I finally got a an 8/8 on a verbal passage!!

[thadarknyte]

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SOooo i know this isnt a big deal for many of you out there, but for me, this is huge. Ive done numerous verbal passages (i took the august 05 exam) and i have been studying for about 2 weeks now, and even in the easiest passage i usually get 1 question wrong.

After tweaking my strategy a little, I have somhow managed to get it together. With my new strategy, i 4 passages in a row, for a total of 28 questions, and I got only 4 wrong. Again, i know for most of you this is no big deal! haha, but that just made my day!

I think imma go get some coldstone now

 

[~CDN Pre-med~]

Hey...i wrote in august as well...do you mind sharing what the "tweaking" was? I'm still having major issues with verbal...well not major, but i can definitely benefit from advice of some sort! 🙂

 

[thadarknyte]

Okay, so this is going to sound ******ed, but its working for me...

You know how you have to read critically and some even suggest to read as a professor...well thats what I do...EXCEPT

I think of a person in my major who I hate because they are cocky anus holes and think that they are God's gift to us and I pretend that I am doing a peer evaluation on one of the paper's they wrote.

This makes me read the passage carefully and it DEFINATELY helps me understand it more. I read the full passage but I do very minimal underlining unless there is something that I feel is important to "tag".

Basically, by pretending that I am grading someone's paper, I look for flaws in the argument, i see what doesnt make sense, and most importantly I try to understand it. This was a huge prob for me in the last MCAT because I would do all the underlining and get the main idea, but i really wouldnt understand the passage in full. Hopefully this helps, its very small, but with practice...im telling you, it will work! GOOD LUCK! 👍

 

[Mr. Tee]

Thanks for the tip...I will try that! 👍

 

[luckydoc]

SOooo i know this isnt a big deal for many of you out there, but for me, this is huge. Ive done numerous verbal passages (i took the august 05 exam) and i have been studying for about 2 weeks now, and even in the easiest passage i usually get 1 question wrong.

After tweaking my strategy a little, I have somhow managed to get it together. With my new strategy, i 4 passages in a row, for a total of 28 questions, and I got only 4 wrong. Again, i know for most of you this is no big deal! haha, but that just made my day!

I think imma go get some coldstone now

What were you usually scoring on verbal before you "tweaked" a few things?

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

mmmm, Coldstone

 

[~CDN Pre-med~]

lol...i will definitely try that!

 

[thadarknyte]

What were you usually scoring on verbal before you "tweaked" a few things?

On my diagnostic I got a 4 🙁. With practice kept getting consistent 6 and 7s. And now im finally getting 9's and 10's, which hopefully will go up in the next 2 montsh of studying.

 

[Medicineman20]

I struggle with the verbal, any advice to improve my VR score???

 

[KeyLime]

What books (EK, TPR, Kaplan) are you using?

 

[alex_shimp]

Actually the idea proposed is pretty good, I will try it...

Altho what I am tyring to do is every paragraph I read, ask yourself.. what is this guy trying to say.... who is he/she exactly?

Those 2 questsion help you quite a bit.... like knowing the main purpose / argument helps you answer 8/10 time correctly...

 

[soosung]

I guess I'm at the point where you were getting 6's and 7's. Barely just got a 8 using the method. I tried reading carefully, but I still seem to miss a lot...

 

[DoctorAck]

Here is what I have found:
I took the MCAT last august and got an 8 on verbal (which was pretty consistant with my Kaplan practice tests). I am taking the MCAT again in April and looking back on the summer, I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong until I STOPPED doing what Kaplan told me. Kaplan tells you to map out the passage by writing a paraphrase down next to each paragraph, and write down the Topic, Scope, and Purpose of each passage-- I found that the paraphrasing after each paragraph was actually hurting me because it would disrupt the flow of the passage, I'd often be sitting there for 10-20 seconds trying to think of how I could fit the idea into a few words, which really disrupts your train of thought in relation to the passage as a whole.
At the end, writing down the topic, scope, and purpose was just a waste of time,---- basically, if you DONT know these things by the end of the passage, you have missed the point and you probably will do terrible on the passage anyway. Writing them down just took an additional 20-30 seconds off your time, every passage. Add all this paraphrasing and T,S,P time up, and you are wasting about 5-6 minutes on your VR section!
Kaplan's mapping, in my opinion, is severely disruptive to the flow of the passage and distracts your train of thought, you will often find yourself confused between paragraphs. I've changed my strategy by just reading the passage straight through, without stopping, unless to underline important things or circle keywords. Once I started doing this, it seems that I have gone from getting about 2-3 questions wrong per passage to 1-2 questions wrong per passage.
I've also heard reading the NY times helps improve your verbal. Read magazines (NOT BOOKS LIKE NOVELS--the format is way diff. than the MCAT), short articles, journals, read read read. You want to be able to look at an article and nail the main idea, everytime. The main idea is essential to like 90% of the questions.
Haha, ok, sounds like a lot of "expert" advice coming from someone who only got an 8 on verbal, but me and my little MCAT study group discuss strategies all the time, and we pretty much agree that this is what works for verbal. Hope this helps.