Am I a ******???

[Glucose]

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Ok so I always thought I was pretty good with comprehension. I read pretty often and I think my reasoning ability is ok, I'm a Chemistry major afterall. So why am I doing so bad on these darned EK verbal tests. I do the tests, follow the rules and even get a warm fuzzy feeling while I'm taking the test that makes me THINK I'm on the right track. Then I grade the stupid things and end up with a 6 ...yes you heard right a big fat 6 as my scales score!!! I feel dumber and more demoralized with each test I take. I am convinced that if I just take one more practice test that my score would improve and it was all a mistake...but no the more I take the worse it seems. I am ending up really neglecting the Science portions for this. It's August 1st for pete's sake. What am I doing wrong?

 

[turk00]

First of all, don't just do the tests...learn from your mistakes. There are different types of questions that are asked on verbal...logic, inference, detail, etc etc...the more practice you have, the more you will be attuned to what type of question they are asking and what type of wrong answers they would put for those questions. Make sure you don't get too involved with the passage--I mean, read actively by all means, but don't be caught up on every little detail. Read for the what the author's purpose is in every paragraph, and if a question asks you about a minor detail, you can go back to the passage. Also, another important thing to remember is that the answers is either in the passage or based on what is said in the passage--DON'T GET CREATIVE....I tend to believe that the reason people miss anywhere from a few to a significant amount of questions on the Verbal Section is due solely to the fact that they get creative with their answers...what you need to know is in the passage. If they ask you to infer something from evidence in the passage, look over the relevant evidence but don't add any input of your own. Keep it on a strict passage-based level of thinking and you should improve your score--it seems to be working for me. If you go through the passage and feel overwhelmed by the amount of information in there, don't be. Like I said you can paraphrase each paragraph into a sentence or so and understand how the author's ideas flow and what his purpose is paragraph by paragraph--and this is mostly what they will test you on--if you get the "gist" of each paragraph or main idea that is presented. Let me know if you have any other concerns about the Verbal Section...

 

[Blitzkrieg]

practice..practice..learn from mistakes..work hard..

dont get discouraged.

keep your head up, and put your nose to the grindstone..keep the confidence high.

 

[Wahoo07]

One thing that I've noticed on verbal is that I can usually narrow the choice down to two answers. One answer seems almost too obvious. The other seems like it may be right if I interpret it in one way. Choose the obvious one!! People tend to freak out and second guess themselves. They think, "It can't be this easy, they must want me to interpret things on a different level." Maybe this is true in the sciences, but in verbal, I've noticed that you shouldn't go digging for meaning. I don't know if this will change when the new test comes out next April, but for now, the simpler answer is best. My $0.02

 

[Chronotropic]

Are you taling about AAMC tests or the minitests in EK books or the EK practice tests. I can tell you that on all EK tests I score around a 7 or 8. However when I take a AAMC tests I score around a 10.