Is EK 101 verbal easier or harder than actual?

[Pakidoc12]

Hi Everyone,

I've been using the EK 101 verbal book, and so far ive done the first 7 tests with small improvements each time. I basically improved from 7's to 8's and got 9's and the last two. But then today I went and took just the verbal section of the free mcat on the aamc website (which is aamc test 3), and I scored a 6 . Ive seen in other threads that people said EK is harder than actual? But my score says otherwise... I'm not really discouraged because I feel I can do better if I take another verbal section from an actaul test, but just wanted to know, is EK generally harder or easier? Thanks!

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[MedPR]

Hi Everyone,

I've been using the EK 101 verbal book, and so far ive done the first 7 tests with small improvements each time. I basically improved from 7's to 8's and got 9's and the last two. But then today I went and took just the verbal section of the free mcat on the aamc website (which is aamc test 3), and I scored a 6 . Ive seen in other threads that people said EK is harder than actual? But my score says otherwise... I'm not really discouraged because I feel I can do better if I take another verbal section from an actaul test, but just wanted to know, is EK generally harder or easier? Thanks!

It really depends on what passages you get and what passages you are strong at. I figured EK 101 was easier because I've done pretty well on it so far.

 

[Mountaineer12]

I thought tests 1-10 of EK have been easier than the AAMC practice tests, but tests 11-14 of EK are pretty tough and I've scored about the same on them as the AAMC ones (9s and 10s). I'm not sure if EK is actually easier, but it's definitely more interesting and shorter than the AAMC ones so it's easier to concentrate, at least for me.

 

[Tsiana]

I found the EK 101 verbal tests not very useful, nor a great predictor of the verbal score. For one thing, there were always a few questions per test that were either 1) the wrong answer was noted to be the right one (rare but it happens) or 2) the questions did not feel like real MCAT verbal questions. I did consistently worse on the EK tests because of this, as I started to mistrust the tests, and therefore did not work as hard at them.

FL real exams are way more useful.

 

[Amba]

I found the EK 101 verbal tests not very useful, nor a great predictor of the verbal score. For one thing, there were always a few questions per test that were either 1) the wrong answer was noted to be the right one (rare but it happens) or 2) the questions did not feel like real MCAT verbal questions. I did consistently worse on the EK tests because of this, as I started to mistrust the tests, and therefore did not work as hard at them.

FL real exams are way more useful.

I agree, I did the first 10 EK tests by going 2-3 passages per day at a time and consistently had 9s (some) and 10s (mostly), with one rare 12. On my two FLs, I've gotten 32/40 and 36/40. I've found some of EKs answers to be very frustrating and haven't seen any improvement on their tests, so I'm probably done with that book unless my verbal tanks on my FLs.

That being said, if you're really low in verbal, EK has some of the better passages on the market and is still good practice.

 

[Warren Peace]

I wouldn't say it's harder, just different. They ask questions that focus on different things and the answers can be EXTREMELY vague. Don't get me wrong, it's good practice, just not great.

If you can read through the passage and get understand what the author is arguing/describing and where he makes certain arguments or observations you'll be fine.

Don't let your scores get you too far down (especially if you understand the stuff... some of their answers are just ). For what its worth, I did about ten of them and got a 7-8 average with one 10 (or something in that range). On the real thing I got an 11 (I feel I could have gotten a 12 if I didn't freak out a little at the 10 min mark)

 

[Classof2013PreM]

I scored higher on the real thing, but I'm not sure if I would consider them harder than the real MCAT. I felt the ek101 verbal passage questions were just more poorly worded and vague.

 

[YouNeverKnow22]

EK 101 is pretty easy IMO, and usually 1 question per passage where I'm like "WTFFFFFFFF"