Actual Score (PS/V/BS): 28 (12/6/10)
Predicted Score (PS/V/BS): 32 (12/9/11)
Prep Materials (Content/Practice Materials and FLs): Kaplan course + Kaplan Review Books + Kaplan FL's + AAMC FL's
AAMC and Other FL Averages: ~30-32
Comments/Feelings/Tips: I am very dissapointed at both my verbal and bio scores, especially verbal. I am retaking the MCAT probably in January because I want to crack at least 32. It will be very difficult to increase by score by that many points but I think it is doable. The verbal section was especially difficult because I was not used to the testing environment.
For those of you scoring above 32s and such, what did you do to prepare for verbal and bio? What prep materials do you find the best and what study methods really helped you guys see improvement? I have not looked at EK 101 passages for verbal which I am told is very good but for bio I was scoring between 10-12s and I am not sure why i did so poorly. Any other tips and help are highly appreciated, thank you!
You are already doing well with bio. In my opinion all your focus should on VR if you are going to retake, and only maintain your score in other sections.
I personally found that none of the non-official VR books were much helpful at all. I did both the EK and TPRH, and found both of them... well, honestly a waste of time because I was getting near perfect score in them, but when it came to AAMC practice tests I couldn't break past 13.
I am ESL, so VR did take some effort for me. My preparation for VR was a bit unorthodox actually. I used official LSAT reading comprehension passages. I found the LSAT material a lot closer to the MCAT style compared to EK or TPRH in relative terms. The LSAT also has 5 multiple choices, so I did think they are more challenging than the MCAT because you aren't as lucky guessing things. The length of the passages are similar, and so is their diversity of topics and density of content. The style of the questions is somewhat different than MCAT, but again, I thought they are a better simulation than anything the prep companies have to offer.
Overall the MCAT VR and LSAT reading comp test you on the same thing: how well can you quickly grasp the main idea of a very dense package on a topic that you are not familiar with, and whether you can articulate the attitude of the author, his/her premises and argument formulation. If you take nothing else away from doing LSAT passages, you will for sure get better at understanding the main idea, and that skill is the linchpin of VR. I found that with the MCAT practice material from prep companies you could always just get the right answer by digging back to the passage. Not so with the actual MCAT, and kind of the same with the LSAT.
In any case, my own score in that section is not that spectacular and below what I got in my practice tests, so take all this along with your own common sense. Trying it certainly won't hurt, especially if you are all out of official AAMC practice material.
And of course, always time everything. Another thing I did was redo each passage after doing them under times conditions, but BEFORE checking the answers, this second time around not timing myself (usually next day or something). Then I compared my untimed, non-stressed answers to the times ones. Finally I compared both the first and second answers to the key, analyzing both my right and wrong answers very carefully. This helped me understand better why I was making mistakes: for example, was it because I read too fast and didn't understand some main key points, and why? And the questions I got right, did I get the pm right for the right reasons?
One of the most valuable things that came from the above was that I realized it is never a matter of not having enough time to read. Even if I wasn't rushing, it didn't take more than 3.5 minutes to read any of the passages. That understanding really helped me to just relax and find a good rhythm that minimized errors.
Good luck!
