Serious HELP needed from those scoring, or who scored 9+ in VR. Please read on!

Hands4Surgery · Aug 23, 2012

I feel like my VR ability has improved greatly, but I still have a big issue, and I would like to know how you guys all do it.

I am timing myself to about 8:30 minutes per passage, and it takes me about 6 minutes to read the passage, leaving me with only 2:30 min to answer the questions. I obviously run out of time at times, don't have time to go back to the passage, and accuracy goes down the drain. I really seriously need to know what it is that you all do to read the passages in less than 6,5,4 or three minutes and then jump on the questions? this are long-as-heck passages! I've even seen people claim they read the passage in 2 min, and jump straight to the questions and do well. How do you guys do that? what do you look for? what types of questions do you ask to your self, or answer to yourself as you read, to gain enough info so fast?

Many thanks!

Fellow pre-med: H4S

McPhee · Aug 24, 2012

Hands4Surgery said:
I feel like my VR ability has improved greatly, but I still have a big issue, and I would like to know how you guys all do it.

I am timing myself to about 8:30 minutes per passage, and it takes me about 6 minutes to read the passage, leaving me with only 2:30 min to answer the questions. I obviously run out of time at times, don't have time to go back to the passage, and accuracy goes down the drain. I really seriously need to know what it is that you all do to read the passages in less than 6,5,4 or three minutes and then jump on the questions? this are long-as-heck passages! I've even seen people claim they read the passage in 2 min, and jump straight to the questions and do well. How do you guys do that? what do you look for? what types of questions do you ask to your self, or answer to yourself as you read, to gain enough info so fast?

Many thanks!

Fellow pre-med: H4S

7 passages, 60 minutes. You have about 8.5 minutes for each passage and its associated questions.

What you're doing now is actually what I recommend, i.e., spend more time on the passages so you can power through the questions. This approach is not working for you, however, which indicates your reading comprehension/analysis is a big part of the problem. (That said, you should also try to finish the passages faster.) In other words, if you're spending a lot of time on the passages (I'm assuming you don't suck at reading) yet struggling with the questions, the effectives of your reading is poor.

One thing I noticed is when I tried to skim a passage I got destroyed by the questions. That's why I read the passages VERY carefully/critically (but not that slowly). I typically took 4.5 to 5 minutes to read the passage, leaving me with 3.5 to 4 minutes for questions. However, I am a fast reader so even though I read very carefully, I finished in reasonable time.

Good luck!

ebasappa · Aug 24, 2012

McPhee said:
7 passages, 60 minutes. You have about 8.5 minutes for each passage and its associated questions.

What you're doing now is actually what I recommend, i.e., spend more time on the passages so you can power through the questions. This approach is not working for you, however, which indicates your reading comprehension/analysis is a big part of the problem. (That said, you should also try to finish the passages faster.) In other words, if you're spending a lot of time on the passages (I'm assuming you don't suck at reading) yet struggling with the questions, the effectives of your reading is poor.

One thing I noticed is when I tried to skim a passage I got destroyed by the questions. That's why I read the passages VERY carefully/critically (but not that slowly). I typically took 4.5 to 5 minutes to read the passage, leaving me with 3.5 to 4 minutes for questions. However, I am a fast reader so even though I read very carefully, I finished in reasonable time.

Good luck!

I agree. Although I don't do super well, I did notice an increase in accuracy when I slowed down a bit to read (while ALWAYS keeping the main point/idea in mind) in about 3~4.5 mins.

Hands4Surgery · Aug 24, 2012

Awesome guys. Thanks for the input. It is definitely taking me ~6.5 minutes to read the passages, and I do feel that I understand them decently for the most part. I still need improve a lot because, first, I know I need to finish the passages faster, but also I am loosing situational awareness:

This is what I am trying to implement:

for every passage that I read I want to extract the following as I read:

1. What's the most I can get from paragraph 1?
2. Purpose?
3. Audience?
4. How do paragraphs connect?
5. What's the validity of the information? (speculation, facts, opinion, random composition)
6. Is there unsupported stuff? - What and where?
7. What does the last paragraph say?
8. What is the overal M.I?

When I say that I lose situational awareness is because sometimes I plow through the passages and forget to question myself of half of the items above, which I believe are crucial to master this stuff. What do you guys think? Do u guys think my issue is that I need more practice? Are items above overkill? Am I missing anything?

Thanks for your input!

OA

Drrrrrr. Celty · Aug 24, 2012

Personally I take my time with the passages, after I read a paragraph I attempt to grasp the main points made by the author and to highlight as needed. If you just read and then go onto the questions without digesting it a little in your head then you're going to do a lot worse on the test. Also don't time yourself on passages, if you get a passage on geology or social science you're probably going to finish it and its related questions in under 6 minutes, but if it is a heavy humanities based one then you'll probably be doing 10 minutes on it.

Mehd School · Aug 24, 2012

serenade said:
Personally I take my time with the passages, after I read a paragraph I attempt to grasp the main points made by the author and to highlight as needed. If you just read and then go onto the questions without digesting it a little in your head then you're going to do a lot worse on the test.

I noticed a score jump from 7ish to 11ish once I had this epiphany.

Hands4Surgery · Aug 24, 2012

Great. Great. So... take a bit with the passages and digest the info: force it to make sense.

I am also thinking about doing the following. Please say what you think of it.

I'm thinking of understanding and noting EVERY assertion made in the passage, while blowing by the assertions' support information, only being attentive to anything that jumps out at me while plowing full steam ahead through the supports. I think that paying close attention and understanding the assertions will facilitate converging to an overall main idea, while blowing trhough the support will save time. Does this sound like a wise thing to do? if not, why not?

Palam · Aug 25, 2012

I scored my first >10 with an 11 today in AAMC #8. I'm not sure if it was luck because I thought the verbal was pretty challenging. I also didn't do well in the bio because it tested pretty much all on systems which I've barely studied.

Anyway, I spent no more than 3 minutes reading the passage. This gives me enough time to read relatively slowly on topic sentences and slow down if I see something that looks important. I think I also did a good job of using POE by getting rid of ideas that were too narrow or not mentioned in the paragraph. I always, always go back to the passage and read the text surrounding the information being questioned.

I think one of your best bets is to focus on why you get questions wrong so you become more cognizant of those mistakes.

Also I find the TPR online passages way harder than the AAMC!

karafox · Aug 25, 2012

i wouldn't advise this, but this has worked for me (went from 6's to 8-10s).

i want to make the disclaimer that i'm not good at analytic readings. hell, i'm probably deficient in regular reading. i chalk it up to bad foundations and lack of continuous hardcore reading. whatever the case, i am good at reading fast. so, i (calmly) read the passage once, think about the main idea OR identify a sentence in the passage that gives it, and simplify the questions as much as i possibly can. i do refer back to the passage, but try not to.

but just reading and doing practice passages really help improve the "ah-ha-so-this-is-what-this-is-about" without going through the nitty-gritty details. you will develop an intuition.

Serious HELP needed from those scoring, or who scored 9+ in VR. Please read on!

Hands4Surgery

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McPhee

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ebasappa

Momma said knock you out.

Hands4Surgery

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Drrrrrr. Celty

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Mehd School

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Hands4Surgery

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Palam

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