VR: TPR vs EK vs Kap

[Dr.TurkandJD]

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Hey guys,

I started off my studying at about a 50% success rate in verbal. I went up to 90% and currently plateaued around 60-70% (6-8). I really want to get up to a 10, so I started reading different strategy books. All three test-prep books give different strategies. Which one do you think is the best?

Just to summarize:

TPR: Rank the passages, do the easiest once first, pre-screen the questions and then read the passages. Do only 6 and guess on the 7th.

EK: Do all the passages in the row, dont pre-screen the questions and try not to go back to the passage.

Kaplan: Do the passages in order, and write down a one sentence summary after every passage.

I have been doing the TPR method. Please help 🙂

Thank you!

 

[Melomare17]

Hey guys,

I started off my studying at about a 50% success rate in verbal. I went up to 90% and currently plateaued around 60-70% (6-8). I really want to get up to a 10, so I started reading different strategy books. All three test-prep books give different strategies. Which one do you think is the best?

Just to summarize:

TPR: Rank the passages, do the easiest once first, pre-screen the questions and then read the passages. Do only 6 and guess on the 7th.

EK: Do all the passages in the row, dont pre-screen the questions and try not to go back to the passage.

Kaplan: Do the passages in order, and write down a one sentence summary after every passage.

I have been doing the TPR method. Please help 🙂

Thank you!

i would say to NOT rank passages, you waste too much time clicking and skimming. i would do EK's one, but just read faster so you can go back to the passage if you need to.

 

[Buttafuoco]

I think the EK guys make good points in their method. A lot of people just have trouble finishing in 60 minutes, how the hell are you going to rank the passages in any timely fashion? I don't care if the passage feels like it was written by James Joyce on acid, that doesn't mean that the questions are going to be difficult. I don't really get how writing things down is a good idea either. So time consuming. In the real MCAT I had last week, a lot of the passages were like 7 paragraphs. You need to plan on having worse time constraints on the real thing IMO. Consensus is generally to do a few passages a day every day under timed conditions from TPRH and EK 1001 and really spend time reviewing every answer later so you can get a feel for them.

 

[pfaction]

So the real MCAT has that long passages? Holy wow. Was not expecting that. I'm at 8 minutes/passage and I'm getting 10's, but I don't know how well that relates to the actual MCAT.....****. And EK says to not go back to the passage? That's a horrible thing to say, considering a lot of the answer choices twist around words

 

[Buttafuoco]

The good news is that supposedly performance on the AAMC, EK 1001, and TPRH in terms of what they say your scores are diagnostic of I think has been pretty predictive.

But I think their point is that when you read for themes, arguments, tones, etc it should just be in your head. Those are things that you get a feel for by reading the entire passage. I think a good strategy would be to try to answer big picture questions without going back, then with detail questions, mark them and double check if you finish with time to spare. Those are the easiest but most time consuming.

 

[pfaction]

I'm getting 7-10's on those so as long as I'm above a 9 on the real MCAT....Butta, how long were these passages, seriously, compared to AAMC or EK/TPRH?

 

[Buttafuoco]

Hard to judge objectively, but I actually only completed 38 questions on the MCAT vs. always finishing with I'd say 3-5 minutes left on the EK and AAMC practice tests. Like I said, I wouldn't stress it too much because those are generally said to be predictive, but do make sure that when you're doing practice passages that you're practicing fundamentals- POE, striking out answers you know for sure are false, reading critically, and marking questions like detail questions that focus on silly details where you can go back to them and make sure they're right if you have extra time, oh and marking questions and going with a best guess if you're scratching your head for more than a minute or so. I think I figured after the exam that I would have liked to have aimed for a first pass speed of 1.2 minutes/question with hindsight being 20/20.

I think there's a link in SN2ed's schedule where one guy found that he got better at VR by giving himself something like 6 minutes per passage when practicing instead of 7.5 or whatever most people shoot for.

 

[Dr.TurkandJD]

The way TPR allows you to take the time to rank the passages is because you are suppose to guess on the 7th. So you have 60min for 6 passages, which should be more then enough. Do you think doing 6 (and ranking) is worse then just doing 7 straight through?

I dont know, I have been doing bad on the passages and really evened out about 2-3 points below of where i was to be. What should i do?

 

[thlaxer]

I'm getting 7-10's on those so as long as I'm above a 9 on the real MCAT....Butta, how long were these passages, seriously, compared to AAMC or EK/TPRH?

I followed EK's strategy as well. Kaplan's strategy might be useful for keeping track of things, though on the actual exam you should be quickly making mental notes of what you're reading (instead of physically writing it down). TPRH's strategy is just plain silly imo.

Not sure about other people's experiences, but the Verbal passages I got on the real thing seemed longer than the practice passages from TPRH/EK/AAMC. I didn't get a chance to do a word count though so it may've just been psychological.

 

[MedPR]

I guess I ended up doing EK's strategy without even knowing it. This was how I approached the passages and hopefully it worked out for me. I was averaged just below a 12 on the AAMC FLs using a strategy similar to EK.