any RC strategies?

[bobuba]

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i read the whole passage as i take note of important terms
this is very time consuming; the time goes out the window before i get to the 3rd passage

any suggestions?

 

[DentalKitty]

I personally do not like the Kaplan roadmapping method (or similar notetaking strategy) and find I go much faster by just doing a quick skim to get the main ideas and then starting on the questions. You should attempt to give yourself 20 min per passage and think about moving on once that time has passed. I think you will see how much more time it feels like you have if you just dive into the questions though....

 

[litldime]

i read the whole passage as i take note of important terms
this is very time consuming; the time goes out the window before i get to the 3rd passage

any suggestions?

what i did was modify the kaplan method of keywords.... i basically only read the first line and glanced for any words that struct my eye in each paragraph and wrote it down...this takes me like 2 mins for the whole passage....i do this to kinda have an idea of where things are when i scan for the answers.... i do it so i don't go looking for the answers blindly

first time i did it, i got a 41/50 and finished with about 10 mins to spare
hope this helps
-ld

 

[allstardentist]

If you are aiming for 20+ instead of 25+, and you dont have a good reading skill like me, I suggest you NOT to read the passage first. What I did on the actual test was to read around first 3 non-inference questions. If you see an inference question, skip them for now. With those questions in mind, start reading the passage. If you found an answer to one question, read another question and keep that in mind. Keep working like that until ure done with non-inference questions. By now you should have a good feel of what the passage was about. And now try to do the inference questions u left out. if you can't answer an inference question still, SKIP them and move on. And if you have time after going over all the passages, go back to them and try to figure them out. I took this approach and went over all the questions with 15 min to go. Then I went back to the inference questions. After the test I couldve swore i got all of them right but I got only 22. It's prolly cuz I didnt get a good deep understanding of the passage. Its not the BEST method but i think it is an efficient one. AND you wont do well just by reading this but you need to practice this method as much as u can. hope it helps.

 

[chrisvocker]

First off, the RC section is my worst section on the DAT (my Kaplan diagnostic was 15 or so). I have been trying a few strategies over the past few days, and the 'dive-in-without-reading' strategy seems to be working the best. Just took a Topscore RC test and made a 46/50 with about 8 minutes to spare. If you can scan for key words fairly quickly and can develop a decent memory of which paragraphs contain what then you should be OK....at least with the Topscore test.

Do Topscore RC tests seem extremely easy to anyone else? And, can anyone make a comparison of Topscore RC to the actual DAT?

Also, as a last bit of information, I had my mom (late 40s) take the same Topscore RC exam and she scored a 44/50 with time to spare. She's a sharp lady, but I didn't expect her to score that high.

What do you all think?

 

[shoeler]

I tried the Kaplan method for a long time and my scores were always way too low and I hated it becaue I never had enough time to answer everything. Finally I stopped reading the passage and started just looking at the question and answers and quickly skimmed over the passage until I could find the keywords in the question/answers and then I read sufficient enough until I got the answer. This worked tons better for me! I began to see tons of time left over and it paid of big on exam day.

Moral to the story, find a method you like and that works for you and stick to it. FIND THAT METHOD FAST, PRACTICE SEVERAL READING SECTIONS NOT JUST A FEW PRACTICE TESTS!