Hi ladies.

I took the Princeton Review's diagnostic mcat exam on Saturday. I did OK on the sciences but got a 6 on the verbal :weeping: :weeping: :weeping:

I know that the verbal is the hardest one to improve. I can't say I'm surprised, since I moved here a year ago, but I feel pretty discouraged.

Did any of you manage to raise your verbal score by 4 points?


thanks.

A 6 in verbal is actually pretty good for your first TPR diag score, that is what I received and I am quite fluent in English. Do not stress but please do not listen too much to the TPR "way" of going about verbal they are waaaay wrong. Get your hands on the EK VR 101 passages at the Examcrackers web page. Now this is worth it's price in gold! 11 full length VR exams totally like the mcat style of touchy feely questions. I pulled off an 11 on the real deal and I know that it was due to practicing with EK VR exams NOT with the TPR I think my highest in TPR was like a 9...on the VR part. So anyways, TPR is great except the verbal strategy, and the verbal exams are not quite like the real mcat, with tpr you can go "find" things in the passage but with the real mcat you just have to "feel" it.

Thanks for the tip (and the hope) efex101.
I was planing to get some extra passeges.

I also got a real VR score 6 points higher than my "diagnostic" with Kaplan. My friends have a theory that these prep places make the diagnostic exam way harder than anything you get on the actual MCAT, so that when you get your real score back, and it's lots better, you think the course helped you more than it did, and you tell all your friends about it. I agree with efex, the absolute best thing you can do is take tests that resemble the real thing. Kaplan's practice VR's were pretty good, although I ignored their "method" as well.

Best of luck!