Desperately need CARS strategies/tips..

[daftypatty]

Hi guys, so I've exhausted TPRH verbal passages and I really have not done well. I think my # of wrongs per passage actually increased throughout the month, I felt pretty confident/good about the passages in the beginning of my studies, getting around 1-2 wrongs, but since then I think its regressed to 2-3 wrongs.

I have 2 main problems:
1. Very convoluted/dense passages : On the passages that are fairly easy to read/interesting/or a topic that I am familiar with, I can usually breeze through them and do very well. But on extremely dense, wordy, convoluted passages that have no clear indication of the main ideas, I just CANNOT get through even reading the whole passage ... I cannot seem to finish reading it without staying focused, and therefore I cannot get out the main idea or authors opinion of the passage. Can anyone offer tips in this specific case?

2. Timing : I've done most/if not all of my passages thus far un-timed. So, I've probably went over even 20 min on some of the passages, just because I wanted to thoroughly understand the passage & not make mistakes. Now that I've tried to give myself a 10 minute limit per passage, I'm finding it a lot harder and unable to finish most of them within the given time span. I'm wondering if there are any tips for timing and how to progressively improve timing...

Thank you

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[mcatjelly]

What's your current approach/strategy?

 

[itsallgood92]

I too am interested in this. @mcatjelly what did you do for CARS? I saw this was your strongest section.

 

[qwe7791]

Interested as well.

 

[mcatjelly]

I too am interested in this. @mcatjelly what did you do for CARS? I saw this was your strongest section.

Interested as well.

Oh gosh I'm sorry, I somehow missed your tag!

So the obnoxious truth is that I think the majority of my preparation occurred long before I actually started studying. First semester of freshman year, I took a kick-butt research methods course that forced me to put into practice many of the skills CARS requires. Then my junior and senior years I worked for a clinical psychologist who would have me do background research for her that involved reading dozens of articles and quickly gleaning the main points; senior year I did the same when I assisted with a lit review that required, again, quickly reading over hundreds of articles and writing brief summaries of each to send off to the grad student. So, tl;dr: I don't feel all that qualified to provide advice for this section because my only practice came from AAMC material and EK FLs.

But I'm no different from others in that it's super hard for me to stay focused on passages that are dense/dry/convoluted, so I developed a highlighting strategy that I think worked very well for that. I created a mental list of key words and phrases that I would vow to highlight should I come across: transition words, words or phrases in quotes (MCAT loves to ask what the author meant by the words in quotes), author assertions, counterpoints, important names/dates/time periods, etc. Once you do enough passages you get a feel for what types of things questions like to refer back to, so the above method helped with ease of referring back to a passage when a question required it, if that makes sense.

 

[MyNameIsRobertPaulson]

Since its too late to re-do my undergrad early years, would you say reading lots of CARS passages and reviewing them can help one train up these skills in ~ 4 months?

 

[mcatjelly]

Definitely. ^

 

[daftypatty]

How do you guys review your CARS passages? I usually just try to identify whether my mistake was due to: not understanding passage, not reading question carefully/misinterpretating question, misinterpretating answer choice, etc.. But I don't feel like my post-game analysis helped? I improved over the month due to practice, but i dont think my reviewing method is good..

 

[itsallgood92]

Oh gosh I'm sorry, I somehow missed your tag!

So the obnoxious truth is that I think the majority of my preparation occurred long before I actually started studying. First semester of freshman year, I took a kick-butt research methods course that forced me to put into practice many of the skills CARS requires. Then my junior and senior years I worked for a clinical psychologist who would have me do background research for her that involved reading dozens of articles and quickly gleaning the main points; senior year I did the same when I assisted with a lit review that required, again, quickly reading over hundreds of articles and writing brief summaries of each to send off to the grad student. So, tl;dr: I don't feel all that qualified to provide advice for this section because my only practice came from AAMC material and EK FLs.

But I'm no different from others in that it's super hard for me to stay focused on passages that are dense/dry/convoluted, so I developed a highlighting strategy that I think worked very well for that. I created a mental list of key words and phrases that I would vow to highlight should I come across: transition words, words or phrases in quotes (MCAT loves to ask what the author meant by the words in quotes), author assertions, counterpoints, important names/dates/time periods, etc. Once you do enough passages you get a feel for what types of things questions like to refer back to, so the above method helped with ease of referring back to a passage when a question required it, if that makes sense.

Thanks for the advice! I've actually been doing a similar highlighting technique, but I think CARS is really just a hit or miss for me. I feel like doing well on the section is entirely dependent on if I actually understood what I read or not, which definitely has me a little concerned. I still haven't touched AAMC stuff yet, so I'm hoping I see a little more consistency when I make the switch from TPR and Kaplan materials. Additionally do you think that the new highlighting function slowed you down on the real thing? or was it fairly easy to manage?

 

[mcatjelly]

Thanks for the advice! I've actually been doing a similar highlighting technique, but I think CARS is really just a hit or miss for me. I feel like doing well on the section is entirely dependent on if I actually understood what I read or not, which definitely has me a little concerned. I still haven't touched AAMC stuff yet, so I'm hoping I see a little more consistency when I make the switch from TPR and Kaplan materials. Additionally do you think that the new highlighting function slowed you down on the real thing? or was it fairly easy to manage?

I wasn't prepared (my fault) so it was initially off putting, but it was definitely easy to manage.