Hi all,
Any recommended psych and sociology journals that would be good practice for bolstering comprehension in said areas?
Any recommended psych and sociology journals that would be good practice for bolstering comprehension in said areas?
recommended psych/soc journals ?
- Thread starter ThaDude
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QxMD makes a great, free app called 'Read' that populates new articles based on what preferences you set (journal, discipline, etc). You can put in institutional credentials if you have them for increased access to papers. It's a great resource for access to a ton of primary articles you can read in your down time, which will pay dividends on the MCAT.
Oh, so one should focus on primary articles then, in the social sciences (for psych/sociology)?
Silly question, but there are no narratives/fictional stories on the MCAT right, even with the CARS and 2015 changes and all?
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Read anything and everything you can get your hands on (not just psych/soc articles), and make sure you can explain the figures, trends in the results, etc. Reading over the methods for biochemical/biology papers is helpful as well, though it's easy to get bogged down in the minutiae. Primary and review articles are both useful. The big picture skill that pays off is being comfortable with being uncomfortable, if that makes sense.
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Best thing to start with is something you're interested in. Pull a topic off the AAMC list of topics and search it in Google Scholar. I picked 'neural plasticity' at random and found the following articles (some are behind a paywall):
http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(99)00177-8/abstract
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v7/n1/full/nrn1809.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159110005210 (this one discusses the effect of immune system modulation of neurons- combining multiple systems is something the AAMC loves to do)
http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(99)00177-8/abstract
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v7/n1/full/nrn1809.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159110005210 (this one discusses the effect of immune system modulation of neurons- combining multiple systems is something the AAMC loves to do)
True believer! Thank you. But isn't the verbal section now taking out passages to do with the life sciences/medical sciences? i.e. aren't they solely focused on the social sciences now? sorry for the silly question...
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True. The best thing I found to prep for CARS is to read anything and everything (sensing a theme here?). I've seen Reason and Responsibility recommended, which is a basic philosophy textbook (buy a used, older edition copy if you opt for this route). Jump around in the book and read a passage or two, then write in the margin what the author's main points are. It's dense stuff, but if you get in the habit of 1) asking yourself what the author is trying to convey and 2) actively looking for bias in everything you read (from newspaper articles to research papers), your critical analysis skills will improve. If you want to take it to the next level, read it with someone else and then argue for or against the author's position.
This is getting into the territory of unsolicited advice, but the best thing that helped me while I was practicing CARS was remembering that every answer must be supported by something in the text. If I couldn't go back to the passage and highlight a precise word, phrase, or sentence that supported the answer I chose, then I needed to take a second look. This won't hold true for 100% of the questions, as some level of inference and reasoning is required, but it helps eliminate answers that 'seem' right but aren't textually supported. Remember to leave your background knowledge at the door and consider only what's in the passage.
