Verbal-> predictor of med school performance

[riceman04]

or...to get people IN. i think we all know who the pessimist is here.
-mota

That's not being a pessimist...that is an example of analyzing the argument from all sides.

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[63768]

it makes perfect sense that verbal is a predictor of med school and after performance. in verbal, unlike PS or BS, you cannot rely on previous knowledge and/or knowledge that can be looked up to accurately answer the questions; instead, you must read carefully and glean the right answers from the given passage. this is most often the case with med school, seeing as how a lot of this info is new to us.

 

[MDDM]

it makes perfect sense that verbal is a predictor of med school and after performance. in verbal, unlike PS or BS, you cannot rely on previous knowledge and/or knowledge that can be looked up to accurately answer the questions; instead, you must read carefully and glean the right answers from the given passage. this is most often the case with med school, seeing as how a lot of this info is new to us.

Not necessarily... Verbal comes from excerpts that you would've come across if you have done some reading in college. I actually came across passages that came from a public health book. Additionally, verbal passages are highly based on cultural context. Take this, for example: There was a passage on my MCAT about the GOP (Grand Old Party)... Without clarifying what GOP actually means, the passage went on discussing Republicans and Democrats, using "GOP" and "Republican" interchangeably. If you were taking the MCAT in Sweden, I highly doubt you would know what is going on. This is one example among many... For example, some passages discuss famous people and not-so-famous ones. If you had a prior knowledge about the person being dicussed, you would be able to answer the questions much faster. So contrary to what the AAMC says, I found my performace on verbal highly correlated with the content and topics being presented.

 

[crazy_cavalier]

it makes perfect sense that verbal is a predictor of med school and after performance. in verbal, unlike PS or BS, you cannot rely on previous knowledge and/or knowledge that can be looked up to accurately answer the questions; instead, you must read carefully and glean the right answers from the given passage. this is most often the case with med school, seeing as how a lot of this info is new to us.

Right, and the science passages required that you don't read the passage whatsoever. I didn't need to glean *anything* from the bio or phys passages

The whole "verbal section predicts step performance" thing is such a crock. That whole section is specifically engineered into tricking you into picking the wrong answer.

 

[Dave_D]

I found that at least on the verbal reasoning being familiar with the style of writing is what made the difference. So I was use to how information was presented in the science passages so I did better on those ones than say philosophy.(Admittedly sometimes the questions Kaplan asked were so contorted that I got a different answer and I still consider mine the correct one.)

 

[osli]

The whole "verbal section predicts step performance" thing is such a crock. That whole section is specifically engineered into tricking you into picking the wrong answer.

On the contrary. While it is true that for some questions none of the answers are obviously correct, it is also true that for all of the questions three of the questions are obviously wrong. This is simply testing your ability to apply logic, not intuition or guessing, to a problem that isn't exactly clear. Remember the old saying (that goes something like...) "when you eliminate the impossible, then what is remaining, however improbable, must be the answer."

Apply that to the MCAT verbal and you're golden. Reading a lot helps make this second nature.

 

[Orth2006]

Hey

Did anyone heard this before? My friend's kaplan teacher said to her that studies have shown that Verbal score by itself is the most consistent predictor of how well students do in med school. Have anyone heard or known of such studies?

Thanks
just curious here.

Well if Verbal indicates med school performance then Writing Section should do much more. Afterall what use is it if you are this genius and yet you can't communicate effectively on paper in 30 minutes.

I just think one should take all these studies with a grain of salt. Med school is a different ball game and more than likely most people who get in do well. Don't fret about it - get in first.

 

[Orth2006]

On the contrary. While it is true that for some questions none of the answers are obviously correct, it is also true that for all of the questions three of the questions are obviously wrong. This is simply testing your ability to apply logic, not intuition or guessing, to a problem that isn't exactly clear. Remember the old saying (that goes something like...) "when you eliminate the impossible, then what is remaining, however improbable, must be the answer."

Apply that to the MCAT verbal and you're golden. Reading a lot helps make this second nature.

Actually the answers are neither correct nor wrong. Or better yet in some cases they are. But the one that gives you your point is the "credited response". So some answers on their own could be argued to be right but if they are not the credited response then you don't get credited. Which makes all this prediction thing silly. I can agree verbal or MCAT in general can predict USMLE performance. Afterall if I'm not mistaking, the USMLE is administered by the same company that administers the MCAT. So you can imagine the structure of these exams will be somewhat similar.

Maybe the situation would be different if verbal was 60 questions, 9 passages but instead of 85 minutes, make it 100mins or 110mins. At the end of the day the skill being tested is speed reading. While speed reading is a great skill to have, I'm not sure what place it has in being a good doctor. Furthermore as I mentioned earlier being able to communicate effectively(writing skills) is as important as being able to read work by other people. Yet the Writing Section is more neglected in evaluting an applicant than the other sections.

 

[63768]

Right, and the science passages required that you don't read the passage whatsoever. I didn't need to glean *anything* from the bio or phys passages

The whole "verbal section predicts step performance" thing is such a crock. That whole section is specifically engineered into tricking you into picking the wrong answer.

i never said that you don't need to read the bio or phys passages. i was saying that having a background in bio and phys is necessary to do well on the bio and phys sections. don't you notice that in PR and kaplan courses, you undergo a review of bio, phys, gen chem, and orgo, whereas with verbal it's all teaching techniques and how to decipher the wrong or right answers?

it seems like i struck a nerve on this. i really didn't mean to piss anyone off. i've just heard this theory and have analyzed it a little. no need to go nuts just because i don't agree with you.

 

[t33sg1rl]

The director of the adcom at my med school told us that undergrad GPA, all MCAT sections, and 2-3 other specific numbers (grade in specific undergrad classes, whatever) were all crunched up in a super-secret formula to give a predicted Step 1 score. That predicted board score is then used more than any single stat alone (like undergrad GPA). Verbal is weighed more heavily than science because it correlates with board scores (note, it does NOT correlated with performance in preclinical years)-essentially, someone could be a lousy student, but an excellent test taker-this person will probably pass Step 1, which is all the school wants.
The guy also said that the predicted board scores have historically been very accurate... meaning, I'm dying to sneak into the admissions files and find out NOW what I'll be getting on the boards!

 

[OwnageMobile]

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now i've realized what i've done, and i'm thinkin, "wtf, goddamnit, son of a..."
so now i'm and i go over the passage again, sometimes just as absentmindedly as before. then i'm kinda and i start to blame my situation on churchill all of a sudden...always-constipated-lookin, british, tea-sipping bastard...

This is totally me. I am dyslexic and absolutely hate reading. My spelling is terrible and I loathe reading out loud because I sound like a 3rd grader at times. I am a smart guy though; was in the gifted program, got a 37 on the MCAT yada yada...but what was my verbal? 9.

NOW TO ANSWER THE OP:

This was a gem from an earlier post:

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/research/bibliography/start.htm

Enjoy my people! Let us see how you guys can really interpret data. Plus, how cool would it be to whip one of these studies out during an interview!

 

[kajNCgirl]

Just a post for anyone who may be disillusioned by a lower verbal score-- I was an english major at a competitive undergraduate university, however my verbal score on the MCAT was the LOWEST of all 3 sections. I am now a second year med student and I have found my verbal score to be completely unpredictive of my performance in my course work (my grades are fine, and my test scores are consistently higher than many students in my class who scored well above me on the verbal section and the MCAT as a whole). I have not yet taken step 1, but all of the upperclassmen with whom I have spoken have said that the 2 tests are completely different (there are no long passages on the usmle, and the usmle is much more information based). My experience with med school so far has been that the more hard work and time you put in, the better you do, it is as simple as that. I was very disillusioned by my MCAT scores going into med school last year, but I wish I had not worried so much about it as my MCAT scores, and particularly my verbal section, were not predictive of my med school performance in any way.

Hope this helps to calm anyone who may be worried about the MCAT and the verbal section...

kajNCgirl

 

[USArmyDoc]

Great; then we can all agree that legislation prohibiting torture should not affect current practices, and as such there should be no opposition to its passage!

I agree with you here. With that being said, I think everyone's definition of torture is a little weak here in the states.