Strategy

Energy – sit up straight. give 100% every time you take a test

Focus- learn to focus and ignore distractions

Confidence- be confident of your score and be arrogant when you read. When guessing
assume that every answer you pick is correct.

Timing- read every passage in the order given, and attempt every question. Check your
timer only once, after you have finished the fifth passage. Guess at the difficult questions
so you have time to answer the easy questions. Finish the entire section with two minutes
to spare.

Tactics
Follow these exact steps:

Take a five second break- before each passage, including the first passage, take five
seconds to focus your thoughts. Instead of taking breaks at random, inconvenient
moments, plan your breaks. Remind yourself to sit up straight, concentrate, and focus.
Then start and don’t break your concentration until you have finished the whole passage.
Repeat for every passage.

Read every word- 3min/passage*9passages=27min of reading passages. You have 58

minutes to answer 60 questions. Don’t distract yourself by writing in the margins.
Mastering the verbal section is as much an art as a science. With practice a feel for the
right answer can be developed. If you teach yourself not to expect the concrete certainty
that you get with science questions, you will become more comfortable with the verbal
section. Concentrate on the main idea not the detail. Don’t read the questions first. Don’t
circle or underline words. Train yourself to become excited and interested in any and
every passage topic. Read for the main idea. When you read, ask yourself “what is the
author trying to say?” creating an image of the author in your mind will help you
understand him. Construct a stereotype of the author. This will help you to make
intuitive decisions about how the author might answer each MCAT question about his
passage.

Construct a main idea- After you finished reading a passage (before beginning the
questions), take 20 seconds to construct a main idea in 1-2 complete sentences. On the
real test do it mentally.

Use all four tools to answer the questions:

1. Going back: the list useful and the most time consuming of the four. If you are not
finishing the section, you should not go back at all until you can regularly finish.
should be used only when :
 i. You are regularly finishing an exam on time.
ii. You know what you are looking for.
iii. You know where you can find the answer.
2. The main idea: the most powerful tool for answering MCAT verbal questions
3. The question stems: there is a lot of information in the question stems alone. In
fact some are able to do the whole Verbal section without reading any passage,
being able to collect the necessary information merely from the question stems.
Therefore everyone should take advantage of this to get more questions right.
4. The answer choices: a good test taker can sometimes distinguish the correct
answer among the distracters without even reading the question or the passage.
Some of the distracters might include: a statement that displays a subtle
misunderstanding of the main idea; a statement that uses the same or similar
words as in the passage buy is taken out of context; a true statement that does not
answer the question; a statement that answers more than the question asks; a
statement that relies upon information commonly considered true but not given in
the passage.
a. Round-About: a distracter that moves around the question but does not
directly answer it. Simply don’t answer the question as asked. May be
true. A lot of convincing words are spoken but nothing is really said (a
politician is speaking).
b. Beyond: a distracter whose validity relies upon information not supplied
by the passage.
c. Contrary: a distracter that is contrary to the main idea.
d. Simpletons: answer choice that is easily verifiable from a reading of the
passage is highly suspect and often incorrect. They have extreme wording
like always and never
e. Unintelligible: a distracter that you don’t understand. Don’t choose an
answer that you don’t understand unless you can positively eliminate all
other choices. Be confident, not confused.

Identifying the correct answer: correct answer choices contain softeners, words that
make the answer true under more circumstances, such as most likely, seemed, has a
tendency to …. An answer choice with a softener is not necessarily correct; it is just more
likely to be correct.

It is often helpful to simplify the question and answer choices in terms of the main idea.

The main idea—is a summary of the passage in one or two sentences. It is a statement
about the passage topics, and includes the author’s opinion. Main idea questions are
about 90% of the verbal section. You must concentrate on the main idea while you read
the entire passage. Writing the main idea on paper is an important step toward improving
your ability to find the main idea; however, because it is time consuming, on the next day
go back to each passage and write out the main idea. While taking the exam, make a 20
second pause after reading a passage, and construct the main idea in your head.
 1. Constructing the main idea: A. After reading the passage, write down the main
topics. Each topic should be from one to four words. B. From these topics, choose
the most important ones two three at a time, and write a short phrase relating them
to each other and the passage. C. Connect the phrases in one or two sentences
which still concern the most important topics but incorporates the other topics as
well. Be sure to include the author’s opinion if it was given or implied. Try to
emphasize each topic to the same extent to which it was emphasized in the
passage. This is your main idea.
2. Confidence: often on the MCAT, passages seem incomprehensible. Don’t panic!
Most questions are answered correctly by 60%or more of test-takers. Have the
confidence to keep reading. Don’t reread a line or paragraph over and over until
you master it. If a line or paragraph is incomprehensible continue reading until
you get to something that you do understand. Get the general sense of what the
author is trying to say. Remember the four tools.
3. Know your author: you must become familiar with the author. Who is he/she? Is
the author young/old? Rich/poor? Male/female? Conservative/liberal? Do you
love or have this author? Take a guess. Create a picture of the author in your
mind. use your prejudices to stereotype the author. Your harsh judgment of the
author is everything to understanding what he is trying to say. The better you
understand the author, the easier the questions will be. Read with emotion and
judge harshly.

How to study for the verbal reasoning section

1. Take a verbal test under strict timed conditions and score yourself.
2. Take a break from verbal for at least one day
3. Take the set of questions for the first passage in the verbal exam that you recently
finished and examine the questions and each answer choice as if you had never
read the passage (by analyzing question stems and answer choices only—without
reading the passage). If this step takes you less than 30 minutes per passage, then
do it again because you missed quite a bit.
4. Repeat step 3 for each passage.
5. Take a break from verbal for at least one day.
6. Carefully read the first passage in the same verbal test, and write out precisely
worded main idea in one or two complete sentences being certain that your main
idea expresses the author’s opinion or stance on the issues.
7. Match your main idea to each question and all the answer choices and see what
insights you gain into answering MCAT questions.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for each passage.