Hi
@unrulytreasure,
That's a great question, but a big one! Honing your ability to efficiently read passages, pick up on the important information, and apply it in the way that MCAT questions expect is a long-term project, but it is definitely possible to make significant improvements. If I had to give you one tip, it would be to do lots of practice passages and to
review them painstakingly. It should take just as long—and often longer—to review a passage thoroughly as it does to take it.
For each question in a passage, be sure to analyze the following points:
- What was the question actually asking for? Some MCAT questions can be answered with outside knowledge only, others require information from the passage, and yet others require careful analysis of the text or of figures/tables. Additionally, you'll run into questions that might have very intimidating-seeming wording, but are actually asking for something simple. For example, a question could pose an involved hypothetical about protein modifications and interactions with the plasma membrane, but getting the right answer might be as simple as identifying which amino acid is the most/least polar.
- What did you have to do to get the right answer? Note that this is not exactly the same thing as asking "why was the correct answer correct?", although they sound similar. The point here is that you need to understand both the concepts behind the right answer and the process of how you take passage information and apply it.
- Why are the incorrect answers incorrect? For some questions, this may be obvious, but for many other questions the incorrect answer choices show patterns of incorrect reasoning that you can learn from. The more you practice, the more you'll get a sense for such patterns, which will both help you get other questions right and for you to read the passages in a way that anticipates what the MCAT will want you to understand.
- What could you improve on for similar questions? Why you got a given question wrong (or why you were unsure about it) is much less important than what you can improve in the future. Focus on identifying specific steps for future improvement. This could mean reviewing certain content areas, it could mean tweaking your pacing or how you approach reading a passage, and it can also mean getting creative with how you use your scratch paper or organize your work. The goal here is to identify action points that you can either complete before your next FL exam (for content review) or apply to your next exam (for strategy/process).
Consistent, careful review will help you build an intuitive sense of what information in the passage is important and how to dissect it.
Another note: science passages tend to be either informational or experimental (and "experimental" passages can vary depending on whether they present an experimental technique or the results of actual research). The more research-oriented a passage is, the more you need to be attuned to issues like what the authors were trying to figure out and why, and how their findings fit into that picture, whereas more informational passages tend to be a bit more detail-oriented. A final technique to try would be to move away from highlighting
unfamiliar words and to start highlighting
familiar, testable content, because those parts of a passage are more likely to be the focus of questions.
Hope this is helpful, & hang in there! The name of the game is practice, practice, practice (and review, review, review).
