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How are you doing on CARs?


cw2lu4

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Just curious as to how you guys are doing on CARs training so far?

I've been using EK 101 Verbal and doing 3 passages per day. When I first started the book I was getting only 2/7 questions correct but after a few more weeks of practice I got more comfortable with EK passages and I'm averaging 80% for every 3 passages that I do in 30 minutes (with 3 minutes to spare usually, but I always just end and never look back). I did Kaplan passages and I get the exact same score. However, I find that TPR passages are much harder. I attempted two passages (in 20 minutes) from their CARs book and got less than half of the questions correct. 

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CARS is the hardest section for prep companies to duplicate, and each company has a different set of people writing those passages, each with their own advantages and flaws.

80% on EK's is very good! keep on working on TPR and try to get your hands on Nextstep's matieral, diversifying to me seems the 'safest' approach . If you truly want to know where you are at, the only way you could do that is by doing AAMC's scored exams... but I suggest you save them for last (but not too late) 

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I took NextStep's diagnostic test and scored a 129 on CARS a few weeks ago before I started prep. I've been doing NextStep and Examkrackers practice daily with a 90 minute section once per week. I have access to 3 Kaplan FLs, and I'll be doing the 3 AAMC FLs, but I'm saving all those for July and August. The same thing happened to me for Examkrackers, but to be honest I find their questions to be unclear and ambiguous at times. I'm afraid that by learning to adapt to their style of questions that it's training me for Examkrackers CARS rather than AAMC CARS... NextStep is much clearer in their questions. I'm using a NextStep book that came out just before the new exam, so the passages are really long and pretty challenging to read, and I'm averaging 60-70% correct so far, but I found their diagnostic to be shorter in terms of passage length, and the questions less difficult. I agree with the diversification approach!

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4 hours ago, hartk48 said:

CARS is the hardest section for prep companies to duplicate, and each company has a different set of people writing those passages, each with their own advantages and flaws.

80% on EK's is very good! keep on working on TPR and try to get your hands on Nextstep's matieral, diversifying to me seems the 'safest' approach . If you truly want to know where you are at, the only way you could do that is by doing AAMC's scored exams... but I suggest you save them for last (but not too late) 

Hmmmmm... I've heard mixed reviews about NextStep but I suppose more practice never hurts. I was thinking of doing AAMC CARs this summer just for kicks. I'm not writing the MCAT until the summer of 2018 so I could probably re-use AAMC material next year since I likely won't have any passages memorized. I'm just starting CARs now since I'm going to grad school and I probably won't have much time to properly study. 

 

1 hour ago, gonads said:

I took NextStep's diagnostic test and scored a 129 on CARS a few weeks ago before I started prep. I've been doing NextStep and Examkrackers practice daily with a 90 minute section once per week. I have access to 3 Kaplan FLs, and I'll be doing the 3 AAMC FLs, but I'm saving all those for July and August. The same thing happened to me for Examkrackers, but to be honest I find their questions to be unclear and ambiguous at times. I'm afraid that by learning to adapt to their style of questions that it's training me for Examkrackers CARS rather than AAMC CARS... NextStep is much clearer in their questions. I'm using a NextStep book that came out just before the new exam, so the passages are really long and pretty challenging to read, and I'm averaging 60-70% correct so far, but I found their diagnostic to be shorter in terms of passage length, and the questions less difficult. I agree with the diversification approach!

I agree. I read the answer keys in EK for questions that I got wrong and sometimes I find myself disagreeing completely with their answer. I'll look more into NextStep! Are you planning on using TPR Hyperlearning as well?

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I see... in that case just to let you know that AAMC's vol.1 is much harder than vol. 2. Its good that your looking into CARS this early, however if I could go back in time I would definitely expand my vocabulary, the MCAT will use ambiguous words in the answer chocies to scare you or to conceal the right answer, and sometimes that ambiguous word in the passage is key to understand tone/opinion. If you don't pick up on those subtle ques, you'll have a hard time scoring 127+

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3 hours ago, gonads said:

I'm not doing Hyperlearning. I never looked into it. What about you? I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks that about Examkrackers haha 

 

 

 

 

Yeah I'm definitely going to give it a try. I just got a .pdf copy of the 2011 Hyperlearning book. 

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