What do you think of this verbal tactic?

[cubixguy77]

Suppose you are faced with a verbal question and have no inclination toward any of the answer choices whatsoever. In this case, would it be wisest to pick the answer choice that is the longest/most words?

What do you guys think?

...I find the longer answers to be more likely to be correct in TPR's verbals, but I don't know if the same would hold on AAMC tests.

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[TheGloaming]

I just looked AAMC practice test 7 and the answer length has no relation to the correct answer. So I would say your going to have to find a new strategy. There's just no loopholes when it comes to the MCAT.

 

[OBEAHDOCTOR]

I dont think that is going to work...I am currently studying from TPR, Kaplan and EK and I dont see any correlation between response length and correctness...If I had like 3 weeks to kill I could probably run this through sas (purely based on all the passages I have done) and see if I am right...but I am pretty sure it will be the same conclusion. Have you tried the EK method?

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Okay, so I am convinced I have too much time on my hands. I tried your technique of seeing if the longest answer choice was best on the AAMC materials. I looked at them all (including the Practice Items in Verbal--an old printed booklet).

The longest choice was correct 26.2% of the time, which is so close to random guessing (25%) that I doubt that method will work on the real MCAT. The shortest answer choice was correct 24.7% of the time.

I think you're going to have to do it the old fashion way: reading and thinking.

 

[WorldChanger36]

Yeah if you get to a question in verbal and have no idea at all what the answer is you screwed up. When you are not sure go with answer that has the strongest lean toward the main idea and ask yourself was the author positive or negative toward this idea. This shaves down most answers to a 50/50 choice for me.
The best method for me has always been read each paragraph, then write one word that describes the main idea of the paragraph. Then once done reading I write three of four words on what I think the main idea is, then I attack the questions. With EK 101 is miss one ever other passage on good days and finish with 1 min to 30 seconds left on the clock.
Don't short cut this stuff do the work or you are going to be hurting on the day when you get scores back.