Customer Reviews

MCAT Verbal Reasoning Mastery: The Complete Reading Comprehension Program (How to Turn a VR Score 6 into an 11)

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

From reading the other reviews here and the book's own description of itself, it would seem like this is some kind of miracle program that will raise your verbal score. After reading through this book myself, I would have to mostly disagree. The book does have some valuable hints and strategies. It also does a good job of describing the verbal section and going through question types. Although, you could and should find out all of this yourself with practice tests. Which is really the problem with this book: it doesn't contain that much novel information, in my opinion.

The first 5 chapters give a description of the MCAT and verbal section, emphasizing how the verbal section is SO important and how this book will help you SO much. It then goes on to describe reading skills, which while not badly done, in my opinion weren't anything new. It does spend time building up a lot of anticipation for the miraculous "Neuro-Visual Programming". I was honestly hoping this would be a really novel and valuable new method for reading. Overall though, I found it kind of ridiculous. I mean, active reading and visualizing the material is important, of course, and the method isn't totally useless. But, I just can't believe you can really follow the method outlined in this text, which would have you imagining a real-life object, like parts of your house or a person, for every idea and subject you encounter in the passage. I would like to be proven otherwise on this, but I just don't see how it's practical as described in this book.

The reading plan and books list are good. But, once again, why do you need this book to tell you that reading is good practice for the verbal section? Also, the q & a with top scorers is pretty good, but really short and not so valuable in my opinion.

The worst section of the book is the 150 pages of exercises. These are not practice MCAT verbal questions, they are random passages that are in the book solely to measure your reading speed. Not bad, but you could read anything for this - why not just do lots of real MCAT questions? There's also visual memory practice, which is nothing but pictures of symbols in boxes for you to memorize. And that's it.

Still, I think this book does have some good hints and strategies and it's not wrong in its advice on preparing for the MCAT verbal (except the NV programming thing). Also, I was never a below average reader, so maybe it's more helpful for some. I just feel like the book's a little over hyped and it could be a lot shorter and less expensive.

Most MCAT verbal resources I've encountered simply breakdown the passage and question types and they fall short of offering any concrete techniques that will help you improve your score.

In order to succeed at the verbal section of the MCAT you have improve your reading skills. This book with its thorough and innovative plan will help you do this.

I consistently scored 9 on the verbal section of practice tests and I was unsatisfied with my score, knowing that a great verbal score can really help your application. Using the techniques in this book I scored an 11 on test day!

If your verbal score is the only thing standing in your way to submitting a confident medical school application then this book is an incredibly valuable tool.

This is the first book, that gave a great in depth analysis of the MCAT verbal reasoning and had excellent suggestions. However, there is an 8 month reading program outlined in the book, and I bought it 2 months before I took my MCAT test. I'm still practicing a lot, but I wish I had the full 8 months to really prepare.

After reading this book and probably most of the verbal reading books available, I can conclude that this book is not really a MAGICAL WAND THAT WILL CHANGE THE SCORE. Indeed, I agree with the author that you need to read well, fast and comprehend at much faster pace ( if you are a below average reader). The program used by the author for visual aid ( mostly because you retain much more info when you visualize it) is a good one; however, i think to some extent we all are visual. As we read we try to form a movie like presentation in our mind to formulate MAIN IDEA, PROTAGONIST..etc. I think it is a good reminder for all of us to use it and develop it further. But again the program described is time consuming and honestly of little help. As to attack the verbal reasoning you must also see how the questions are asked, they way they are presented in jumbled words to really score good on MCAT. I agree with another reviewer who said, " do we really need this book to tell us that?". With that price i was really expecting some good practice material ( with questions too.)

I studied a lot of verbal books for the mcat. This is the one. It's like having a private tutor at home because it goes over personal problems you have on the mcat verbal. It trains your mind how to think and RELEARN how to read passages. The reading schedule it has is very useful and the advice it gives is based on solid experience that works. I give this an A+ and I recommend it to anyone who wants boost their verbal score up by at LEAST 4 points.

This is a great program for anyone who is not naturally gifited at the Verbal Section. Unlike the other sections, you can't simply study certain problems or take a lot of practice tests to improve this score if you are scoring consistently below a 9.

This program offers a systematic way to improve your reading/thinking which is usually the real problem. Be warned, this is not a book for slackers. I was putting in several hours a day over several months when I was working on my verbal score, which many people will think is exessive. But when I saw my 12 on my offical MCAT score report, it was totally worth the effort.

This book offers a unique strategy for MCAT Verbal Reasoning. Basically all the other strategies break down to: read the passage critically and anwser the questions carefully. Oh yeah and if your still having trouble annotate the passage. Great strategy if it works, but what if it doesn't? That was the boat I was in and this book really helped me out. I never was an avid reader. Mainly because books moved to slow for me and the ideas were always just words on the page. This book allowed me not only to score much higher in the verbal section, but also really taught me how to read, which I now believe I was never really properly taught how to do. Buy this book if you want an innovative and fun approach to MCAT verbal.

This book is better then any other VR book out in the market. I have princeton review and examcracker. The other two just teaches you short cuts to the verbal section. This is the only one that actually teaches you to be a better reader. Highly recommend. However, you need to devote 8 months to your improve your reading comprehension if you are going to use this book.

The book's goal is really to have you read a ton of stuff, and get really fast at making summaries / getting the main idea. This is OK if you have, say, 6 months; however, most pre-meds don't have 6 months to study for the MCAT. I'd stick to examkrackers 101 verbal passages...I thought those were plenty ok and I scored in the double-digits in the verbal section.

If you are new to the MCAT then it would be a good idea to purchase this book. It provides a complete, general information regarding the exam and detailed information on Verbal section. Those who purchased one of the Kaplan book for MCAT will find a striking similarity with this book, with exception that this one spends more time teaching you how to distinguish between different types of passages and questions. Unfortunately, this book does not provide as much of practice materials as ExamCracker. Thus if you need just a practice material to improve your score, then this book is not for you. That is why I'm returning it back to the seller.