<p>I'm a sophomore who's currently attending at UC Davis.</p>
<p>I've been getting good grades (~3.75) and am involved with research, hospital volunteering, and club activities. </p>
<p>I'll be junior next year and am worried with upcoming MCAT that I'll have to take.</p>
<p>When I took SAT, the highest I got was only around 680 with writing section being the lowest (620? I think).</p>
<p>Obviously English is not my forte so this time I want to prepare myself before I take this test.</p>
<p>I'm somewhat confident I'll get by with science subjects, but I am worried that I will do bad on both the verbal and writing section of the exam.</p>
<p>What do you guys recommend to improve my verbal and my writing?
Is writing score on MCAT important?</p>
<p>All I have to say is don’t compare the verbal on the MCATs to the verbal on the SATs. I scored much lower than you on the verbal part of the SATs and now I’m getting about the average for matriculants on my practice MCATs. And it’s not like I read any more than I did in HS. But if you’re honestly worried about it, you can always read a dense journal/magazine like The Economist in order to improve your reading comprehension. You don’t really need to worry about that too much yet, though, because you’re only a Sophomore. As far as the writing, it’s the section med schools care about the least, by far. It’s more of a tie breaker between two applicants with similar credentials. As long as you follow the criteria that the MCAT asks for when writing the essays, you can receive a decent score without even being that good of a writer. You need to be able to articulate clearly, obviously, but you don’t need to be an English expert to do well.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’d suggest reading dense articles, news articles, etc. rather than a novel or other longer forms of literature. The MCAT Verbal passages are all about reading comprehension in short dosages, you just have to be able to read a quick, maybe 4-5 paragraph opinion/descriptive piece and answer some questions about it. The questions can be very tricky and sometimes obscure, but as long as you have the reading skills to understand the main purpose of the passage, the authors feelings, etc. it’s really not too bad. I will say the MCAT questions are much ambiguous than the SAT verbal section, and they definitely take practice. Having said that, there are tricks you’ll learn to deal with it. For instance, many times an answer is more likely to be correct if it deals more generally, using phrases like “most likely that”, “in some instances”, rather than “always”, or “never”. You’ll learn when certain tricks become appropriate to use and when they’re not.</p>
<p>The writing section is only important if you get a really low score, or a really high score. Most people get in between and I think it has little affect on your application. It’s also not too hard to score well. As long as you write three paragraphs, each dealing with the three tasks they want you to complete, spend about an equal amount of time on each, and use reasonable examples, it doesn’t matter what your content/opinions are…just as long as things are legible, there are no grammar mistakes, and everything makes some sort of sense. Personally, I always felt as though the writing section was more in place to just wear you down for the Biological Sciences section (i.e. to spend two hours on verbal and writing and then have to switch back to science is a hard task).</p>