Verbal is going to kill me

[sasoor]

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Hi, I am going to take the August 2005 MCAT. I need to get 30+ (don't we all!!!). I have already taken the MCAT once and I had a 26 with Bio=10, Phy=10, and a V=6. I hate verbal, but i guess there is no escape. I applied for schools last year and did not get in anywhere (GPA=3.2). Right now I am working full-time at a hospital with a surgeon doing cancer research. I even have papers, but it seems like none of that counts. Does anyone have any suggestions? I really need to pull up my verbal score to a 10, is it possible in only 3 months? I appreciate any comments and suggestions.

 

[Booyakasha]

Hi, I am going to take the August 2005 MCAT. I need to get 30+ (don't we all!!!). I have already taken the MCAT once and I had a 26 with Bio=10, Phy=10, and a V=6. I hate verbal, but i guess there is no escape. I applied for schools last year and did not get in anywhere (GPA=3.2). Right now I am working full-time at a hospital with a surgeon doing cancer research. I even have papers, but it seems like none of that counts. Does anyone have any suggestions? I really need to pull up my verbal score to a 10, is it possible in only 3 months? I appreciate any comments and suggestions.

Read constantly. Read the paper every morning (the New York Times is free online). Also, get some strategy tips from various sources; try them out and see which one you like best.

 

[NorCalGirl]

Read constantly. Read the paper every morning (the New York Times is free online). Also, get some strategy tips from various sources; try them out and see which one you like best.

I agree! Verbal was my weakness, as I'm sure it is for many people (esp. people who speak English as a second language but also for people are who aren't big readers). To get myself better prepared to read boring passages in lightning speed, I read for 2 hours/day (spread out or all at once if you don't have attention problems) for 6 weeks before the MCAT! I read the NYtimes, books, the Economist, the New Yorker, Harper's, oh my I read everything I could. And I had never really been much of a reader before, but I actually enjoyed it. And I must have done over 20 full-length practice verbal sections before the actual MCAT (just to get my mind ready for it). After all that, I'm still not a verbal genius but I increased my verbal score by 3 points. Seems small, but it made all the difference in the world for me! Good luck!

 

[markboonya]

I took the princeton review course and found that their tips (in the verbal book) were quite helpful, so mayb try to get ur hands on one. other than that, its just about practice practice practice. 2 weeks prior to the test, i took a full length verbal every morning. save the amcas ones for last. make sure u go over the ones u got wrong, and make sure u understand where ur line of reasoning in answering that question went awry. it also helps to read the explanations for the answers u got right. since u still have a couple months before august, read read read. it was helpful for me (when reading magazines, newspapers, science journals) to stop myself after every paragraph and summarize in one sentence what the author was trying to say. of course u wont have time to do this during the actual test, but it will put u in the mindset to quickly grasp the general tone and message.
goodluck with ur studying.

 

[doctorjoy]

This is just my opinion of what I have observed through my students and my own self. A lot of what we do is what our mind tells us to do. mind over matter. The more you tell yourself you hate something more likely you are not going to do it or do well with it. So i say try a different approach, think positive about verbal. Fall in love with verbal 😍 I don't know it is just a suggestion 😉

 

[optimistique]

I followed a study philosophy similar to NorCalGirl. 👍

Get Examkrackers 101 Verbal passages (11 full length tests) plus AAMC 3-8 and any other practice you can get your hands on. I do have some critiques about EK 101 VR but you can read about that in a slew of other threads.

Go to your school library and read as many issues of Scientific American and Atlantic Monthly as you can... just for starters. The AAMC pulls passages directly from these sources (you can see the citations on the practice tests.)

Don’t stop there. Get a nice sleeping bag and live in the periodical section. Read the driest journal articles you can find. Practice concentrating on material that doesn’t interest you.

For some of the passages that gave me trouble (AAMC 7) I went so far as to look up the books where the material came from - just to prove to myself that they weren’t pulling stuff out of the air to drive me crazy. It really is stuff from your local university library. My point is to thoroughly REVIEW your work. I would completely mark up my practice test and highlight the answer in the passages.

Get this outside material and: Read fast, read intensely, read every word. Read until your head hurts.

 

[stoleyerscrubz]

what's strange about threads like these is that either all of the posts will say stick to practice passages only and out side reading is BS or the whole thread will lean to the use as many passages as possible and supplement with outside reading.

I prefer the latter. I tend to zone out when reading boring passages so reading outside material during my free time helps my concentrattion. I read it quickly and then try to come up with a main idea in 5 seconds. Of course the bulk of your work should be practice passages and going over answers.

I use EK's method but I am going to combine it with kaplan's method of identifying Question types. LukeWhite made posts about this. You can find their method in Kaplan 45 MCAT. I read it in the library and noticed I was confusing one of the question types for another and consistently had problems with it.

 

[Turkeyman]

Reading in general will work

Doing practice passages will work

Doing both of them together will probably work even better

Doing nothing won't work

Simple as that...verbal's a killer for those of us who don't read regularly and have problems following trains of thought. I have a really slow mind when it comes to such things, but practice will help you pull through 👍

 

[shantster]

I found this a little while ago on this forum that I've saved in my links for when I take the MCAT next year since it looked quite helpful. I have yet to test it out though.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=39366

 

[caribsun]

i would just read a few articles every morning from a literary mag or new yorker for a focused hour looking at structure and theme and the gist of the reading.

the rest of the day, I would study my ass off for the phys and bio and try to rock those. Then i would just take the test and relax and see how you do. verbal is a lot about relaxing and stream of consciousness than doing a bunch of questions. IMHO

Hi, I am going to take the August 2005 MCAT. I need to get 30+ (don't we all!!!). I have already taken the MCAT once and I had a 26 with Bio=10, Phy=10, and a V=6. I hate verbal, but i guess there is no escape. I applied for schools last year and did not get in anywhere (GPA=3.2). Right now I am working full-time at a hospital with a surgeon doing cancer research. I even have papers, but it seems like none of that counts. Does anyone have any suggestions? I really need to pull up my verbal score to a 10, is it possible in only 3 months? I appreciate any comments and suggestions.

 

[sasoor]

I found this a little while ago on this forum that I've saved in my links for when I take the MCAT next year since it looked quite helpful. I have yet to test it out though.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=39366

Thank you for the link shantster, it seems VERY helpful. Now I need to implement it in my Verbal practices.

Sasoor