Good Reading Material

[void]

What are some good reading materials to build the habit of reading to prepare for the rigors of medical school and its admissions process?

NY times? Science magazines? Scholarly articles? Research journals? New England Journal of Medicine? Straight up textbooks? Novels? Poetry? Every single MCAT prep book published?

Assuming, you have a natural disposition to read, and you have ~4 years to prepare for the MCAT anyway.

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[JS14]

nice topic yet no replies

bump

 

[Chris127]

http://www.newyorker.com/

 

[bozz]

I guess it depends how long you have.

I tried reading the Economist for a lil' bit... the articles for interesting but it probably doesn't do anything over a short period of time.

 

[Jman35]

What are some good reading materials to build the habit of reading to prepare for the rigors of medical school and its admissions process?

NY times? Science magazines? Scholarly articles? Research journals? New England Journal of Medicine? Straight up textbooks? Novels? Poetry? Every single MCAT prep book published?

Assuming, you have a natural disposition to read, and you have ~4 years to prepare for the MCAT anyway.

Although reading "scholarly" material, or just material aimed at a more educated crowd will indeed help you, I think the real aim is to develop a thirst for reading. This is something that develops over a long period of time, if not a lifetime. This is not to discourage you though. What I'm trying to say is that read things because you enjoy reading, and if you don't, start trying to. The people I know who scored 12 or more on the VR were avid readers since childhood; they read because they loved it, not in order to become better readers.

One of my close friends abhors reading. He asked me what he should do, and although it's tempting to tell him to read the New Yorker, Economist, Nature, etc. I know that if he tried it wouldn't last more than a month. The trick is to find material that you like, and just read it. Once you develop that zeal for reading then you can hone your skills and try to gradually increase the difficulty of the readings. Of course this is all assuming that you don't read that much...if you already do (as you said) then any of the above periodicals or others like them will help you out. Just read anything you can get your hands on, especially things you have a hard time understanding, whatever that happens to be.

 

[tncekm]

As someone who previously hated reading and avoided it at all costs, I found that after I forced myself to read The New Yorker for a while, I eventually started to enjoy it. Now I kind of enjoy the VR passages and I've been making improvements in VR

 

[Vihsadas]

Remember that the verbal can cover many different subject matters. It is good to get ACADEMIC literature from many of the different disciplines along with some other stuff that could be suiteable like the economist or other less 'layperson' magazines. I would start by reading some articles on art and history, short article biographies or interpreatitive pieces. Reading some planetary science could also help as that likes to show up from time on the MCAT. Hit up the 'JSTOR' which is an academic journal index for humanities, business and law, just like pubmed is for science.