Verbal Reasoning Confusion

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krogers21

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Alright, so I decided to take a practice mcat the other day in order to see where I was at in my studies. Needless to say, I think I did pretty well in the sciences without having studied Physics or O. Chem yet -- I got 9s on the sections, is this good? However, I did horrendous on my verbal reasoning - I got a slap to my self-esteem with a 6. Completely devastated, I went directly to the verbal reasoning and glanced at the sections I missed. Today at work (I work 40 hours/ week -- completely showing up in my scores) I was talking with my co-worker who wrote June 2012 and got a 37. He was telling me that it was probably just a fluke since I have been averaging around 9 based on my AAMC 3 diagnostic and AAMC 5. Attempting to test this theory because I had forgotten which questions I had missed, I decided to take the verbal section again. When taking it as my practice (attempt 1), I ran out of time because I'm border-line mentally handicapped in reading speed; so, I had to guess on the last passage and was rushing through the second to last passage to get to the last. On attempt 2, I finished in time though I had only 2 seconds remaining and received an 8 (~ 9:30 PM finish time). Taking a break and getting some ice cream with my girlfriend, I came back home (~10:45PM) and decided to retake the test under untimed conditions (I had not reviewed the questions so figured this would be fine). I finished in ~1 hr 16 min. and got an 11.

The reason for this novella is that I am needing an outside source to gauge whether there is any indication that I'm capable of receiving 10+ scores given that I improve my reading comprehension times or if I merely was able to just retain the information from reading and collectively build upon my understanding of the passages. I feel like this may be the case as I could remember previous answers; however, it did not affect my judgement on choosing what I deemed the appropriate answer. In fact, this could indicate that all my problem is is comprehension of the readings and doing so in a concise way.

What are your thoughts on all of this?

Thanks for bearing through this treacherous post. :laugh:
 
I would think because you had a chance to read every passage three times, things you missed the first time becomes apparent the third time and contributed to the higher score. So I think it's a crapshoot...

The hardest part of MCAT verbal is reading quickly once and remembering the basic outline of the passage. Once completed, go back to the passage to confirm the answer. That's how I managed a decent score on my MCAT. I think the easiest way to become better at verbal is to read newspaper and make an effort to read the articles quickly.
 

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