is CARs highly time constrained for test takers?

[northwestmedic]

I keep reading this... is this people's experience?... surprises me some as it's just a mix of easy questions and then AAMC's judgement of what's correct on others (obviously they apply logic but I'm think most people don't always agree with them as to what's correct).......

I'm thinking something I've learned from crossword puzzles is valuable.... I often get stuck on parts of them while doing them in the morning. I come back at night and often I can get a lot of the missing clues i.e. my brain was subconsciously working on the questions all day.

anyway, do people have a lot of trouble with time on this section?

thx in advance ........... p.s. I can definitely see myself having huge time problems on the 2 scientific sections of the MCAT. there looking at a question for 10-20 minutes can sometimes get me the answer but obv. no time for that.

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[Rogue42]

I keep reading this... is this people's experience?... surprises me some as it's just a mix of easy questions and then AAMC's judgement of what's correct on others (obviously they apply logic but I'm think most people don't always agree with them as to what's correct).......

I'm thinking something I've learned from crossword puzzles is valuable.... I often get stuck on parts of them while doing them in the morning. I come back at night and often I can get a lot of the missing clues i.e. my brain was subconsciously working on the questions all day.

anyway, do people have a lot of trouble with time on this section?

thx in advance ........... p.s. I can definitely see myself having huge time problems on the 2 scientific sections of the MCAT. there looking at a question for 10-20 minutes can sometimes get me the answer but obv. no time for that.

Not to brag about anything, but just trying to give a reference. I scored a 36 on my ACT in reading with all kinds of time to spare. During my untimed AAMC practice tests, I was scoring very high too; however, during my timed practice tests, I learned that I would only have about 1 minute left. During the actual exam, I was short on time and had to answer the final two questions off of guesses. So for someone who considers oneself to excel in reading comprehension, I did in struggle with time. People struggle on it because they're slow readers or it takes them longer to digest the information.

 

[camp23]

I'm sort of the same as the above poster, I scored a 35 on my ACT reading and I read a lot for fun. I almost always scored the highest on CARS in my practice tests, with lots of time to spare. I had about 25-30 mins left on the real exam when I finished that section. I won't know my score until Tuesday as I took the test on 8/18 but I feel it was my best section. I had 3 minutes left for the C/P section, which took me the longest.

 

[Altius Premier Tutor]

Time is usually precious because to finish on time even good readers have to read a little more quickly than they would by choice.

Second, many questions have two tempting answer choices. This frequently drives students back to re-read the passage looking for justification, which can be a huge time drain.

I recommend all my students track the time spent on each passage on their scratch paper, deducting X minutes per passage each time, from the total minutes allowed for that section. This prevents the most dangerous timing problem, which is gradually building up a time deficit--which can be deadly.

 

[PlsLetMeIn21]

Thank you Rogue and Camp. I feel like I'm going to be in your same about with timing. Did you feel yourself falling behind during the exam?

 

[northwestmedic]

thx for the responses......... i

 

[northwestmedic]

alitius.. yes, i wrote recently and i kept a close eye on time/question left......... and one thing i found was i did stand-alone Q's first which gets you way ahead of time schedule, but then i realized that was false security as the Q's left were much more time consuming.. nice thing about watching time/question left is i slowed down alot without realizing it at one point probably by excess pondering over 2 or 3 Q's in a row