Hey guys. Just a quick question. My local library has a massive amount of SAT/ACT and AP lit books for you to check out. Will the reading sections of these prep books be beneficial to prepare for the CARS section or should you just stick to Kaplan and TPR MCAT books?
As a former SAT/ACT instructor and tutor, I can promise you the SAT/ACT reading comprehension will not help much for CARS prep. There are a few reasons why:
1) Passage difficulty. SAT/ACT passages are written for high school students from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. As such, the vocabulary, level of abstract ideas, subtleties to the arguments within will not reflect the MCAT in any meaningful way.
2) The old section was called Verbal reasoning, now it's called CARS. The AAMC has always avoided calling it Reading Comprehension like they do on the SAT, GRE or LSAT because they want to make it clear, the questions/thought processes skills needed are well beyond and different from what's needed for those other exams. This is NOT just Reading comp but longer.
3) A majority of points on the SAT come from main idea and detail questions, vocab-in-context (what is closest to skill 1 on the CARS). These Qs are a rarity on the MCAT. The vast majority of CARS questions (70%) are Skill 2 and 3. These require much more inductive and deductive reasoning skills, being able to analyze, strengthen, weaken and recognize arguments and opinions. SAT/ACT/GRE questions just will not prepare you for this.
4) The tone.
Every single prep company out there works very hard to emulate the tone, voice and sometimes illogical logic of the AAMC CARS passages. This is a tough task. Even Khan, the AAMC partner, has released some new CARS passages which are just not that great at capturing the CARS voice. If companies that seek to emulate the AAMC need to work hard at it, would you want to use some ETS or LDAS generated exam which didn't even try? I would not.
There is plenty of MCAT-oriented CARS material out there. Some is free (Khan) and the AAMC CARS material is relatively cheap. Older VR books can still help as the CARS section is the
least different part of the new MCAT. Just be aware that any old natural science passages no longer reflect what's on the new MCAT, so I would recommend skipping them. There are also a few CARS-oriented resources built for the new MCAT, so peruse the threads if you want to know more about them.
Good luck!!
