Yet another verbal thread...

[midn]

I know there are a million of these, but I am seriously getting demoralized by verbal.

I'm taking a TPR prep class and I am actually getting worse and worse at verbal. My performance on passages on the homework is erratic ranging from missing no questions in a passage to missing well over half of it. I go back and analyze the questions to see what I am doing wrong only to find that I really disagree with how the answers are stated so I get no where.

I started with a 7 on the first diag, and then dropped to a 5 on the next diag. I've tried TPR's strategies (outlining) and my own strategy (no outlining, just reading) and neither is showing any improvement.

In the in-class tests, I am doing even worse. I haven't gotten more than half of the questions right for the past three passages we've done in class. Other people say the passages are easy and how they're doing well, so I know the problem is my own which only serves to destroy my confidence more since we're half way through the course and I have yet to find what I am doing wrong.

I took three EK 101 passage tests and got a 8, 7, and an 11 (taken months apart at no regular interval). I talked to one of the top TPR instructors about this and he said EK exams are completely nonrepresentative of the MCAT so it doesn't help me at all.

I borrowed one old written AAMC test from a friend and plan to to take the VR this weekend, but I'm so broken at this point that I'm afraid to see how bad I'll do on it.

I just needed to vent my frustration/dissapointment and hopefully get some morale support.

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[sexyman]

I think your biggest problem is your confidence.

Next time you take a verbal pretend that the last score you got on verbal was a 13. While your reading the passage act as if your the greatest verbal test taker ever.

Im sure you were looking for some type of amazing strategy or something; sorry I don't think one exists. But do try being overlyconfident. I think at this point your just thinking about it too much and verbal is messn with your head.

 

[midn]

Well, I tried taking the written AAMC MCAT 9 today and wow, I really do suck at verbal. I can't grade it yet since I don't have the answer key, but I was guessing a lot because I felt so pressed for time. I answered the last four or five questions in about two minutes after skimming the last passage.

The passages varied in length but were about the same length as the TPR passages and EK passages. The passages were definitely more difficult to interpret than EK passages which tend to be easier to read, but on the flip side, most the questions seemed to be just picking out a few details from the passage unlike EK which has you do a lot of inference and purpose questions.

There were a few that got pretty abstract, but nothing as hard as the hardest TPR passage. So I guess TPR verbal is a fair representative example of the actual MCAT, just slightly harder.

I guess I need to get cracking on VR...

 

[medfool24]

I feel your pain. Verbal is hard for me as well. I really do think I've improved on my ability to do it but I'm still getting low scores. I don't know, maybe I just suck at verbal.

 

[sexyman]

Positive attitude guys! "maybe I just suck at verbal" isnt going to get us anywhere.

 

[dochoov]

I hear you on the positive attitude thing, but lets not deny that some of us inherently suck at verbal. It's scary/cool how reliable the aamc tests are for me. My score is consistently 73-75%.

When I first started a month or two ago I would be freaking out during verbal, seriously stressing. Now I'm calm and confident. I move straight through. What's the difference in my actual score? Nothing. I suck at verbal, plain and simple.

I really understand the passage and all the answers only after going over them a second time.

 

[soccerpunk60]

my baseline verbal was a 5 back in janurary. ive done some practicing and ive gained some confidence, and it's at 8-9 now. obviously i'm still trying to get it up, but i havent dropped down to the 5-7 range since i started doing mcat work back in janurary. so clearly something is going right, i think with practice and repitition there's no way to not eventually get better at verbal.

 

[dochoov]

I just got 76% on an EK verbal, my highest yet (boooyaahh), but if I only count the first 40 questions as my test, I would have an 84%

 

[midn]

Well, I just took AAMC 6 and here is my score distribution:

11-10-10 (PS-VR-BS)

Here are my previous TPR scores for reference:
10-7-11 and 11-5-10

I did skip the written composition part completely though since I don't have enough time to do it today.

I'm pretty happy with my score although VR maybe a bit off since I got a bit of a head because the program glitched out. When a pop-up came up, IE blocked it, and I had to enable pop-ups which caused the entire page to refresh and restart the timer. I was already done reading a passage and answering a few questions by then and was thus given an extra few minutes. Besides that, I know that I don't suck at VR now! TPR be damned (although I did try to use some of their strategies; we'll see how much they helped once I review the test)!

There were quite a few rote memorization questions so I need to actually go back and review my TPR notes .

BS had me laughing since there was so much crap I didn't know about physiology, etc and it asked really in-depth questions about it. PS was pretty easy since one could easily derive the answer by balancing units and there were many logical ways to come to an answer.

I finished the BS section with 30 minutes to spare (I stopped the section with 5 minutes to spare after reviewing every question). I finished PS with 20 minutes and VR with 0 .

I have to take these scores with a grain of salt since they weren't under actual testing conditions, but I'm still excited since it certainly shows my potential.