When practicing verbal..

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is it true you shouldn't worry too much about reading why you got the question wrong if you are using an outside source that is not AAMC?

i liked EK101 and I know I am the minority but I thought most of their questions were fair and I could understand their rationale for right and wrong.

I recently hopped back on the horse and started TPRH and personally, I think the answer key is convoluted and lacks good explanation...ugh its frustrating and i'm tempted to just see what i got wrong and not stress over the explanations.

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Yeah, I would agree with your first sentence.

TPRH >>> EK 101 IMO. I think you can do well in EK 101 if you take everything in their passage literally and just find stuff in the answer choices that matches.

The most important thing is to practice under super harsh time conditions. I took the test yesterday and ran out of time. Don't let that happen to you.
 
If i shouldn't worry too much about the explanation, what am i supposed to get out of this?? I'd do very well with EK but TPRH is killing me. I feel like i should read why im getting the questions wrong but the rationale is hard to understand for me. I dont remember the Official Guides questions being this hard!
 
Apparently you think like, or your mind is "wired," similarly to the EK authors. Just as when people "talk past" each other, or fail to see what another person is trying to explain at first, sometimes VR passages AND answer keys, completely overlook an entirely valid perspective. This has been noticed not only by myself, but by many tutors, professors, etc. AAMC has very few, if any, passages and questions like this, but EK and other (non-AAMC) test prep companies usually have some.

In order to IMPROVE, you will need to inquire about why you got questions wrong. The best method for that, if you can afford it, is to run those questions by another person. You can also look it over yourself, but in all likelihood, there will be scenarios where you understand YOUR reasoning, but will have extreme difficulty FINDING the authors, unless the answer key was sufficient or what some people refer to as an honest error (ex. misreading) or silly mistake (ex. circling the wrong answer even though you knew the correct answer).

It's also important to make sure that wishful thinking doesn't rule. An example of wishful thinking, is when someone reads on answer key and both their original reasoning AND the answer key's reasoning make sense. Then, you need to figure out HOW you could have got the question right while being aware of both your logic AND the test maker's logic. WHY is the test maker's logic deemed "better?" Wishful thinking is when students give the test maker a free pass, and fail to resolve that issue.

Some non-AAMC questions are, "duds." It is also important to know when to "leave well enough alone." IMO, you definitely want to know WHY you got MOST of your wrong answers wrong, but if you cannot figure out a small handful of questions after running them by a few different people who got 12's or better on VR, feel free to forget about those non-AAMC questions. They are probably "duds." It is just not worth your while to keep pursuing them, after so many hours. (You can still keep a list of them in case you find a new person to run them by. Just don't be too concerned after some point.)

The ONLY other reason, I would stop checking answers or stop looking for the correct answer would be if I were battling test anxiety.

Hope you've found this helpful.

Good luck!
 
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is it true you shouldn't worry too much about reading why you got the question wrong if you are using an outside source that is not AAMC?

i liked EK101 and I know I am the minority but I thought most of their questions were fair and I could understand their rationale for right and wrong.

I recently hopped back on the horse and started TPRH and personally, I think the answer key is convoluted and lacks good explanation...ugh its frustrating and i'm tempted to just see what i got wrong and not stress over the explanations.

use your judgement. sometimes both EK and TPRH have questions that are just stupid... if their explanation sucks, then try and figure out why it sucks and move on. try to understand it, but if you are sure that the book is being stupid then don't be upset or frustrated, just move on. once you start doing AAMC's you will have a better feel for when the book is sucking.
 
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