Pcat Help

[mocheddah]

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Alright guys i need some help. I was put on the alternate list because my pcat comp score was low. The verbal section hurt me a tremendous amout, so does anyone have any suggestions to improve this??
THanks guys...i love you...i love you a lot...i really do!

 

[SoccerCoach10]

Verbal is a little more difficult to raise. I think that you could probably try reading more often (like newspapers, etc) and I would also suggest getting practice with analogies and word roots. I didn't really study for the verbal/reading sections when prepping for the PCAT, but I love to read and I think that definitely helped me out (I got a 98% for verbal). I think that if you studied word roots, that would help. Even if the word isn't familiar, if you know the root you can do process of elimination and make a good guess.

Good Luck!

 

[parabolic]

If you were having difficulty due to a smaller vocabulary, you could try the website freerice.com (a bunch of other SDNers have suggested it) or study the top xxx (100? 200?) SAT words. The consensus seems to be that GRE words are overkill.

If it's analogies that were the issue, practice helps. You can probably find a book of analogies online.

The number one tip overall: read. Read as much as you can. It will help.

Here are a couple of good threads on studying for the verbal section:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=488565
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=469582

Good luck!

 

[lwang81]

Alright guys i need some help. I was put on the alternate list because my pcat comp score was low. The verbal section hurt me a tremendous amout, so does anyone have any suggestions to improve this??
THanks guys...i love you...i love you a lot...i really do!

Verbal is hard to raise. You just really have to try everything. Try learning more vocabulary by using word smart? Read more books. Do a lot of practice test with verbal sections and see how they explain the answer. Was it only because of your verbal or your overall PCAT was too low because I know people with low 30's in verbal who did well overall and got accepted.

 

[medicalCPA]

To improve your verbal scores, you must do one thing. READ!

I can personally attest to the truth of the above. I am an international student and I took the SAT in 1999 and scored 680 on the verbal portion. I was denied a visa by the US embassy in my country, and I didn't try to come to the US for another 4 years. In that time I read a lot. I wasn't reading to improve my test scores; I had met someone who inspired me to. My father had lots of books - kind of his personal library - and I would start from one end of the shelf and read through to the other end. I don't know how many books I read, but they must have been in the hundreds. It really helped. When I took the SAT the second time, I got 800 on the verbal. I got 790 on the GRE verbal, 98 on the PCAT verbal, and 99 on the reading comprehension portion. Although, interestingly enough, I got 10 on my MCAT verbal...
That's my story. You probably don't have 4 years, but read anyway.

 

[justyliz]

I agree with all of the other posters' great advice... Improving your verbal score just takes time. One thing I did a few months before the test was subscribe to Word of the Day on www.dictionary.com. The service will e-mail you different words and their definitions everyday. Also, it may be useful to learn some of the very basic latin prefixes/suffixes so you can deduce the definition of some of the words on the verbal section. In my experience, the actual words on the verbal section weren't particularly difficult. The hard part is making the abstract connections between them (for analogies) in a set time limit. I would say you would be just fine using SAT vocabulary books in preparing for the PCAT - the GRE is overkill.