RC was the section that I was most worried about during my DAT prep because I'm a pretty slow reader. To make sure I was as ready as I could be, I took the advice of Dr. Romano^ about the 30 minutes of reading. I read 30 minutes of scientific articles from knowable magazine, scientific american, the scientist, etc. to built on my reading speed and comprehension. However, do not just read these articles mindlessly. Actively try to read and comprehend what is being said (not 100% comprehension but enough to understand the ideas of each paragraph). If you keep actively reading, you'll probably get 1% better everyday, and that will add up in the long run.
I also took a full length RC practice test weekly for about 9 weeks (doubled my practice tests for the week before my DAT, so I did about 10 practice tests in all). Full length practice tests were essential for me to getting a rhythm/strategy down and for understanding how much stamina I needed in order to do well. For the practice tests, the strategy I used was a bit modified from S_Diamond_DDS's
Helpful Strategy for RC Section for Slow Readers. My strategy consisted of reading a little more than half of each passage. For example, if the passage had 10 paragraphs I'd read one more than half, so 6 paragraphs. If the passage had an odd number of paragraphs, say 13, then I'd read 7 paragraphs (rounded up from half of 13). My goal was to read quickly but still comprehend 60-70% of the information in the passages. After each paragraph, I'd take a few seconds to mentally summarize what the paragraph consisted of so that I could create a mental roadmap of where information was when I went to answer the questions (I did this little mental summary of keywords and main ideas after each paragraph during my 30 minutes of practice reading each day as well. Practice makes perfect.) My goal was to get done with this portion of reading in a maximum of 5 minutes. Then I'd go to the questions. If I came to a question that I didn't recognize, then I knew it must be from the paragraphs after I stopped reading. I would then either read the first sentence/keywords/last sentence of subsequent paragraphs or just search and destroy until I found the answer. I would shoot for completing an individual passage by 19.5 minutes. Sometimes I would go a little over and that gave me a reminder that I have to speed up a bit for the rest of the passages. I shot for 19.5 minutes for each passage because I wanted to make sure I answered every questions. This is essential. You DO NOT want to get hung up on a single question, even if it seems like an easy recall questions but you just can't find the answer. You need to keep moving because you do not want to guess on two-three questions at the end because you ran out of time. They could have been really easy to answer but you just didn't have time. So pace yourself and be conscious of time.
Find a strategy that works for you! If doing only S&D isn't working for you, then test some more reliable strategies.
