Critical reading in mcat

[coolcucumber91]

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I heard that the mcat is a lot of reading comprehension/ critical reading. I'm not a very good reader (I find it hard to focus and I tend to skip lines) and my SAT verbal was around a 670. How should I prepare myself for the intense amount of reading comprehension in the mcat? Is it just as simple as reading more books? Is there certain types of writing I should read?

 

[Whatyousay]

Inb4movetoMCATforum.

Practice.

Then after you're done, practice some more.

And then practice after that, just because.

Then read the New York Times, the Economist, and Scientific American.

 

[zeppelinpage4]

I have yet to take the MCAT, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

However from the current passages I have encountered while studying, I think being able to read dense material in an efficient and effective manner is really important.

A lot of the science and verbal passages can be dense and packed with a lot of background info/unrelated tangents. You'll want to be able to read it at a decent pace and take the most important bits of info. without getting too bogged down with details.

Unfortunately I did not prepare for this beforehand so I can't say from experience what will work in terms of long term studying. However I would suggest reading things like scientific papers. These present new material and not all of which you may understand. So it could be a good way to get you comfortable with reading tough material.

 

[Iso4ane]

I don't know if this will make you feel better but i got a 650-670 or something on the SAT for reading, But, I got a 11 on the MCAT which is pretty decent considering that is usually everyone's lowest score. But try hard, and in my opinion the MCAT read was nothing like the SAt reading so do not fret about it too much

 

[Lil Mick]

It's not like the SAT that I took (old person here, though). Reading a wide variety of sources (scientific articles in the sciences, political/current events newpapers/magazines, and humanities texts--if you can understand Kant, you can understand the passages) helped (more for the sciences), but the test isn't really understanding the articles, it's understanding the questions and being able to locate the answers to those questions in the passages.

 

[Geekchick921]

Moving to MCAT Discussions.

 

[raltima07]

I feel differently - if you do good on SAT and ACT verbal, you can do good on MCAT verbal because you have the skills in those sections.

 

[sc4s2cg]

I remember reading somewhere that unless you're taking the MCAT in like 1-3 *years*, reading a lot won't really help you. Passages and practice are the key for everything.