Yeah poly is right, unfortunetly there is no "end all, be all" strategy for magic verbal success. Every single person has different ways of dealing with how their mind reacts to what they just read, and the MCAT does go out of its way to exploit the "scientific" way of thinking, knowing that MCAT students are mostly scientific people. The VR section specifically works against this by not having simple "find the answer" type questions. There are usually either 2 right answers, or NO right answers.
There will be 2 choices you are down to nearly EVERY SINGLE QUESTION on the verbal reasoning. The reason I say practice, practice, practice... is because the MCAT is like a game, and you can figure out the "MCAT" choice based on practice. By the time test day came, I felt like I could read the choices on main idea questions and know the answer just based on how it was worded, without even reading the question. It's a manner of figuring out the test, not figuring out the answer.
EK has some good practice sections, though their verbal book is really small by comparison. They have a section where they re-word every answer choice down to its simplest components, I thought this helped a lot. Its like reading a choice and thinking "OK, what are they REALLY saying beneath this overly-verbose paragraph in answer choice A."
Some more common tactics that these books use:
1. Read a section and answer every question before reading any choices, then choose the answer that best matches what you wrote down.
2. Read just the answer choices and try to predict the question, then choose an answer.
3. Write down everything you know about the author when you are done reading: Is it a man/woman? Is it a scientist/artist/layperson? Are they an "expert" on some topic? Do they have a strong opinion about something? Do you think they are a conservative/liberal? NOW... after writing down your "bio" of the author, go answer the questions based on what you know.
4. Do a full passage and do NOT check the answers. The next day, go back and answer all the questions over again WITHOUT re-reading the passage... see what you remember or see how well you can work through a question without referring back.
I'm not saying all of these strategies are fool-proof, but the more ways you analyze yourself, the more you can improve. The next step is to really break down your own performances. Is there any question type you are consistently missing??? For me, I BOMBED the ROMAN NUMERAL questions. Those were the death of me, and I began to purposely save them for last every passage. This helped me tremendously so I knew I could get the "easier" questions out of the way first.
Again, I'll offer help in any way I can... feel free to PM me with questions any time.
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