I started off with a 4 on verbal and 10s on the sciences. I would work really hard on verbal and neglected my sciences for a good 2 months. At first I would be stuck at a 7 and I felt that nothing I did made a difference. I took 2 weeks off and devoted it to verbal and was getting consistent 9s at one point. Worked harder and got 11 on a few tests. I stopped for a month b/c of school and my verbal dropped to a 7 faster than an elephant off the empire state building (negligible air resistance). Now it took me a good month to get it back to a 9 and I am hopping for a big improvement by the end of this week. I can feel it too. I got my timing down and my reading is never better. Only problem is my score fluctuates from 9 to 11 depending on how focused I am. Best of luck to you. PM me anytime and I can tell you all the strategies I use.
I really do think this tests is bias towards good readers (not only in the verbal section), but what can you do? The thing though, I came to realized, contrary to what AAMC says, the verbal is more of a reading comprehension than a verbal reasoning test. I do think that 90% of the questions can be found within the passage. So really the hard part is just finding them before the timer runs out.
Only after I realized this that my score started to improve. Be focused, read quickly with a mental or written map, and definitely refer back to the passage to answer the question. This should be enough to get you started.
