MCAT verbal

macfan101 · May 8, 2012

I am going into my sophomore year of college. What is the best way I can prep for the verbal section as of this moment. I have the entire summer free so any tips would be appreciated. I am fine on biological and natural sciences. Aiming for 40+.

shoehornlettuce · May 9, 2012

I honestly think scoring 40+ comes down to luck. With verbal especially, the difference between each point after 11 or 12 is usually one question and some verbal questions are awfully ambiguous. Anyway, the examkracker's 101 passages book is pretty solid. People also recommend TPR hyperlearning workbook if you can find somebody who will sell you theirs (they only give them to people who take their course). You might also consider getting some LSAT verbal materials for extra practice. Check out these:

http://www.amazon.com/10-Actual-Official-LSAT-PrepTests/dp/0979305047

For 19 bucks each you get 10 offical LSAT exams. Each exam contains 4 verbal passages. There are 3 books and amazon lets you buy all 3 together for $57.00. Not too bad for an extra 120 practice passages. They are very similar to the MCAT in difficulty and length so it's good practice. I really think doing as many passages as you can get your hands on is your best bet.

kasho11 · May 9, 2012

Aim for 45. But be happy with +-3 from your AAMC range. Honestly any of the test companies reading material is good. I think Kaplan can be too hard at times and too easy at other times, but I prepped with it and the AAMC verbal seems so much easier, though I also am finishing up TPR verbal workbook.

SH3 · May 9, 2012

Start reading http://www.economist.com/ 1 -2 articles a day. Get comfortable with topics you don't necessarily like - read politics and pick up a book like Ethics by Aristotle. Read everyday.

Dasypus · May 9, 2012

Shalashaska · May 9, 2012

Read books, period. Read what you like but also read something that's relevant. None of this "Economist" or "Scientific American" nonsense, unless you're genuinely interested in that stuff.

viva117 · May 9, 2012

Instead of wasting time reading articles, just do GRE, LSAT, MCAT verbal sections. Practice. Practice. Practice. Realize patterns of error. Reading articles is about the same as reading verbal sections, the benefit from doing passages is that you have to answer questions that test your understanding.

Sailor Senshi Dermystify · May 9, 2012

Any online philsophy, music, history or arts related articles that you know of?

viva117 · May 9, 2012

If you're at a university, you can use your library's system to gain access to virtually any journal.

Though, if you're beginning to study and planning to take the MCAT soon, I'd suggest doing verbal passages.

Reading comprehension takes a while to build. Time would be better spent on adapting to the test and you'll still gain the benefits of improving comprehension.

macfan101 · May 9, 2012

viva117 said:
If you're at a university, you can use your library's system to gain access to virtually any journal.

Though, if you're beginning to study and planning to take the MCAT soon, I'd suggest doing verbal passages.

Reading comprehension takes a while to build. Time would be better spent on adapting to the test and you'll still gain the benefits of improving comprehension.

The premed committee at my school said to read The Wall Street journal everyday but I'm liking the New York Times better, especially their philosophy section (high correlation with higher verbal scores).

viva117 · May 10, 2012

macfan101 said:
The premed committee at my school said to read The Wall Street journal everyday but I'm liking the New York Times better, especially their philosophy section (high correlation with higher verbal scores).

True, I'd read those on a daily basis, but if your mcat is 3 months away reading verbal passages is virtually the same thing as reading articles. If I was an entering college freshman or had time to develop reading comprehension, I'd definitely take that committee's advice.

Overall long term success and reading comprehension improvement comes from integrating those articles (from places like the Times and WSJ) into your day, but verbal passages usually cut out the middle man; AAMC verbal passages are cited from academic sources and articles from journals.

If you have a plenty of time, read articles and do your reading assignments especially for your philosophy and humanities classes. If you're starting to seriously buckle down and study, do verbal passages.

PingPongPro · May 10, 2012

+1 to everything viva117 has said in this thread. Trying to improve verbal by reading tons of articles is a pretty big waste of time. Its very hard to change the way your reading comprehension machinery this late in the game. The most use out of this will probably be familiarizing yourself with having to read boring passages, but even there are much better ways to spend your time.

The verbal section is a test of logic. Having the world's best reading comprehension will be absolutely useless if you fail at logic and reason. Take as many verbal passages as you can, and you can hone these skills. If you don't want to waste material, I highly recommend GRE and LSAT verbal passages.

Check out the questions at this link: http://www.west.net/~stewart/lsat/practice-questions-logical-reasoning-1.htm . These are the types of logic based questions the MCAT resembles. These types of questions are amazing for improving MCAT verbal scores.

MCAT verbal

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