Yes and no. RC is harder than students expect and easier than the section makes it feel. Both things are true and they get confused all the time.
Here is the honest read. The section gives you 60 minutes, 3 passages, and 17 questions per passage. The passages run roughly 1,700 to 2,500 words each, which means the math alone is brutal: at an average reading speed you spend more than half your time just reading.
RC is the section that punishes pacing problems more than any other.
Why students think it is hard
Three reasons stack on top of each other.
1. The clock. 20 minutes per passage feels generous until you are inside one. At 200 words per minute, a 2,000 word passage burns 10 minutes before you have answered a single question.
2. The passage topics. RC pulls from biology, philosophy, economic history, and topics you may not have read voluntarily since high school. Density is the issue. Difficulty is not.
3. Question patterns that hide. Inference and tone questions reward boring answers and punish creative ones. Students with strong reading instincts often score worse on these than students with disciplined reading instincts.
Why the section is more learnable than students think
Unlike a content section, RC tests the same skill set every time. Same 7 question patterns. Same trap structures. Same passage shapes. The vocabulary at the answer-choice level is small enough that students can essentially memorise the high-frequency word list. About 173 words show up across nearly every form of the test.
Reading speed is trainable. Question patterns are learnable. Strategy choice is learnable. None of this requires talent. It requires a few hundred passages of focused practice.
Where most students actually fall
Pre-dental students who treat RC as the throwaway section tend to land somewhere in the 17 to 19 range (340 to 370 on the new scale). Students who put real prep into it land in the 20 to 23 range (390 to 450). Students who go deep on RC specifically, which is rare since most generalist DAT prep treats RC as a bonus, break into the 24 to 27 range (470 to 550).
That last group is not smarter. They spent more focused time on the section. RC rewards focus more than IQ.
So is it hard
It is harder than students give it credit for and easier than the score range suggests. The section is mostly a pacing test wrapped in a comprehension test. Fix the pacing and the comprehension lifts with it.
If you are reading this because your RC score is dragging your Academic Average down, start with a real diagnosis. Then work the one fix that matters most for your bucket.
Related: What is a good DAT RC score · How long is the RC section