Verbal Passage

[McatCrusher]

Hi,
I have had serious problems with finishing verbal sections for GS-5 and GS-6. The passages seem to be really long. According to AAMC, new passages are supposed to be shorter than those in the old ones. I was wondering if this is true or not??? I usually dont have any problem finishing the verbal but for the past two i ended up sacrificing quality for quantity, but yet i could not finish reasonable.

[admin]

The questions in the Verbal Reasoning section of the Gold Standard MCAT CBTs are a bit more difficult, on average, than the AAMC's MCAT. It is likely the content of the passages and the questions are slowing you down. The number of words per passage is consistent with the new MCAT CBT.

To be specific, this is what it says about Verbal Reasoning in the 2007 Edition of MCAT Essentials published by the AAMC (page 5):

"The test consists of seven passages. Each passage is about 600 words long, ..."

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/mcatessentials.pdf

Notice that all practice Gold Standard MCAT CBTs (GS-1 to GS-10) have Verbal Reasoning tests with 7 passages per test. Here is the breakdown of words per passage:

GS-5
633
533
637
577
588
520
554

Average: 577 words per passage

GS-6
608
655
632
609
781
539
599

Average: 632 words per passage

Average over the 2 exams: 604 words per passage.

If you learn to do well on the GS tests, you will do great on the real MCAT.

[McatCrusher]

Thank you so much. That was really encouraging. I was getting frustrated with myself. But now that i know GS verbals are more difficult, I feel better.