EK Practice Verbal Test

[prettyslick]

I took EK Practice test for the first time for verbal and got a 6. Anything to worry about? I would like to hear from anyone who took EK practice tests early on (and scored 5-7 on it) and ended up getting like 9 or 10+ on the real thing. And how did you improve? Thanks!

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[RAD11]

I took EK Practice test for the first time for verbal and got a 6. Anything to worry about? I would like to hear from anyone who took EK practice tests early on (and scored 5-7 on it) and ended up getting like 9 or 10+ on the real thing. And how did you improve? Thanks!

There's a lot of threads on this....just search EK and verbal and you'll get a lot of hits.

 

[Telo78]

I guess your talking about 101verbal. Wow, I found most of the passages to be an easy read but the answer choices to pose a real problem as far as ambiguity. I'm not doing too well with them but my TPR verbal I seem to be doing ok and getting better. I don't know, I find the ek verbal from 101 to be quite challenging.

 

[smuwillobrien]

I started off doing horrible on the EK passages, but after a while things started to click. I never completed a full section of EK passages though - I would do one or two at a time, just for practice. The first few weeks of August I was getting almost all of the EK passages correct - maybe one or two questions wrong for every three passages. I was consistently between 8 - 11 on the VR section of the AAMC practice tests (3R - 9), and I ended up with an 11 on the real thing. Good luck.

 

[prettyslick]

I also found many choices on EK 101 to be very ambiguous.

 

[prettyslick]

I guess your talking about 101verbal. Wow, I found most of the passages to be an easy read but the answer choices to pose a real problem as far as ambiguity. I'm not doing too well with them but my TPR verbal I seem to be doing ok and getting better. I don't know, I find the ek verbal from 101 to be quite challenging.

yes talkin about 101verbal passages. I agree, many answer choices were ambigous but reading the explanations are helping.

 

[Div_MD2B]

i practiced with EK101 for the august '06 test...started out with 8's on the first three or four tests..went up to 9's and then 10s...and i got a 9 on the real thing. so...overall, i didn't see a really great improvement...still, i thought that even though the EK passages are easy to read, their answer choices definitely make u think and pay attention to what the overall tone/idea of the passage is. a lot of times, i would get it down to 2 choices and then get stuck...and sumtimes pick the wrong one. i think the key with the EK 101 book is to go back and spend a decent amount of time going over ur answers (wrong and right). what i did was...after grading each test, i would go back to each passage and think thru why i picked that answer (right or wrong) and then read the explanation at the back of the book. i think that helps more than just reading the explanations. i did that for each and every passage even if i got all the questions right. i think that if you spend time reviewing ur answers, u'll definitely see improvement in ur score.
i also used kaplan verbals in the beginning...just because their passages are longer and more boring to read than the EK 101 passages. altho, their questions suck...they r waay too detail oriented.
anyways, i hope this helps and i'm sure with practice u'll do just fine! good luck studyin!

 

[prettyslick]

i practiced with EK101 for the august '06 test...started out with 8's on the first three or four tests..went up to 9's and then 10s...and i got a 9 on the real thing. so...overall, i didn't see a really great improvement...still, i thought that even though the EK passages are easy to read, their answer choices definitely make u think and pay attention to what the overall tone/idea of the passage is. a lot of times, i would get it down to 2 choices and then get stuck...and sumtimes pick the wrong one. i think the key with the EK 101 book is to go back and spend a decent amount of time going over ur answers (wrong and right). what i did was...after grading each test, i would go back to each passage and think thru why i picked that answer (right or wrong) and then read the explanation at the back of the book. i think that helps more than just reading the explanations. i did that for each and every passage even if i got all the questions right. i think that if you spend time reviewing ur answers, u'll definitely see improvement in ur score.
i also used kaplan verbals in the beginning...just because their passages are longer and more boring to read than the EK 101 passages. altho, their questions suck...they r waay too detail oriented.
anyways, i hope this helps and i'm sure with practice u'll do just fine! good luck studyin!

thanks for your reply! when you say Ek passages are "easy" to read, are you implying that real MCAT passages are not that easy to read? Are they similar? how did you feel?

 

[Div_MD2B]

thanks for your reply! when you say Ek passages are "easy" to read, are you implying that real MCAT passages are not that easy to read? Are they similar? how did you feel?

i just thought that the real mcat and aamc passages are a lot more boring compared to the EK passages and the real ones are longer too...i thought. after the first few passages in the EK101 book, i could focus pretty well 'cuz the topics that they picked were pretty alright like video games, school discipline and stuff. but the passages on the real test were more philosophical or related to politics (which i hate!). thas the only good thing about the kaplan passages...they r really boring to read.lol. plus, i had a real bad headache on the test day so everything seemed 10 times harder. but i think the EK questions r pretty representative of the real thing. more specifically, there were sooo many times i would screw up on those EXCEPT questions...like i would know the answer but then 'cuz i didn't read the question right, i would pick the wrong choice. and there were a lot of those on my aug '06 test...and the practice from EK really paid off.
may be u should mix up some kaplan tests with EK tests...i started out using kaplan until i was ok with timing and then did the EK101. so..just get as much practice as possible. g'luck!

 

[smuwillobrien]

The real MCAT passages are indeed a lot more boring than the EK passages. =] It makes me numb to think about the passages I had in August. =\ I wouldn't dismiss the EK passages though because they are practice all the same.

 

[DrBowtie]

Also, the real/AAMC tests are variable in the number of questions accompanying each passage. All the EK ones have 7 I believe.

 

[smuwillobrien]

Also, the real/AAMC tests are variable in the number of questions accompanying each passage. All the EK ones have 7 I believe.

That's a good point - some MCAT passages have 10 questions - I had like 2 or 3 of them on the August writing.

 

[prettyslick]

Ah I see! So did you guys do question in order, or did you skip around passages (do the passages with most questions, or do harder/boring ones first?) Since the computerized version of MCAT is coming up, I am not even sure if we can skip around passage to passage within the verbal section? And I heard there would be less # of questions (33% fewer..) does anyone know how many questions exactly?

Would you guys still recommend same material to practice even though MCAT is changing?

And did you guys underline while reading passages? I am not sure what we'll do on the computerized version..lol

 

[prettyslick]

I agree many passages in EK 101 book are interesting. I came across one boring passage about Islam+koran and comparing it to Jewish religion..... on verbal test 10.

is that a good sample of boring passage on the real thing?

 

[smuwillobrien]

I read through and did the passages in order. I had about ten or twelve minutes left, so I went back and reread the ten question passages.

 

[smuwillobrien]

I agree many passages in EK 101 book are interesting. I came across one boring passage about Islam+koran and comparing it to Jewish religion..... on verbal test 10.

is that a good sample of boring passage on the real thing?

If we were allowed to post what the specific questions were I would, but let me suffice it to say that that isn't even close to how bad some of the passages were. =]