Here we go, I am really passionate about helping people with their MCAT woes, so bear with me.
Do the practice passages from Examkrackers. Use their verbal method guide thing as technique (their technique is essentially to use no technique and go with your gut). All the other prep companies have cool flashy techniques that seem like they will help: "lets rank the passages, name what type of answer each possibility is, etc." And while those are a good sell to an audience, they all do one thing: waste your time. The biggest problem, especially for the verbal section, is lack of time. Instead of wasting time thinking about the deep meaning of the passage and what type of answers topics each possibility is, why not just read the passage and answer the questions exactly how it is. Seems crazy, but keep reading....
The trick with MCAT verbal is simply speed and gut instinct - which coincidentally go hand in hand. If you read the passages too deeply (like word for word, line for line) you will miss the overall point of the passage and waste entire minutes that you cant get back. Again coincidentally, most questions relate specifically to the overall point/feeling of the passage, which is good. So read it like you would any other news article. When you pick up an article you can typically (within the first couple of paragraphs) generally get an idea for what it is about. You can also generally pick up on feelings from the writer: are they biased towards it? Angry about the topic? judgmental? bored? excited? They will use certain language/words to convey their meaning across to the writer. By reading the material in a very general, distanced sense and not trying to master it, you can really get an idea of what the passage is about. It also helps with questions that ask "what would the author think about topic X or Y." (ex. If he sounds pissed off at the topic, then he will probably be pissed off at other similar topics as well... that sort of thing). This general flow of the article and the feelings the writer put into it are all picked up by your gut instinct. If you are reading word for word, you will miss out on the general emotion and feeling of the passage. If you want good practice for picking up on emotion, read some crap on CNN (especially the opinions section). You can really start to understand how people's feelings/biases leak into their writing. CNN in particular is a very good place to start. Their writers are horrible and they infuse their own biases in everything (go read a couple articles and get back to me haha). Then to get to a more realistic challenge, read some articles from the NYTIMES (it costs money to read articles, but you can actually just google article titles and you can get bootleg links through a couple other websites that dont take up your "10 articles a month" haha).
Where the MCAT writers try to F you up is by trying to confuse you with strange writing (to hide the general point) and to give you questions that if you sit there and stop long enough, any of the answers could "technically" be correct. So how to help all of that is gut instinct... You just read it through, think what you want to think about it. Then when you get to the questions, just go with the answer that seems, at your very first glance, to be the correct answer. With practice these answers shine like a light compared to the others. If you look at the possible answers from a very distanced position (and not like over analyzing word for word) 3 possibilities will seem REALLY crazy/wrong whereas one answer will only seem sort of crazy/wrong (this would be the correct answer).
When I first started studying, I was abusing the highlighter, really reading word for word - I wanted to make sure that every single sentence was taken into account. Then I made sure that I carefully was going through every single word of the answers, again making sure everything was covered. By this method I could not break a 6; heck, most of the time I couldnt even finish the passages, and I was born and raised speaking english. That method just wastes soooo much time. Then I went with Princeton review's method, which is to first skim all of the passages and rank them on easiest to hardest. Then in each passage you rank what the possible answers are based on what type of answer prompt that they are. problems with this: A) You have to answer every single passage to get a 15, so why would you rank them with the intention of not finishing the harder passages...? and B) All forms of ranking and such take WAYYY too much time, which of course is the most precious commodity that you have on the MCAT. So as insane and backwards as it sounds, how to fix all these problems is to just... spend less time on the passages and answers. Whereas I first tried all these different methods, I eventually settled on the gut instinct method and got a 10 on every single other verbal section on the AAMCs. A 10 obviously isnt through the roof, but it is good enough for me and better than a lot of people's verbal sections. The problem is that the test writers WANT you to waste your time reading word for word and second guessing yourself; that way you cant finish the passages. They WANT you to second guess yourself, so when you originally picked the correct answer, you then changed it to the wrong one because you spent too much time on it and over analyzed. None of the answers are usually 100% correct, so you just (with your gut) quickly pick the answer that seems the least crazy/ridiculous/irrelevant to the passage. Once you pick the answer, dont look back, dont rethink it, just move on. In undergrad your job is to pick "the most correct answer." You get a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside when you know to your core that the answer you circled is correct. This is completely the opposite with the MCAT. With the MCAT your job is to pick "the least wrong answer." There are no warm fuzzies.... only gut instinct on the answer that isnt completely wrong.
So yea, I suggest just to go speed and gut. It seems scary at first, that you would like drop all strategy and be relaxed when you are reading and answering questions. But it is shocking what it can do for some people. You start to really trust yourself and trust that you know which way is up haha. Because whether or not you feel confident towards the verbal section, the reality is that you DO know what is up and what is down. If you and I were friends, having a coffee and I asked you what you thought about a short article we both read, we could probably talk about it for like 20 minutes. And that is just with ONE read half-assed skim through! Have confidence that you know what you are doing. Even if you dont know anything about ballet, or medieval architecture, or some other obscure topic that they put on the test, you DO know how to think. You DO know how to pick up on social cues found throughout the writing. The problem is you (if you are like me and many other test takers) are over thinking, spending time doing the wrong things, and second guessing answers that you KNOW at your core, are correct.
Overall though, practice. Do tons and tons of practice passages under timed conditions. This is true of all sections. The more you practice, the higher your score will go (to a point). PM me if you need any more advice, on any of the sections.
