August PCAT!! Pearsons--Verbal!!!Writing!!!Quant!!!!

[144288]

Okay, so i'm taking the PCAT august 22nd and i'm really beginning to freak out. The day is fast approaching. I bought the Pearson Practice test about two weeks ago. After taking the test, my weakpoints were Verbal(analogies), math and chem. For the analogies, the bridges were hard to connect, especially if you don't know the meaning of one of the words. My problem with quant is the timing!!!!!!!, how on earth is one suppose to finish 48 questions in 30 minutes??? And also there is stuff from calcII on there. wow. anyway. the chem was seemed fair enough to me, but timig was a problem for me too.

My main problems right now are quant and verbal??? any tips on how to improve my timing for quant ???

i'm freaking out! three more weeks till the august exam

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[crazybob]

first thing you want to do is solve the problems you know how to do and skip the ones that you're unsure about.

second, if you want to attempt a problem, write down what you can and if you get stuck, come back to it later. that way, when you come back to the problem, you can work from where you left off.

other than that, you just have to find what else works for you.

 

[diastole]

Yep, the key to quant is to concentrate on getting as many right answers as you can. That means to move on at the first sign of trouble. In your case, if you see a Calc II question (from your post, I'm assuming this will cause you some trouble), move on immediately. You want to see all the questions. Many people have to guess wildly at the last questions and don't even get a chance to read them. That means that they wasted their time on harder questions and most likely didn't even attempt some questions that were easy for them. You want to answer all the questions that are easy for you and go back to the harder questions if you have time.

Remember though that everyone is in the same boat. I answered B (my wild guess answer) on somewhere between five and ten questions (I think it was closer to ten) and still got a 92. Maybe I was outrageously lucky but I suspect that you can miss a lot of questions in this section and still do pretty well.

For chem, I skipped the calculation questions and went back to them at the end. That helped a bit with the timing.

 

[144288]

Thx for your responses. I'll try the skipping 'harder' questions technique. For the verbal, how did you guys study? coz i'm having a hard time with the analogy section.

 

[lalalayla]

i believe you are given 40 minutes for the quant section, not 30.

 

[144288]

i believe you are given 40 minutes for the quant section, not 30.

yah. i typed 30 by mistake. thx for the correction

 

[diastole]

Thx for your responses. I'll try the skipping 'harder' questions technique. For the verbal, how did you guys study? coz i'm having a hard time with the analogy section.

I still haven't figured out how people study for this part. I didn't have to because it is my strongest sub-section. Maybe you can get your hands on some of the practice exams to get a feel for the bridges. If you run out of materials for the PCAT, look for SAT exams and maybe GRE ones though the vocabulary will be much harder for that.

I think there is something odd about the way Pearson's writes this section. They make weird bridges and choose vocabulary that is just bizarre. I had two questions on my exam that involved obscure food. What is that even testing? I could write better questions than what they are choosing.

 

[charfdorn]

I still haven't figured out how people study for this part. I didn't have to because it is my strongest sub-section. Maybe you can get your hands on some of the practice exams to get a feel for the bridges. If you run out of materials for the PCAT, look for SAT exams and maybe GRE ones though the vocabulary will be much harder for that.

I think there is something odd about the way Pearson's writes this section. They make weird bridges and choose vocabulary that is just bizarre. I had two questions on my exam that involved obscure food. What is that even testing? I could write better questions than what they are choosing.

The ability to solve the analogy without knowing what all the words mean.

To the OP: all PCAT questions are weighted the same and there is no penalty for wrong answers. This means you should answer the easier questions first, then come back for the harder ones, and then guess all the questions you didn't get a chance to work on. Also, if you can eliminate choices as obviously wrong, your chances of guessing correctly go up.

Improving your verbal score in a month is almost impossible. Verbal is one of those sections that you can't cram for. However, you might want to start looking at some 'word of the day' materials. It's unlikely that you'll learn a word that happens to pop up on the test, but strengthening your vocabulary is about the only thing you can do. I wouldn't spend a ton of time on it, just a little each day.