Someone Who Improved On Cars

[oneschoolonedream]

Hi, 

I was wondering if someone who improved on CARS from a low score to a high score could comment on how they improved. 

Please give some of us hope lol 

Thanks.  

[End Poverty]

I think in the beginning, it is a good idea to write a one line sentence summarizing each paragraph.  Keep doing that for the first 50 -100 passages, and you will definitely see a score improvement.

 

Best of Luck  

[tuscanleather]

Some people really seem to like Jack, a CARS tutor. He offers online courses, though is quite expensive. A lot of students have apparently approved as many as 8 points in CARS after working with him. I read as much as I could find on forums and ended up taking his online course. While I think he is a fantastic tutor, very motivating and dedicated, I guess his method and what not didn't work out so well for me:

 

MCAT (Sept 2015): 505 (CARS 124)

MCAT (Aug 2016): 514 (CARS 124)

 

Not too sure of what CARS strategy to recommend as best. I never really found the one that worked the best for me.

[End Poverty]

I am not sure if that's helpful, but I got 124 on CARS the first time I wrote my MCAT with no preparation whatsoever. However, on my second MCAT I used Berkley review verbal reasoning book and got over 127. I did a lot of verbal reasoning passages the second time, probably one hundred passages.

[LFOHarmonics]

Practive VR/CAR passages everyday. No need to do like a full length CARS section early in your studies, but start off with two. 

In the beginning, unless you feel comfortable enough, go without timing yourself and focus on what you are reading. 

One thing I found that helps is that right after each paragraph, do a quick half a second summary in your head of what you just read. Do not relate it, or try to formulate, the main theme. Just "This paragraph said XYZ". That helped me map out the passage for myself.

At the end of the passage, then take a second to reflect on the over-arching theme, or message, or motif. 

During questions, don't look back to the passage (or at least, try not to). Instead of looking for the "right" answer, look for the "wrong" answers and knock them out. CARS, I found, was much more of taking out the obviously wrong answers first, rather than just marking the right answer.

When you review your questions during practice, do not go to the answers just yet. Go over the passage again, and look at your choices. Make sure you understand what YOUR reason was for both what you considered the wrong answer and what you considered the right answer. Then look at the actual answers and see where you reasoning lies.

 

[RichardDegrasseSagan]

As someone who went from scoring 125 twice, to eventually getting a 129 my third time (was scoring 129-130 on practice by the end), the most important thing to do is PRACTICE. I know what you're thinking. You've heard this over and over again. And that it doesn't help you. The reason I think most MCAT-takers who score low on verbal are discouraged by the advice of "practice" is because there isn't a way of systematically practicing like there is for the sciences. With science, you can check your answer, see where you went wrong, and it's all very tangible. It's not for verbal. So here are my tips for what to do when practicing your verbal passages (and I would recommend ideally doing 4-6 passages a day for 2-3 months with a couple of break days, and going heavier closer to the exam). For reference, I think I did about 300 passages if you included my FLs. I did all the old AAMC passages (~100), TPRH (~100), and about 12 full length tests (~100 passages) and only the verbal sections from 3-5 full lengths (~40 passages). You won't have time do review the non-AAMC material thoroughly, so don't try to. Just read the answers over as soon as you finish and maybe take a couple of notes on your incorrect answers. Okay, on to the advice:

• Use non-AAMC material for timing and learning what some of the tricks they throw at you might look like. When reviewing non-AAMC material, take the answer solutions with a grain of salt. If it doesn't make too much sense, whatever, move on. But if you agree with the answer and see where your logic was flawed, then definitely pay attention. I found my mistakes were an even 50-50 split between these types of mistakes.
• Do 2-3 AAMC passages per day and REALLY heavily review them afterwards. Dissect everything within the passage (summarize the passage) and the questions/question stems. Figure out WHY you were making mistakes. I honestly only ever encountered like 2 WTF answers out of the hundreds with the AAMC material. A lot of CARS is kind of like pattern recognition. The more time you spend dissecting the AAMC material and understanding, the better you will be at this pattern recognition business. It honestly comes down to pattern recognition and process of elimination for many of the difficult passages/answer choices (i.e., "no this answer uses language that's too extreme - it has to be wrong: analogous answers were wrong with all the other AAMC material). 
• With the AAMC material, I would suggest planning it out so that you spread the passages across the timespan that you've dedicated to studying. I ended up doing some of the passages twice, and even three times. The reason for this was that I documented EVERYTHING. See below:

 

I used a timer to figure out how long it was taking me to read the passages and how long it took me to answer the questions. What I realized was that I was not spending enough time reading the passage and too long answering the questions. I slowed down my reading pace to absorb everything from the passage (went from spending 3-4 minutes reading to 4-6 minutes reading). Once I did that, I started answering the questions much more quickly. Trying to read really quickly will save you at most 9 minutes total (say you cut down your time by 1 minute per passage). You hurt you comprehension greatly in order to do this. But if you spend a tiny bit more time reading the passage, then you might be able to spend like 20 seconds less on each question (which might end up being like 2-3 minutes per passage). It's just way more efficient to read to understand. DON'T SKIM. 

 

Also, I highlighted the questions I was iffy on/guessed so that I knew which answers I got correctly from guessing. I also kept track of how well I did on each passage. I prioritized reviewing the passages I REALLY struggled with. And I re-did the passages I struggled with about 3 weeks out from test day. And I re-did them all again like 2-3 days before my test. This made sure that all my logical errors were salient to me and I wasn't making them over and over again. 

 

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask here (rather than PMs). Just so anyone else interested would be able to read the replies!

 

P.S. I agree with LFOharmonics' "summarize" advice. I summarized each paragraph in my head very quickly in a couple to few words to keep the flow of the passage in my head. This was especially so if I saw that a passage had lots of paragraphs, and it was starting to sound convoluted. At the very end, I would regurgitate all the summaries of the paragraph to myself within 10-15 seconds to get the main idea of the passage solidified and then jump to the passage questions. 

[Looktoabove]

Thank you so much for the explanation RichardDegrasseSagan, what practice tests did you use ? Did you do your practice mostly on the computer? Or for example did you do the TPRH passages straight from the book?

 

Thank you so much!

[LFOHarmonics]

Thank you so much for the explanation RichardDegrasseSagan, what practice tests did you use ? Did you do your practice mostly on the computer? Or for example did you do the TPRH passages straight from the book?

 

Thank you so much!

Personally, I relied on EK1001 passages, Princeton's hyperlearing, ALL OLD MCAT VR, Khan Academy VR, and at the tail end started to use NextStep (which... Was very hit or miss).

 

Practice is key. I went from 9VR to 130CARs.

 

EDIT: Also I don't think the passage packs (like EK and TPR) are designed to be suited for the computer. They are very much made to be done on paper :/ 

 

Khan Academy and the newer practice MCAT stuff is designed to be done on the computer.

[RichardDegrasseSagan]

Thank you so much for the explanation RichardDegrasseSagan, what practice tests did you use ? Did you do your practice mostly on the computer? Or for example did you do the TPRH passages straight from the book?

 

Thank you so much!

My dedicated verbal practice was TPRH and old AAMC verbal passages. I did not like EK101 as much, so didn't use it for *dedicated verbal practice*. What I mean by that is that these were the resources I used for verbal outside of doing full lengths, and practice that I reviewed quite heavily. I would do them separately from all other practice because I wanted to be at peak mental performance when doing them.

 

The other practice I did was from full length tests. I started doing them 2 months out from my test day (it's a good idea to just start - I hadn't even finished half my content review at this point). I did the following full length tests:

 

Free: 3x TPR, 3x Kaplan

Paid: 3x EK, 4x NS, 2x official AAMC

[victorias]

As someone who went from scoring 125 twice, to eventually getting a 129 my third time (was scoring 129-130 on practice by the end), the most important thing to do is PRACTICE. I know what you're thinking. You've heard this over and over again. And that it doesn't help you. The reason I think most MCAT-takers who score low on verbal are discouraged by the advice of "practice" is because there isn't a way of systematically practicing like there is for the sciences. With science, you can check your answer, see where you went wrong, and it's all very tangible. It's not for verbal. So here are my tips for what to do when practicing your verbal passages (and I would recommend ideally doing 4-6 passages a day for 2-3 months with a couple of break days, and going heavier closer to the exam). For reference, I think I did about 300 passages if you included my FLs. I did all the old AAMC passages (~100), TPRH (~100), and about 12 full length tests (~100 passages) and only the verbal sections from 3-5 full lengths (~40 passages). You won't have time do review the non-AAMC material thoroughly, so don't try to. Just read the answers over as soon as you finish and maybe take a couple of notes on your incorrect answers. Okay, on to the advice:

• Use non-AAMC material for timing and learning what some of the tricks they throw at you might look like. When reviewing non-AAMC material, take the answer solutions with a grain of salt. If it doesn't make too much sense, whatever, move on. But if you agree with the answer and see where your logic was flawed, then definitely pay attention. I found my mistakes were an even 50-50 split between these types of mistakes.
• Do 2-3 AAMC passages per day and REALLY heavily review them afterwards. Dissect everything within the passage (summarize the passage) and the questions/question stems. Figure out WHY you were making mistakes. I honestly only ever encountered like 2 WTF answers out of the hundreds with the AAMC material. A lot of CARS is kind of like pattern recognition. The more time you spend dissecting the AAMC material and understanding, the better you will be at this pattern recognition business. It honestly comes down to pattern recognition and process of elimination for many of the difficult passages/answer choices (i.e., "no this answer uses language that's too extreme - it has to be wrong: analogous answers were wrong with all the other AAMC material). 
• With the AAMC material, I would suggest planning it out so that you spread the passages across the timespan that you've dedicated to studying. I ended up doing some of the passages twice, and even three times. The reason for this was that I documented EVERYTHING. See below:

 

I used a timer to figure out how long it was taking me to read the passages and how long it took me to answer the questions. What I realized was that I was not spending enough time reading the passage and too long answering the questions. I slowed down my reading pace to absorb everything from the passage (went from spending 3-4 minutes reading to 4-6 minutes reading). Once I did that, I started answering the questions much more quickly. Trying to read really quickly will save you at most 9 minutes total (say you cut down your time by 1 minute per passage). You hurt you comprehension greatly in order to do this. But if you spend a tiny bit more time reading the passage, then you might be able to spend like 20 seconds less on each question (which might end up being like 2-3 minutes per passage). It's just way more efficient to read to understand. DON'T SKIM. 

 

Also, I highlighted the questions I was iffy on/guessed so that I knew which answers I got correctly from guessing. I also kept track of how well I did on each passage. I prioritized reviewing the passages I REALLY struggled with. And I re-did the passages I struggled with about 3 weeks out from test day. And I re-did them all again like 2-3 days before my test. This made sure that all my logical errors were salient to me and I wasn't making them over and over again. 

 

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask here (rather than PMs). Just so anyone else interested would be able to read the replies!

 

P.S. I agree with LFOharmonics' "summarize" advice. I summarized each paragraph in my head very quickly in a couple to few words to keep the flow of the passage in my head. This was especially so if I saw that a passage had lots of paragraphs, and it was starting to sound convoluted. At the very end, I would regurgitate all the summaries of the paragraph to myself within 10-15 seconds to get the main idea of the passage solidified and then jump to the passage questions. 

Thanks for sharing your tips. It really gives me hope that if I am not naturally good at CARS, one day I can improve too.

Can you share an example or two of the pattern recognition you mentioned? As you read, are you to pick up on possible questions they might ask or the sections of the relevant text they might test on?

 

 

How much attention do you pay to details when reading? I am mostly focused on reading to get the main idea but when it comes to questions, I feel that the details were important and it takes away so much time to go back and reread sections of the passage for the details.

 

 

 

I have been doing a lot of practice but its really a hit or miss for me. I am going to start keep a log like you showed in your post.

 

I know the general stay away from extremes and don't go too out of scope.

I have to say that with practice, I have gotten better at the main idea questions and even if the answer choices don't have the same wordings as I had in my head of the main idea, I am able to use POE and choose the right answer.

 

But for the other question types, I am not sure - its all based on the passage - sometimes I get 1/7 and sometimes 7/7 and I haven't been able to narrow it down to a specific topic of the passage or type of question I am missing

[RichardDegrasseSagan]

AAMC will very infrequently have detail-oriented questions that don't rely on the main idea in some way. The external CARS/VR practice is really crappy because often, that's exactly what they do: they have irrelevant detail oriented questions that don't follow/incorporate the main idea of the passage.

 

Incorporate the details into the main idea, but don't dwell on them. I found it really helpful to make a quick mental summary of each paragraph after reading it, just to keep the details in order. Then I would repeat the cumulated summaries after each paragraph.

 

E.g. "first paragraph: affirmative action is prevalent. Second paragraph: affirmative action may be bad.

 

So affirmative action is prevalent, and it could be bad. Okay, third paragraph talks about rich minorities abusing affirmative action. Okay, so far: affirmative action prevalent, potentially bad, and why bad".

 

 

Doing this really helped me keep the passage details straight and prevented the passages from becoming convoluted. And it helps you keep a mental map of where each idea arose from if you ever need to refer back to the passage (which I suggest you almost never ever do).