is one month enough time to raise CARS score??

[premedkid1994]

If I do 5-10 CARS passages daily leading up to the exam?
Been getting around ~60-65% right on Nextstep fls on CARS so far (only took 2)

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[MareNostrummm]

I would not recommend doing more than 3 passages a day until you can develop a solid strategy (missing no more than 1 question a passage). Take your time going over each passage. Doing 5+ passages isn't going to help you if you are just applying a poor strategy to all of them. (I know you want to do as many passages as possible since you only have a month but it really won't help you).

You want to be scoring 80%+ on the NS CARS if you want at least a 126 on your MCAT. Make sure that you can finish each section at least 5 minutes early on the NS FLs, because the real MCAT has even longer passages (8-9 paragraphs) that are less interesting (NS has passages on videogames...)

That being said I would hire a tutor with a good history of working with the verbal section of the MCAT.

 

[JohnWall69]

On the same boat as you buddy. Would love to hear others think about this as well. Any help is really really appreciated

 

[summergirl]

No that would not be helpful because the real CARS will require you to do 9 passages in a row, and it's right after you've done 95 minutes of intense C/P. Do whatever you can to practice CARS under those conditions.

 

[aldol16]

To answer your titular question, unless your low CARS score the first time around was due to poor preparation, then one month is not enough time to raise your score substantially. That's the idea of the new confidence interval. It takes time to improve on the CARS.

 

[Doremonster]

Just to chime in and reiterate what others have said, it depends on the context of your situation. If you are already scoring relatively well i.e. 128 or greater then one month is probably not enough because those last few points require a tremendous amount of effort. On the other hand if you are scoring 50% or lower than yeah definitely enough time to develop some test taking strategy to boost it up. It really depends though, as others have stated until you are comfortable and have mastered an approach to answering CARS questions stop doing so many passages. Unless you have a unlimited supply of passages you are just burning through precious material without any sense of direction. Remember that NS tends to be a little more on the difficult side.