VR Practice---How much time per passage?

[meliora27]

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When you're doing practice VR passages, how much time do you give yourself per passage? Thanks.

 

[MD2BEEE]

When you're doing practice VR passages, how much time do you give yourself per passage? Thanks.

On average, 8.5 minutes. If you just want to practice speed I would recommend doing sets of 2 passages in 17 minutes just to account for differences in number of questions per passage since some can have more or less.

 

[meliora27]

I had been doing 8 mins per passage, those extra 30 seconds would have been nice I feel. I'll try the 2 psgs/17 mins and see how it goes. Thanks.

 

[rocketbooster]

On average, 8.5 minutes. If you just want to practice speed I would recommend doing sets of 2 passages in 17 minutes just to account for differences in number of questions per passage since some can have more or less.

8.5 is too long. if you mess up on a single passage, you'll go over time and not finish since you only have 30 seconds to spare at the end.

do 8 min/passage. what'll happen is you'll find yourself having 10-12 minutes left for the last passage, so you'll be relaxed rather than panicked at the end and thus avoid careless mistakes.

 

[BlueElmo]

7.5-8 minutes a passage is the norm.

 

[JasoniusUW]

6 minutes for an EK 101 passage. Did an AAMC verbal only with 20 min left to go over answers...but got an 8 =/...Beats the 6 from last time. I read SLOWWWWWW (250 wpm for MCAT verbal), lets me soak in the detail. Of course your mileage may vary, I ran out of time on AAMC 4 but I was looking for needles in haystack (don't do this).

 

[JasoniusUW]

It takes me 2:40 to 3:00 to read a passage, remainder is answering the questions. I find I do better to get a good read of the subject. The most important thing is that you understand it obviously, it'll make up for itself in time for answering questions...But again, your mileage may vary from passage difficulty and your personal comprehension. I personally suck at verbal (question portion - which is the money).

 

[SN2ed]

This is something from Vihsadas's Verbal Guide which I agree with:


1) Practice under harsher timed conditions than you will encounter on the test. You will have about 8.5 mins for every verbal passage. Get a stop watch and a verbal workbook, and practice finishing every passage in 6.5 mins. When I started doing this, two things happened: 1)Even though I was using less time, my scores did not decrease. They stayed the same. 2) When I became really good at answering the passages quickly, I found that I had time to refer back to the passage on every question. Now, since I can read the passages much more effectively (meaning faster) when I see a question that I'm not sure of, I have time to go back and quickly re-read the 3-4 sentences that pertain to the question. At this point, my scores started to increase.

 

[whitefang21]

i am going to try this finsihing verbal passages in 8.5 minutes. i find that the easy passages are the ones i mes up on.

 

[BlueElmo]

i am going to try this finsihing verbal passages in 8.5 minutes. i find that the easy passages are the ones i mes up on.

That's one sick signature. Where from the Bible is it?

 

[sv3]

8.5 is too long. if you mess up on a single passage, you'll go over time and not finish since you only have 30 seconds to spare at the end.

do 8 min/passage. what'll happen is you'll find yourself having 10-12 minutes left for the last passage, so you'll be relaxed rather than panicked at the end and thus avoid careless mistakes.

Speaking of that last passage, would it make sense to start the VR section with the last passage first? I admit I have yet to write the MCAT, but if I was designing these tests, keeping the hardest passage last would not penalize people that were slow (time-wise) since they would be missing out on questions which people are likely to get wrong in greater proportions to the rest of the test. This makes me think that the "killer" passage(s) won't be last and the last one is perhaps moderate or easy.

Any thoughts on my over-analysis?

Thanks
Steve

 

[JasoniusUW]

Speaking of that last passage, would it make sense to start the VR section with the last passage first? I admit I have yet to write the MCAT, but if I was designing these tests, keeping the hardest passage last would not penalize people that were slow (time-wise) since they would be missing out on questions which people are likely to get wrong in greater proportions to the rest of the test. This makes me think that the "killer" passage(s) won't be last and the last one is perhaps moderate or easy.

Any thoughts on my over-analysis?

Thanks
Steve

You're thinking too much, it's random sequence from what I've seen. It also depends on your strengths and weaknesses. I just bolt from beginning to end unless I see an arts/literature passage (in which case I'd skip and come back to it later).

 

[JJMrK]

I try for 7 minutes per passage, mostly in case of detail questions that require extra time. Those are easy enough that they should be free points, IMO.