What should I aim for when practicing verbal passages?

[dcamkl1]

Hi all.

I have searched this but couldn't find a good answer.

I have been doing two verbal passages a day (from EK101 and TPRH). In the beginning, I would miss a lot of the questions (3-4 wrong per passage). Lately, I've been averaging 1-2 wrong questions per passage. I am encouraged by the improvement (I even had a small streak where I got all questions right for three passages), and I'm somewhat happy that I've been able to consistently miss 1-2 questions and not have scores drastically go up and down.

Anyway, I would absolutely love to get a 10 on the real MCAT. So, am I on the right track?

Do you all have a personal standard where missing X questions per passage means you're "in the zone?" Obviously, one should aim for getting all the questions right, but I don't like having an "unrealistic" goal like that.

From my own reasoning off of EK's score chart: at worst if I miss 2 questions for each of the passages in a test, my score is an 8; at best, if I only miss 1 question per passage, it's an 11.

Sorry if this post is somewhat vague. I just want to gauge how I'm doing right now.

Thanks.

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[tima]

Missing 1-2 questions per passage on the verbal section is good. For example, if the passage has 7 questions I would consider a 5/7 a good score. But, you should try to aim for 100%. Take some AAMC exams near the end of your MCAT studying because those usually give accurate scores.

 

[random1234]

Well, to get a 10, you can't miss more than 9 questions out of the 40.

Whether that's 1-2 per passage for you, or (for me), 100% on like 5 passages then getting 3-4 wrong on the others, it will still come out the same. For me, there always seems to be that passage I don't really get, no matter how hard I try. I am not sure if doing more practice will help this or not. I guess if anything it will help you with timing, which is good.

 

[OneTwoThreeFour]

Hi all.

I have searched this but couldn't find a good answer.

I have been doing two verbal passages a day (from EK101 and TPRH). In the beginning, I would miss a lot of the questions (3-4 wrong per passage). Lately, I've been averaging 1-2 wrong questions per passage. I am encouraged by the improvement (I even had a small streak where I got all questions right for three passages), and I'm somewhat happy that I've been able to consistently miss 1-2 questions and not have scores drastically go up and down.

Anyway, I would absolutely love to get a 10 on the real MCAT. So, am I on the right track?

Do you all have a personal standard where missing X questions per passage means you're "in the zone?" Obviously, one should aim for getting all the questions right, but I don't like having an "unrealistic" goal like that.

From my own reasoning off of EK's score chart: at worst if I miss 2 questions for each of the passages in a test, my score is an 8; at best, if I only miss 1 question per passage, it's an 11.

Sorry if this post is somewhat vague. I just want to gauge how I'm doing right now.

Thanks.

I would suggest that doing 4 in one day then taking a day off is a better way of doing it. That way, you don't think to yourself: "now is 15 minutes of verbal time!" every day. It isn't long enough to really feel engaged. At least not for me.

 

[eleveneleven]

I usually aimed for 1-2 wrong per passage. Occasionally I'd nail a passage and miss zero and then other times I'd blow it and miss 3+, but as long as I was averaging about 1-2 wrong, I felt "in the zone." Averaged about 11 on all my practice tests and then ended up with an 11 on the real thing, so 1-2 per passage seems about right.