CARS - TPR and EK101

[autumn0408]

English is not my first language, so I've always had difficult times doing well on CARS. But I did fairly well on Princeton Review Hyperlearning passages and saw my scores improving. Then when I started doing EK101, my scores were brutal even when I thought I understood a passage clearly and felt I did well. Many people say that EK101 is a good practice, so how do I get most out of it?

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[betterfuture]

I don't know why, but EK 101 felt waay different than AAMC style questions. The passages might be ok, but the questions and answer choices are really ambiguous. Might work for some people; idk. TPR on the other hand, is very similar, I've found.

If you can, you should buy both AAMC CARS Qpacks. They are really good for understanding the types of passages you will see and most importantly the styles of questions and answer choices. If you still want to utilize the EK101 book, I would say use it to work through the passages untimed and get the big idea. Go to the questions and try to reason through each answer choice step-by-step. Understand why the 3 answers are wrong, and why that 1 is right.

 

[Chromium Surfer]

Yeah EK is known to be inconsistent but TPR is pretty representative of the MCAT. I would second getting the AAMC Q packs.

 

[autumn0408]

Thank you for your response! Yes I'm planning to use aamc Q pack but didn't want to use it right away since my test will be in Jan. Do you think it's better to start with it to get a good idea of what the test is like and then do other test materials?

I don't know why, but EK 101 felt waay different than AAMC style questions. The passages might be ok, but the questions and answer choices are really ambiguous. Might work for some people; idk. TPR on the other hand, is very similar, I've found.

If you can, you should buy both AAMC CARS Qpacks. They are really good for understanding the types of passages you will see and most importantly the styles of questions and answer choices. If you still want to utilize the EK101 book, I would say use it to work through the passages untimed and get the big idea. Go to the questions and try to reason through each answer choice step-by-step. Understand why the 3 answers are wrong, and why that 1 is right.

 

[betterfuture]

Thank you for your response! Yes I'm planning to use aamc Q pack but didn't want to use it right away since my test will be in Jan. Do you think it's better to start with it to get a good idea of what the test is like and then do other test materials?

I would hold up on the CARS QPack then.

Try other material first as you just want to get a feel for passage types, question types, answer choices, big idea. Then as you progress, start timing yourself. Always, when checking answers, try rereading the passage first and then reviewing why 3 answers are wrong and 1 is right. That way you can know if something was supported in the passage or not and where to locate that information. Most of the time, the answers are directly stated and the questions will sometimes require you to find indirectly stated ideas. Don't reread the passage if you are doing 1 passage at a time; this is only when you have done 4 or 5 since it may be harder to recall the what the passage was talking about.