Examkrackers 101 Passages in MCAT Verbal Reasoning

This book completely lacks Humanities passages, which are certain to show up on the MCAT (~2 passages), and are also typically the hardest passages to tackle. This book is useful to a certain extent to practice timing/strategy, etc., but don't stop here with your Verbal practice.

I love this book because I used their verbal reasoning book to help me understand what to expect and these 101 passages has allowed me to get faster at those techniques! Very satisfied with this book!

This book let me really think what are the possible type of questions on the MCAT. I scored highest among all other scores on my Verbal Reasoning. This book really gives you lots of practice before the actual exam.

Excellent training for the mental endurance required to tackle the verbal section. However the passages are more difficult than the AAMC ones. I kept getting a few 8s and a 9 toward the end of the book, yet on the practice exams and on my real exam, I received 10. I would recommend this to future test takers above all other options available. Good practice!

Definitely helped improve my verbal score. Practice is the best way to do so. However, I finished the book about a week before my exam and without the practice, my actual exam was two points lower than I received on a practice exam (13 vs 11), so time your studying well. However, the book does warn in the first few pages that this is for people who aim to get between a 9 and 11 on the MCAT and if you want to be above that range, there are other books available.

My Chemistry Princeton Review instructor recommended this book. What a fantastic book! The only way to study for the verbal section is to practice, practice, practice. I did 4 passages (back to back) everyday- 2 minutes for the passage, and 1 minute for each question. I took the MCAT in 2008 and got a 12 on the verbal section. This book is definitely worth it!

This book includes many many practice passages for you to do. I think that is the key to scoring well on verbal is to practice a lot. The MCAT does not really test how good at "verbal reasoning" you are, but just how good you are at deciphering the convoluted questions they throw at you. It's kind of like having a crazy, passive-aggressive roommate that decides to get pissed off at random things, but you just have to be around them a while to learn how to deal with them. Practice makes perfect!

Using this book worked for me because I was able to improve my score from a 9 to an 11 in the course of using this book. I scored an 11 in verbal on the actual MCAT.

Just received the 101 MCAT passages about 3 weeks ago. So far I have no complaints. There are some minor errors throughout the book, but these need to be overlooked as I can already tell this is an incredibly helpful resource. For someone who has taken the MCAT once already, I believe the passages and questions do a great job a mimicking the real thing. I would go as far to say that should is a MUST for anyone who is only scoring in the 8-10 range, and looking to hit the 11-12 mark consistently.

The only other study guide I used besides this book to study for the MCAT verbals was Kaplan so I can't say much about Barrons or other smaller brands. However, I can tell you that I found this book very helpful and beneficial- the Kaplan books... not so much.

My son used this book in addition to other materials to sit for the MCATs on his second mcat testjng. He did not do as well on the verbal reason on his first sitting because his study aids did not focus on verbal reasoning as much as the other parts. He said that this book was pretty good. He also used another source..but recommends this book as well.

I took the MCAT just yesterday. In retrospect, one thing I really would not recommend to other people preparing for MCAT is using this book. This is a completely objective opinion. I have done almost all of the book, solved almost all the problems. I found that while the difficulty level of the questions themselves could be definitely tricky and challenging. In that aspect, this book is acceptable. However, the problem with this book is that the types of the passages and especially the difficulty level of the passages are NOWHERE similar to the actual MCAT or the AAMC practice tests online. I can confidently say that the MCAT passages, as well as the AAMC pratice tests' passages were definitely more challenging. Frankly, I really have to say this book screwed me over the verbal, because it really made me to think that the passages were as easy as it seemed- but they really weren't. Sorry for everyone taking the MCAT, but the verbal section is HARD. Don't have false hopes that it will have a few give away passages. EVERY SINGLE PASSAGE is equally difficult, and definitely more difficult that I'd say 80% of all the passages in this book. Examkrackers are good with practicing concepts, but only ones really worth getting and that I would recommend is the biology book, and maybe the physics book. Organic chemistry is way too easy... WAY to easy, and general chem and physics are unecessarily way more difficult and have some obscure topics you won't have to bother for the MCATs.

If you are preparing for MCAT, I'd rather purchase ALL of the AAMC practice exams, which is available online for a year, and keep practicing those than to purchase all of examkracker books like me and waste nearly a month doing all the problems. AH, one more thing. There are typos here and there in examkracker books... it looked very unprofessional to me. Buy them and use them at your own risk.

I have taken 6 practice MCATs under real timed conditions and I just took the full thing. My average on the practices are about a 12 or 13 in this section. If you miss 3 I think you get a 13. I haven't gotten my score back on the real MCAT yet. While it is true that the MCAT has ambiguous answers, I decided to start taking actual practice MCATs and found that I had to stop using this book. The answers in it were too "tricky" and I kept getting obvious/straightforward questions wrong on the actual practice MCATs because when I saw an answer that seemed too obvious, this book had trained me to think it was a trick answer. Although the MCAT does ask you questions about the main idea and other things that you must make inferences about, they also ask you many questions (I would say over 50%) where they expect you to look in the passage to either confirm a correct answer or eliminate other answers based on a pretty straightforward review of the text. The Exam Krackers method focuses way too much on teaching you that the MCAT is trying to trick you and making you second guess what seem like obvious answers.

Now having said that, I am very good at this section, in fact, it's my strongest section so maybe what seems like a straightforward answer to me doesn't to someone else. But the reality is I had to stop using this book because it was causing me to miss questions on the real MCATs. The book is good for practicing timing, although why not just buy the actual MCAT practices? They aren't that expensive and you know you are getting an accurate representation of what you will face.

As many others have noted, there are many very suspect answers to passages, which is probably again because many of the "wrong" answers were written to try and trick you into choosing them. I have encountered suspect answers on real MCAT practices also though, to be fair, and even some where it didn't seem that the question writer understood the point of certain paragraphs and arguments made.

This is a good book for practice. However I think this book can be misleading at times. For those studying for the MCAT, use this book to practice passages and more less of actually taking a test one by one. I would say use this book to practice a few passages a day. The questions are very challenging and will you get you thinking and focused for the real thing. I would say this can be easier than the real MCAT or AAMC verbal, but it is harder at times as well. So I guess we can say it balances out.

The passages for the most part are very interesting, compared to most verbal passages I have seen in the real MCAT and other prep companies. This book lacked humanity and philosophy passages, which is almost always present on the real MCAT. Although the questions are extremely difficult, some of the questions all over the book have more than one right answer, and will keep you guessing. So this book does have it's mistakes.

I would not actually score each practice verbal test based on the scale given in the back of the book. In my opinion I think some tests are harder than others in the book. Because of this I think that one and only scale in the back of the book should not be representative of each test in this book. If each test were graded accordingly, based on a pool of people getting certain questions right and wrong, then we would know each real score for each test. A lot of people I know, including myself, had verbal scores which fluctuated from this book.

As I mentioned before, use this book as practice. See which questions you got right and wrong, and why and how it lead you to the answer. Just use this book to polish your test-taking technique for the Verbal section, whatever technique it might be.

I give this book a 3.7 rating, which rounds up to 4. I do recommend this book, but with caution.

The book was marked as "like new." when I received the book all the questions were answered in the book and all the passages were underlined. Considering this is not a recreational book, and mty sole purpose of this purchase was to study.. That is very unexcepptable. The person did not even have the descency to erase all of the answered passages before they sold the book as "like new". At least the work was done in pencil.

Passages are easier to read than Princeton Review and AAMC tests. The wording of the questions is not as convoluted as the AAMC tests. However, the questions are very difficult to answer. Often times there is not enough information in the passage to correctly answer the questions, and it seems like there could be information to support more than one answer choice. While it's true that questions on AAMC practice MCATs 7,8,9 have many attractive 'trap' answer choices, this book takes that to the extreme. Therefore, I don't know if this is an accurate representation of the verbal section.

I purchased this book in hopes of preparing for the Aug 04 MCAT. I had previously been studying Verbal Reasoning with Kaplan, but wished to see what another company had to offer.
Pros:
The book certainly as an excellent number of passages. I have yet to find another book that provides the sheer quantity of passages Examkrackers offers. The book aims for an accurate simulation of the Verbal MCAT, providing tear-away sheets for you to fill out ovals as you finish one of the eveven full length tests. The passages are from a good range of topics.
Cons:
The passages themselves do not contain many hard words, nor are the sentence structures as difficult they should be. I consider myself with only mediocre Verbal Reasoning skills, yet I found that in very few the passages was I confused. I feel there is a lack of abstract passages - which often appear on the MCAT.
The greatest setback of the book are the explanations at the back of the book; many explanations for questions are simply direct quotes from the text, and do not provide an in depth analysis. I feel this approach does not adequate fulfill an explanation's role - if a simple quote could make me understand the reasoning, I likely would have understood the reasoning in the first place!
Nonetheless, the sheer amount of practice you get from this book will provide a test-taker with a sound foundation for tackling the MCAT.

I run private tutoring courses for the MCAT, and I would say that this book is arguably the best source for MCAT Verbal Reasoning questions, aside from the real exams from AAMC. (Needless to say, I use this book in my course.) The writer accurately captures most aspects of the real exam, including passage length, question wording, distribution of question types, and ambiguity of the correct answers. The only major flaw that I find with this book is that some answer choices are not well supported (even taking into account the fact that the correct answers on the MCAT are supposed to be somewhat ambiguous). In some cases, there are blatant errors in the question stem or stated correct answers, or, more rarely, two equally correct answer choices. For this reason, I would rate this book 4.5 stars, but since the store doesn't let me do that, I will give it 5 stars. :) On the actual MCAT, the incorrect answer choices are usually a little more differentiated from the correct answer. These mistakes and imperfections are frequent enough to be a little annoying, but not abundant or major enough to topple this book off the pedestal of being the best VR preparation book out there. Kaplan's and Princeton Review's materials do not quite compare (especially Kaplan's, which contain too many explicit detail questions). Keep in mind that the questions in this book are probably going to be slightly more difficult than the real MCAT questions, which are not quite as tricky. Have fun and good luck.

This book is unrivaled in the amount of practice it gives you. 11 full length test is more than worth what you pay. However I have been scoring much higher on the test than I would on the TPR verbal test and I'm thinking the passages may not be ambiguous enough. I am rarely left not understanding most of the passage when I still don't get the TPR verbal reasonging passages. If for the practice alone you should get it but take your score with a pinch of salt

As many others pointed out, a large portion of correct answers are highly ambiguous and require you to be exhaustingly nit picky. Other questions are way too easy. I think the portion of questions that are trully representative of the mcat is disproportionately small in this book, but it is good practice nonetheless. Just don't use these practice tests for evaluating your progress , as you might get frustrated and annoyed if you don't see a clear upward trend in your scores. The scale might be representative of a real mcat grading scale, but some of the actual questions are a bit off. Use this for the sheer volume of practice it provides and the aamc practice tests to gauge your improvement.

EK Verbal reasoning book is ONLY be purchased for SERIOUS STUDYING! This is not like those other verbal books where the passages are so easy that youre getting 12's or 13's..this book WILL bring you back to reality. My first practice test I scored a 7 and the second test I scored a 6. I usually score 10 on other exams. I think this book is HARDER than the actual MCAT but its worth every penniy. The choices really do suck and sum of tehm make ABSOLUTELY NOOOOOOO sense, but they make you think more like the MCAT writers. Do not be discouraged if you are not doing well on these exams. Just focus and you start to improve. By teh end of teh book I was getting 13's!

Having taken the real MCAT in 2003, and also AAMC practice tests 3-6, I would say that Examkrackers 101 passages doesn't quite hit the center of the target in terms of actual emulation of the real MCAT. However, it may just be a psychological bias of mine, knowing that it isn't written by AAMC. The passages seem to be just about as difficult, and the questions are written well. The aspect that seems to be just a tad off is the passage topics (I felt the AAMC passages were of a higher quality writing). I give it 4 stars because it is in my opinion 100% beneficial to use this book if you want to practice verbal. I'm definitely able to approach the real MCAT more confidently knowing that I've practiced Examkrackers passages.

MUST HAVE, if you are taking the MCAT. I prepared through a nationally known company last year that predicted my verbal reasoning score at 10, my actual verbal score was 6. I was dumbfounded. I asked my friends that got into Med School for advise and they suggested ExamKrackers.
Once again ExamKrackers cuts to the essentials of how to get a high score. The text focuses on the harder aspects of verbal reasoning section and cuts out the "soft ball" questions. The format is exactly as I remember it on the actual test and the score I got on the first passage was exactly the same as I had on the actual test. I have seen a continual increase with each successive full length test in this product. I anticipate the actual retake of the MCAT will mirror or exceed (as others have experienced) the ExamKrackers predicted scores!

This is a great book with multiple timed exams that will help you improve your verbal score by at least 3-4 points. It helped me immensely. Many people think they do not need to study for verbal and then are shocked how they don't have enough time to complete a section and they generally choose incorrect answers. You don't want that to be you! Buy this book -- it really is amazing :)
If you can't afford it here, look on craigslist!

The only thing good about this book is the passages your paying for. If you read the answers in the back, it might just confuse you even more. The answers that are given are absolutely confusing, and sometimes are contradicting. They give bad reasons of why the answer is wrong, and give worse examples of why it is right. Many times it seems as though, the writers of the book themselves do not know why the answer is right, and that they will try to provide "non sense BS" answers just so they can provide something to you to make this look legit. The answers to some problems many times beat around the bush to confuse you more than it helps so that they can provide you with the right answer without really providing you with why te answer is correct. This is a terrible book. The passages themselves are okay if your only expecting to buy this book for the passages and not for the "reasons" to the answers." I find myself more afraid to look at the reasoning to the answers because it will only confuse me more, than just looking up the actual answers themselves. Many times, the book will direct you to lines and tell you ".....here it is obvious what the author is trying to say" when it really is not, and the answer really doesn't elaborate on why it is obvious. I am very disappointed in this book and very disappointed that ExamKrackers would make something of such poor quality. Bottom Line, answers provided many times give lots of mumble jumble just to give an answer " but its not very well worded, right to the point, clarified answers." They are answers just to provide answers, just to sell a book that looks as if theres lots of answers given. FYI, there are lots of mistakes in the book such as answers shown in columns vs the actual answers described...I am definitely surprised this book is distributed with such obvious errors as if corrections were not given, then sold. Disappointed!

the verbal mcat is different from the time examkrackers released their previous publication. in response, they created this book to reflect the new format. HOWEVER this book is just a rehash of their previous edition. the passages are identical.

it is a good book if you haven't read the previous edition, but don't expect new material. i am disapointed and an otherwise good practice book is useless to me.

Given the usually high profiled stuff from ExamKrackers, this book was for me a disappointment. Let me just say that if you want to score high on verbal, more practice is a must, therefore it's logical to get this book. However, if you are looking for a very clean practice, this book doesn't deliver. While i recognize that verbal section on the MCAT can easily allude to personal bias and subjective opinions, on the actual MCAT the 'correct' answer should be easily justified from the 'inccorect' answers. Around a little over 2/3 of the questions in this book fit that description, everything else is full of ambiguous and unsupported answers, many passages tho interesting are abstract and difficult to read. This can get extremely frustrating if you are expecting to see concrete improvements. However, by dealing with these flaws, and sometimes overly difficult (downright impossible or simply incorrect) questions, you might still gain something that will give u an extra edge on the actual MCAT, which could be sufficently more clear and precise given that it is the verbal section.

The key to a solid verbal score is practice, practice, practice. I would recommend this book solely for that.

However.. the passages in this book are just far too 'dumbed down'. There are almost no passages that compare to the real MCAT's extremely vague and difficult to decipher passages (such as the humanities ones). For that, it only gets 3 stars as it doesn't prepare you for what lies ahead.

Stay away from this horrible approximation of the MCAT verbal section. My score for verbal went down significantly after using this book. Other Krackers material can be quite good, but this verbal review is nothing like what you'll see on the real test and it'll mess you up big time. You'll be in a different logic mindset altogether and absolutely bomb. Go for Kaplan, Princeton Review, ANYTHING ELSE, when studying for MCAT verbal reasoning.

I love the Examkracker series, however this particular book is somewhat off from the real Mcat. A lot of these answers do not make sense, and a strong case could be made for numerous supposed "wrong answers." I don't understand how the writers came up with alot of these answer choices. The passages are also too easy to read. The real MCAT has its share of abstract and literary passages that are much more difficult.

There are only about 5 real practice AAMC verbal tests. This is not that many if you need a lot of work in verbal. This book was very well-written almost identically to the style of AAMC questions. Orsay captures the subtle nuances of question stems and answer choices. There should be more abstract passages though.

I did my homework before buying this book. The pre-med students on student doc forum, strongly suggested this book for english section of the MCAT'S. I have'nt taken it yet, but I notice my readin comp has improved!
Vince

This book was pretty good for developing faster reading skills and gaining confidence but I think the questions in it were much easier than in the real MCAT. Therefore, use this book as initial practice, but attempt real MCATs to make sure your reading comprehension is really as good as this book tells you it is.

This book significantly increased my verbal score on the MCAT. I have to be honest that it was difficult at first. The passages are NOT easy. But, you have to be steadfast and persevere throughout the book. It would be advantageous to create a schedule to coincide the passages.