Paul, Pete, Dana and Others:
I was disappointed with my score on the MCAT Verbal Reasoning. The passages tend to have authors discussing a topic (boring most of the time) and give their opinions on it. Most of the questions have to do with the main idea while others ask for details. Below are two examples of passages and questions seen on the MCAT. Can you please help me find a strategy to increase accuracy and speed? The section is composed of nine passages with 65 questions giving one nine minutes to read and answer questions from each passage. The last MCAT I took, I PRed the section, pulled out trigger words in the questions and then rapid read the passage. Afterwards, I attacked the questions. This strategy was not successful at that time. I have thought of mind mapping for 30 secs after rapid reading in order to increase my comprehension. Can you please offer some suggestions for a new or modified strategy? I am taking the MCAT on April 20. Thanks in advance.
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Passage I (Questions 1-7)
1 The common term tidal wave is a dangerous
misnomer. A tsunami has nothing to with tides;
nor is it a single wave... A tsunami can be
triggered by a submarine volcanic eruption, a
5 landslide or, most commonly, an
earthquake-anything that suddenly causes a
large disruption in the sea level (including, very
rarely, a meteorite impact). Uplift the seafloor
by, say, ten feet, and you create a ten-foot-high
10 mound of excess water at the surface. Such a
mound will collapse under gravity to generate
the tsunami-a succession of waves that radiate
outward across the surface of the ocean like
ripples in a pond.
15 [W]hat makes shallow-water waves so
special has to do with the way minute parcels of
water move when a wave passes. Ordinary
waves set water moving in vertical loops, which
get tighter with depth and dwindle away entirely
20 at depths greater than half a wavelength. In
shallow water, however, the oscillations reach all
the way to the bottom. In a sense, the waves
can "feel" the bottom, and as a result they move
through the water differently from their
25 deepwater cousins.
[T]sunamis are shallow-water waves. They
have wavelengths so inconceivably long-seventy
to 300 miles from crest to crest-that even in the
three-mile depths of the open ocean, the waves
30 set the entire water column in motion, just like a
boulder heaved into an inch-deep pond. One
result is that tsunamis move surface water
farther than ordinary waves do, sometimes
enough to set it rocking back and forth as much
35 as thirty feet. Another is that the interaction with
the bottom limits their speed. In a bottomless
ocean the speed of a wave would depend only
on its wavelength, and tsunamis would sweep
across the surface at more than a thousand
40 miles an hour. Once waves start to feel the
bottom, however, their speed is controlled by the
depth of the water. As a result a tsunami
crosses a three-mile-deep ocean at just under
500 miles an hour....
45 ...Yet despite their enormous speed and
energy, tsunamis are imperceptible on the open
ocean. They typically have a period (the time
from one wave crest to the next) of between
nine and thirty minutes and an amplitude of a
50 foot or two at most....
Only when a tsunami reaches shore does it
reveal itself as the alien being it really is....
[T]sunami waves grow as they approach a
shoreline, for much the same reason as normal
55 waves do: interaction with a shoaling bottom
slows the wave, shortening its wavelength; to
transport the same amount of energy, the wave
must get taller....
...What triggered the Unimak tsunami of April
60 1,1946? Seismologists and oceanographers
have traced its source back thousands of miles
from Hawaii, to the eastern Aleutian
Islands....The waves that had raked Unimak
spread concentrically across the Pacific....
65 Almost everywhere, the tsunami seemed to die
down after several hours only to reappear with
the arrival of waves reflected off some distant
shore. The reflections were followed by
re-reflections; three days after the earthquake,
70 tide gauges in Hawaii, Samoa, and New Zealand
still registered unusual variations in the sea
level....
In the 1930s, when the seismologist
Richter...devised his magnitude scale,
75 seismometers could measure ground motion
with a period of twenty seconds but could not
sense longer-period motion. As a result the
Richter scale understates the magnitude of large
earthquakes, which release much of the energy
80 in the form of waves with longer periods.
Modern instruments have enabled seismologists
to devise a more accurate measure called the
moment magnitude scale, which is based on the
strain energy released in faulting.
85 From calculations based on the area of fault
ruptured and the amount of slip on the fault,
geophysicists estimate that the Unimak
earthquake had a moment magnitude of 8.0. If
so, it released twenty-five times as much energy
90 as its Richter magnitude indicated.... In such
earthquakes, ...slippage on the fault is much
slower than it is in a normal earthquake,
probably because sediments carried down on
the subducting plate act as a lubricant, lowering
95 the friction between the two plates. As a result
the overriding plate can move under much
smaller stresses, more slowly and for a much
longer time than it would without the lubrication.
Such a slow release of seismic energy
100 generates relatively few seismic waves with a
period of less than twenty seconds, so the
resultant earthquake has a disproportionately
small Richter magnitude.
105 From G. Fryer, The Most Dangerous Wave.
1991 by The New York Academy of Sciences.
Which one of the following events LEAST often triggers a tsunami?
A) A volcanic eruption
B) A moderate earthquake
C) A meteorite impact
D) A landslide
The period and amplitude of a tsunami on an open ocean are cited by the author in order to:
A) give evidence of their enormous speed and energy
B) give evidence that it is impossible to detect a tsunami before it reaches the shore
C) calculate the wavelength of a tsunami when it reaches the shoreline
D) establish the time frame necessary for a tsunami to travel from the open ocean to the shoreline
Based on the passage, tsunami waves are distinct from ordinary waves because tsunami waves:
A) move in vertical loops.
B) have a limited speed in the open ocean.
C) move surface water a shorter distance.
D) have shorter wavelengths
As a tsunami approaches the shore:
I. it increases in height.
II. the wavelength shortens.
III. the waves dissipate their energy.
A) I only
B) II only
C) I and II only
D) I, II, and III
Suppose a scientist recorded that an earthquake had a moment magnitude of 7.5 and a fault rupture that lasted 3 minutes. Based on the passage, it would be expected that the:
A) earthquake released a small amount of energy.
B) slippage on the fault was fairly slow.
C) quake would only be felt at a short distance.
D) waves would have a short period.
According to the passage, how long did the overall effects of the Unimak wave last?
A) Twenty seconds
B) Forty-seven minutes
C) Several hours
D) Several days
Based on information in the passage, the method of measuring the magnitude of a tsunami wave is essentially based on which of the following?
A) Identifying the patterns of earthquake waves
B) Measuring the ground motion with a shorter period
C) Measuring the energy released in faulting
D) Measuring the amplitude of earthquake waves
Passage VII (Questions 46-52)
1 The question is often asked how individuals,
having no right to dispose of their own lives, can
transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do
not possess. The difficulty of answering this
5 question seems to me to lie in its being wrongly
stated. Every man has a right to risk his own life
in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that
a man who throws himself out of the window to
escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Has such
10 a crime ever been laid to the charge of him who
perishes in a storm because, when he went on
board, he knew of the danger?
The social treaty has for its end the
preservation of the contracting parties. He who
15 wills the end wills the means also, and the
means must involve some risks, and even some
losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at
others' expense should also, when it is
necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake.
20 Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of
the dangers to which the law desires him to
expose himself; and when the prince says to
him: 'It is expedient for the State that you should
die,' he ought to die, because it is only on that
25 condition that he has been living in security up to
the present, and because his life is no longer a
mere bounty of nature, but a gift made
conditionally by the State.
The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals
30 may be looked on in much the same light: it is in
order that we may not fall victims to an assassin
that we consent to die if we ourselves turn
assassins. In this treaty, so far from disposing of
our own lives, we think only of securing them,
35 and it is not to be assumed that any of the
parties then expects to get hanged.
Again, every malefactor, by attacking social
rights, becomes on forfeit a rebel and a traitor to
his country; by violating its laws he ceases to be
40 a member of it; he even makes war upon it. In
such a case the preservation of the State is
inconsistent with his own, and one or the other
must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we
slay not so much the citizen as an enemy. The
45 trial and the judgment are the proofs that he has
broken the social treaty, and is in consequence
no longer a member of the State. Since, then,
he has recognized himself to be such by living
there, he must be removed by exile as a violator
50 of the compact, or by death as a public enemy;
for such an enemy is not a moral person, but
merely a man; and in such a case the right of
war is to kill the vanquished....
...We may add that frequent punishments are
55 always a sign of weakness or remission on the
part of the government. There is not a single
ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.
The State has no right to put to death, even for
the sake of making an example, any one whom
60 it can leave alive without danger.
The right of pardoning or exempting the guilty
from a penalty imposed by the law and
pronounced by the judge belongs only to the
authority which is superior to both judge and
65 law, i.e., the Sovereign; even its right in this
matter is far from clear, and the cases for
exercising it are extremely rare. In a
well-governed State there are few punishments,
not because there are many pardons, but
70 because criminals are rare; it is when a State is
in decay that the multitude of crimes is a
guarantee of impunity. Under the Roman
Republic, neither the senate nor the consuls
ever attempted to pardon; even the people
75 never did so, though it sometimes revoked its
own decision. Frequent pardons mean that
crime will soon need them no longer, and no
one can help seeing wither that leads.
But I feel my heart protesting and restraining
80 my pen; let us leave these questions to the just
man who has never offended, and has never
himself stood in need of pardon.
From J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract.
85 1762.
According to the passage, a person will be accused of committing suicide unless his actions:
I. cause harm to others.
II. save the lives of others.
III. attempt to save his own life.
A. I only
B. II only
C. I and III only
D. II and III only
Based on information in the passage, how does Rousseau view the death penalty?
A. It is the best means of deterrent.
B. It is a regrettable but necessary form of punishment.
C. It is an unacceptable means to control a society.
D. It is a part of every society.
The passage suggests that when an individual violates a law in the society all of the following are true EXCEPT:
A. he has broken a social treaty.
B. he should be considered an outcast
C. he is considered an amoral person.
D. he should be given the opportunity to atone for his transgressions.
Based on the passage, Rousseau believes that in a well-organized society:
A. crimes are rampant.
B. capital punishment is infrequent
C. pardons are often given.
D. more laws are enacted.
In the fourth paragraph, Rousseau employs the metaphor of war to achieve which of the following?
A. A comparison between putting a criminal offender to death and killing a vanquished enemy
B. A comparison between a rebel and a traitor to one's country
C. A contrast between the peaceful ideal of the State and the violent reality of the State
D. A contrast between putting a criminal offender to death and
killing a vanquished enemy
As it is used in the passage, the term "Sovereign" refers to:
A. the State.
B. a superior judge.
C. a higher being
D. a King.
Based on information in the passage, which one of the following opinions could most reasonably be ascribed to the author?
A. The rights of the individual are more important than the rights of the State.
B. All malefactors have a right to rehabilitation at the State's expense.
C. Rousseau does not feel he is qualified to judge the actions of others.
D. Individual rights are always protected by the State.
i couldn't resist such tricks!