Pacing Strategies During the MCAT

[betterfuture]

Hi guys! Going to take my MCAT soon and just wanted a few pointers from past test takers or those that are currently studying for the MCAT about how to approach convoluted passages.

Like, I know we have to practice and get use to timing and shorthand math etc which is great and all. But I mean when you see a complicated physics passage, or biochem passage with like a table and graph thrown in there, do you guys actually skip over those or just look at them if a question requires? Do you guys refer to the passage paragraphs alot to find answers or is it mostly from extrapolating info from the graphs. Could you guys give any other advice besides just stating "practice with the AAMC stuff." I already have those. Just wondering if there was other tips/strategies/step-by-step method you guys do to approach hard passages. (i.e. POE, highliting only sentences like "Researchers wanted to conduct an experiment to figure out how X affects Y", etc)

Thank you!

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[sleepyhead22]

Just took it yesterday. I don't have any huge tips but one thing I wish I had done is practice with the font size bigger (i'd say it was zoomed to +25% at the testing center). It threw me for a loop and made it hard to judge passage length.

 

[iluvbeingpremed]

Hi guys! Going to take my MCAT soon and just wanted a few pointers from past test takers or those that are currently studying for the MCAT about how to approach convoluted passages.

Like, I know we have to practice and get use to timing and shorthand math etc which is great and all. But I mean when you see a complicated physics passage, or biochem passage with like a table and graph thrown in there, do you guys actually skip over those or just look at them if a question requires? Do you guys refer to the passage paragraphs alot to find answers or is it mostly from extrapolating info from the graphs. Could you guys give any other advice besides just stating "practice with the AAMC stuff." I already have those. Just wondering if there was other tips/strategies/step-by-step method you guys do to approach hard passages. (i.e. POE, highliting only sentences like "Researchers wanted to conduct an experiment to figure out how X affects Y", etc)

Thank you!

1) Yes skim the tables and graphs and come back to them when you read the questions and know what to look for

2) I found that on the real MCAT the majority of questions were graph/figure interpretation

3) You need to figure out what works best for you, everyone is different. Personally, I highlighted keywords and transitions to keep myself focused, read the passage only once and then went to the questions, and POE is HUGE. Like I remember having questions where two of the answer choices were synonyms so I could easily cross them both out or I would find irrelevant answer choices to cross out, ect.

 

[Necr0sis713]

You don't have to read the passage slowly and absorb it. Get the jist of it and then refer back when answering questions. This takes experience. I did a billion practice tests to the point where I can essentially skip graphs and then whenever a question asked me about the graph, THEN I would go back and answer the question. However, don't just read the graph to answer: look in the passage for "An experiment was done to blah blah" to first know what the experiment was about (this time you're reading it more slowly so you can synthesize the information with the graph)

 

[betterfuture]

For the P/S section, did you guys feel you had to draw out what was going on in the experiment because of the long setup.

Like "Reasearchers divided women with Breast Cancer into 3 groups by age. A control was set up as well. The reasearchers then asked half the women in the first group to yada yada, and the other half with blah blah, the second group to yada but not yada, and blah and blah, and the 3rd group with such and such but no blah and blah. After 3 weeks, a post experiment test was conducted where the results were divided by X Y Z." When I see things like this, I don't know whether to draw it out or just not worry about it till a question pops up. Any suggestion on what you guys did with experiment setup?

 

[alpha-GTP]

For the 2 science sections, I simply skimmed the passage to get a general idea of what is going on. While doing this, I highlighted any key terms that I anticipated would come up in a question. When it came to graphs/charts/equations, I did not bother looking at them until a specific question referenced them. What I noticed a lot of the time, especially for the physical science section, equations were sometimes not even brought up in passage questions. They are simply there to induce panic/confusion.

I also didn't want to spend time interpreting graphs/charts because I might focus on things that are not even addressed in questions. I usually answered the freebie questions first (ones that can be answered without the passage, or ones with simple calculations like F=ma, etc.). This freed up 2-3 minutes for each question that required interpreting data and forming conclusions. Any answer that I wasn't at least 90% sure of, I would mark and come back to it later. I decided which marked questions to come back to first based on how much time I think it would take me to get an answer. Freebie questions would be answered first regardless of the order in which they appeared in the exam, and the questions that required interpreting data would be answered last. This way, I maximized how many correct answers I can get with the 20-25 minutes I usually had after finishing each section.

 

[betterfuture]

Did you feel clicking to get to the questions made you lose precious time? I almost never triage because the questions appear 1 at a time.

 

[alpha-GTP]

I love how you refer to it as triaging. That's a good way to describe it, lol.
I feel like all the flipping back and forth didn't cost me more than a minute per section. I feel like doing this was better than spending 2 minutes trying to figure out a question where I didn't know what was going on. This is especially true for CARS, since it was by far my weakest section. There were times when I read the first 2-3 sentences of a passage and being like, "f**k", and skipping it and coming back to it at the end. For me, that was better than reading through it with my eyes glazed over and having to reread it again in a state of panic when answering the questions.