“Q:A” VR section of the MCAT test-taking strategy

Here is my personal method for taking the VR section of the MCAT. I read the passage through, reading critically but not taking a huge amount of time to figure out details I didn’t understand. I did make sure that I understood the overall argument and thrust of the passage though. Then I read the questions, answered the ones I knew, and referred back to the passage for the few that I didn’t. I never skipped passages, because for me it was more trouble than it was worth to remember what I had to come back to.

Again, my strategy was what personally worked for me. I’m a fast reader (I did always finish ahead of time), I’m good at grasping arguments, and I had a double engineering/humanities major so I was somewhat used to reading humanities passages. (The art ones were the worst for me.) And I’m not used to marking up textbooks so it never really occurred to me to mark up the passages, though I did occasionally underline or star things that I knew I was coming back to.

In general, I think it’s a good idea to read the passage first, because if you can get a handle on the argument (as I described upthread) you will be able to answer several of the questions very quickly, and know where things are when you need to refer back. Whether to underline or make notes is up to you - I essentially mapped the passage in my head, but I think most people do better with some actual marks on the page.

Skipping passages, again, is a personal thing, but I’d recommend only doing it if you come to a passage that’s making you freak out for whatever reason. If you’re going to be wasting time hyperventilating, go on to the next one, but as long as you can stay calm and tackle the passages one by one I think steaming ahead is probably the best way to go.

If you feel like you need to try out some different strategies, be sure to do it on practice full-lengths well before the MCAT. You may find that a certain technique really helps you, or you may be surprised to find that it doesn’t work at all. And you don’t want to be showing up on test day, still dithering about whether to read the passage or the questions first. You should have your style pretty much down by then.