities. Do a journal search in your library's database system for topics that already interest you. (There are social science articles on everything you can possibly imagine).

As a poster above me said, I would encourage reading difficult/challenging books that you have to work to get through. But at this point you're already kind of behind on that and it sounds like it might be difficult for you to stick with full-length stuff, so that's why I'm suggesting articles in a similar vein.

If you don't know where to start, here are some of my favorite journals (these are all in my field so you might find some other area more interesting):

Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Medical Anthropology
Social Science and Medicine
Signs
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
Cultural Anthropology


Browse those or other journals for a title that catches your eye, and try to work through the article (it will be difficult but that's kinda the point). Once you start getting closer to the MCAT, start doing actual MCAT verbal prep (Princeton Review Hyperlearning verbal workbook, etc.)

Side-note: Do you watch a lot of TV? Try substituting out an easy-to-read adventure, romance, fantasy, or thriller novel instead. This should not take the place of heavier reading, but it can certainly help if it takes the place of TV or video games. Let me know if you need some suggestions here--I might be able to help based on your interests.
 
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dap said:
You might try reading academic journal articles in the social sciences or humanities. Do a journal search in your library's database system for topics that already interest you. (There are social science articles on everything you can possibly imagine).

As a poster above me said, I would encourage reading difficult/challenging books that you have to work to get through. But at this point you're already kind of behind on that and it sounds like it might be difficult for you to stick with full-length stuff, so that's why I'm suggesting articles in a similar vein.

If you don't know where to start, here are some of my favorite journals (these are all in my field so you might find some other area more interesting):

Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Medical Anthropology
Social Science and Medicine
Signs
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
Cultural Anthropology


Browse those or other journals for a title that catches your eye, and try to work through the article (it will be difficult but that's kinda the point). Once you start getting closer to the MCAT, start doing actual MCAT verbal prep (Princeton Review Hyperlearning verbal workbook, etc.)

Side-note: Do you watch a lot of TV? Try substituting out an easy-to-read adventure, romance, fantasy, or thriller novel instead. This should not take the place of heavier reading, but it can certainly help if it takes the place of TV or video games. Let me know if you need some suggestions here--I might be able to help based on your interests.
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Anthropology is one of my majors, so I'm sure I'll really enjoy those suggestions. I will look into them. I don't watch much TV. I think I'll start trying to read. I hear "The Hunger Games." is an awesome series. But, I don't want my MCAT to be ruined by the verbal; I trust I'll be fine in the other sections. Even though it's a year early, I will take these suggestions into consideration (after spring break of course :laugh: ).
 
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You may want to check out The Princeton Review's MCAT Verbal Accelerator LiveOnline Course. It will help you sharpen your reading comprehension skills and raise your score in the MCAT Verbal Reasoning section. This course provides test-takers with additional training in critical reading techniques. Med school admission committees tend to weigh the Verbal section heavily, so it's important to get your best score!

Course Features:

- 15 hours of classroom instruction delivered through Elluminate®, our state-of-the-art online classroom
- 6 2.5 hour sessions
- Course taught by one of our premier Verbal MCAT instructors
- Verbal Accelerator Student Manual and Reader
- MCAT verbal practice passages exclusive to our MCAT Verbal Accelerator Course

Check out more details here: http://www.princetonreview.com/medic...celerator.aspx
 
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ThePrincetonReview said:
You may want to check out The Princeton Review's MCAT Verbal Accelerator LiveOnline Course. It will help you sharpen your reading comprehension skills and raise your score in the MCAT Verbal Reasoning section. This course provides test-takers with additional training in critical reading techniques. Med school admission committees tend to weigh the Verbal section heavily, so it's important to get your best score!

Course Features:

- 15 hours of classroom instruction delivered through Elluminate®, our state-of-the-art online classroom
- 6 2.5 hour sessions
- Course taught by one of our premier Verbal MCAT instructors
- Verbal Accelerator Student Manual and Reader
- MCAT verbal practice passages exclusive to our MCAT Verbal Accelerator Course

Check out more details here: http://www.princetonreview.com/medic...celerator.aspx
Click to expand...

I took the a TPR course online but it didn't help with my verbal at all. Is the verbal accelerator course any different in terms of techniques and skills taught?
 
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Ultimeaciax said:
I took the a TPR course online but it didn't help with my verbal at all. Is the verbal accelerator course any different in terms of techniques and skills taught?
Click to expand...
Which course did you take? The Princeton Review only offers a LiveOnline (and not a regular online) course that has actual verbal sessions with an instructor (over 22 hours worth) – did you take that one? If so, then you can take advantage of our guarantee and work on improving that part of your score.

If not, what did you actually do/use? Then I can suggest the best possible course of action based on your situation.

On a side note, the Verbal Accelerator course works a bit outside the conventional MCAT passage framework. There is a lot of similarity in the skills and approach, but there are also new techniques you will focus on (skills with interpretation and analyses, recognition sentence/paragraph structure, etc). For more info visit, http://www.princetonreview.com/medical/mcat-verbal-accelerator.aspx

Again, once I know more from you, I can better advise you.
 
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You have plenty of time to increase your Verbal score, but it is going to take some work. I'd recommend a critical reading/thinking class. That's basically all Verbal is. I'd avoid a composition class. Try and find a non-science class you'd be interested in, but make sure the reading list is substantial. The only way that score is going to come up is to read a lot while you still have time.
 
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I can't really give strategy advice, but one thing you need to do for sure is get TPRH and EK 101 books and start working a couple passages a day way out in advance. I would really try to make sure that you're finishing them well under time too. On the MCAT you get 1.5 minutes per passage, but after taking them MCAT yesterday I wish I had made sure that I could finish problems at a pace of ~1.2 minutes per passage (I was finishing them 1.4 minutes per passage on practice material). The length of the passages on VR for the real thing was something that kind of threw me through a loop. Definitely really ingrain a few basic techniques too- use POE and guess on the really tough questions, mark detail oriented questions if you don't know the answer right away and move on. You can go back to them for easy points if you finish early, but you will lose opportunities for easy points if you sit there spending a couple minutes to find the right answer. The length thing (unless my test was way longer than normal) was something that made it clear to me that you need to really really use these techniques. I was a little sloppy with them on practice tests because I found it relatively easy to complete them under time even if I was going back to the passage, but not so with the real deal.
 
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