This exercise will teach you to think about what parts of a text are important and which ones are fluff. Writing them down on the MCAT would take too long. Attack the questions and avoid pitfalls : One of the hardest parts for students who are stronger in science than verbal on the MCAT is avoiding wrong answers.
There are five wrong answer choices. Absolutes: These answer types leave no room for error. They often use phrases like always or never. Unless the passage makes an absolute statement, avoid these types of answers. Too-Simple: These statements dance around the question. They often include statements that the test-taker agrees with or knows to be true. Opposite: These answers contradict the main idea of the passage you isolated earlier.
Mush: These questions often recycle words from the passage in confusing, but tempting ways. I find myself most susceptible to these types of answer choices. They involve either overanalyzing, or pulling in outside information.
Everything is in the text, so stay close and focus on the main idea. When practicing, learn to identify what kinds of mistakes you make. Keep moving. The MCAT requires a quick tempo, so just keep moving. That way, you will know what to look for when you read the passage, and the questions will prime you on material that you will need to pay attention to. The reason the MCAT requires strong reading comprehension is because medical school requires you to process a lot of reading and information, and to be able to apply scientific principles to that information.
Much of the clinical guidelines and research are described in medical journal articles, which are akin to a very long MCAT passage. Medical schools want to know if you can handle the reading rigors of scientific writing and the MCAT helps assess your verbal reasoning with the CARS sections.
Something similar can be said of reading— critical reading will improve your MCAT verbal skills. When reading passages either for school or for pleasure, make sure you are understanding the main points and even jotting down notes if you have trouble with these areas.
Look for more ways to practice. I also believe they are harder than what you will see on the MCAT. A helpful trick might be to try going through some LSAT reading comprehension passages with explanations for the answers.
If you need a more immediate solution, it might be good to come up with a purely test-strategy approach to the passages that will help get you through the exam. Reading comprehension is a critical step to doing well on the MCAT and also in becoming a physician. There are no formulas to memorize or theories to apply, but the MCAT Verbal section will test your ability to reason and make logical inferences from material that you have never seen before.
These questions are different from any other English test you have taken before. This allows the MCAT to remain entirely in multiple-choice format. The MCAT is given by computer interface, meaning that there is no physical paper involved save for scratch paper. All passages appear on the screen, with answer choices in an adjacent window. Luckily, the MCAT system allows you to highlight parts of a passage during your analysis, and cross off or eliminate answer choices, but it does not allow you to highlight material in the question itself.
It can be a valuable strategy to review the questions before reading the passage, so you know what material is important in the passage. This section of the exam is much more than that. It is based on reasoning and logical assumption. Many of the passages will center on some sort of social commentary, debate, or opinion. Both fiction and non-fiction works may be included, but the link that almost all MCAT Verbal passages share is a shade of author bias. It is crucial to identify the bias or opinion in each passage and make judgements on how the bias affects the argument, use of language, and the portrayals of the authors themselves.
It consists of roughly 7 to 9 passages, each followed by 4 to 8 questions, for a total of 40 questions in the section. The section is then scored out of 15 points, with the top three scores 13, 14, and 15 frequently encompassing the 99th percentile. The average score on this section is approximately 8. Considering that no memorization is required for the MCAT Verbal section, and that it tests reasoning and intuition rather than factual knowledge, medical school admission boards tend to be particularly discerning when reviewing scores for the MCAT Verbal section.
Focus on studying the material you understand least well, and take lots of practice tests to really get a sense of what this section of the MCAT is all about!
Subject optional. Email address: Your name:. Determining implications. Determining the probable cause of an event. Making a prediction based on a passage.
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