Improve VR early? or right before the test?

[junkct]

alright, the title of the thread might seem a bit stupid of a question, but hear me out. VR is my weakest section, so I'm planning on working on that quite a bit. I'm taking the MCAT on jan 31. I have all the Kaplan material, as well as EK 101. I've done about 7 tests in 101 and I'm at around 10-11 (I'd really like to get to the 11/12 range... I'd be happy with a 10 on the real thing, but just want to give myself a buffer, and extra points never hurt!)

I haven't done any rigorous VR practice yet (nothing like 1 test per day or anything), but I've been sprinkling the 101 tests throughout my test prep, mostly to make sure I keep practicing at least somewhat. I figured I could improve my VR by starting to do rigorous VR practice a couple weeks before the test. See, I didn't want to try to increase my score right now because I would just run out of practice materials, and I didn't want to just improve my score right now so that it just drops later on as a result of not having any practice materials. However, I was browsing through the 30+ strategies thread and most people say to start VR early and to not wait till the last minute to work on it...

I have about a month now before the test, so I could potentially start my VR practice right now and try to boost my score to that 11-12 range, but then if I run out of 101 tests and don't really have anything to study with for the last 2 weeks before the test, do you think my score would drop? Basically, I guess what I'm asking is if you start out at like 8-9 (like I did), do vigorous practice to get up to 11-12 early on in studying, and then don't do as much VR practice after that, is your score likely to stay constant or drop? Also, is my score not going to increase by doing what I'm doing currently (1 VR test per week)?

Sorry for the convoluted post; feel free to ask me to clarify anything. I've been studying since summertime and just don't know if I'm going about this VR thing the right way...

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[SN2ed]

If you don't practice, yes, your score will go down. This isn't a might or maybe, it will go down. I made the same mistake because my verbal scores were high and they never recovered after I stopped practicing. Great advice from my test prep "teacher" Never stop practicing. That said, taking a test a week isn't the best way to use your resources. I think limiting yourself to 4 timed passages a day would probably be better. Whatever you decide, you should get more verbal practice material. When you're calculating how much verbal material you have, remember that your FLs have verbal passages in them.

 

[junkct]

If you don't practice, yes, your score will go down. This isn't a might or maybe, it will go down. I made the same mistake because my verbal scores were high and they never recovered after I stopped practicing. Great advice from my test prep "teacher" Never stop practicing. That said, taking a test a week isn't the best way to use your resources. I think limiting yourself to 4 timed passages a day would probably be better. Whatever you decide, you should get more verbal practice material. When you're calculating how much verbal material you have, remember that your FLs have verbal passages in them.

Thanks for your response. When I was originally scoring 8s and 9s, I practiced a little bit to get myself at least to the 10 mark (this was sometime over the last semester), but knowing that I wouldn't be testing until end of january, I didn't want to use up all the EK tests, so my real practice was mainly during full-lengths once a week and Kaplan VR tests here and there, with the intention of ramping it up a few weeks before the test and doing one test every day or every other day to try to improve my score to the max it could go. I just wasn't sure if a few weeks was enough time to try to improve, or if I should start earlier than that. If what you're saying is true, then maybe I'll keep doing teh kaplan VR (which I have a lot of) just to keep myself fresh, and then move onto EK as test day gets closer...

 

[futuredoctor10]

If what you're saying is true, then maybe I'll keep doing teh kaplan VR (which I have a lot of) just to keep myself fresh, and then move onto EK as test day gets closer...

Good plan I think!

 

[J ROD]

I would do a couple of passages a day two weeks up until the MCAT.

 

[229141]

" Never stop practicing.

Nuff said!