Hello Altius Tutor,
Could u elaborate on the Altius strategies for CARS ? How different is ur strategy to other companies or private tutors? what is it that you are claiming since many claim the same ! though I agree that it takes a lot of practice and repetition to master all the strategies.
I'm not sure I know what you are asking when you say "what are you claiming since many claim the same...?" But I can certainly speak a little bit about our CAR strategies and how I personally help my students ace this section. This is a limited forum though, if you really want to know about our approach you can call the office 435.671.5783 anytime M-F 8AM-5PM MTN and ask to speak with a tutor. They will give you a free consultation, answer questions, often even give you one free session to check the out as a mentor, all without paying a cent. That would give you more opportunity to discuss back and forth too, rather than just reading replies to posts.
Now to CARS strategy, there are several strategies we use to help students more quickly resolve the literature they are reading into salient points which are likely to be tested by the MCAT authors. We also work on strategies for accurately dissecting the question and getting the correct answer. Even if you understand that portion of the passage being tested you can often miss the question because of poor or inefficient critical thinking habits/techniques. What we do not do is give you the false idea that there is a "secret trick" you can employ to rapidly increase your score. No such thing. The way to dramatically improve your score is to dramatically improve your reading comprehension/analysis abilities and to dramatically improve your skill at accurately answering the AAMC CAR question types. I'll explain two things which have helped my students immensely.
First, we have a 3-Stage Development System for CAR. You begin at a more basic level wherein you take more time to read, take more notes, and use a basic passage analysis/annotation strategy. You have to reach certain benchmarks at that level to move on to the next. For example, at that level, you should reach the point that you no longer feel worried about timing or the difficulty of the passage syntax. You should be able to confidently read most passages and at least feel like you understood the gist. After you reach this and several other benchmarks you move to Level 2. This requires you to become more analytical, take fewer notes, and focus more on big-picture literary components. After you reach all of those benchmarks you move to Level Three. This is the final set of skills and behaviors we find in nearly every student who performs at a high level on CARS. Your analysis is now very succinct and focused directly on relationships, argument components and mathematical/algorithm-like notes which can be jotted down very quickly. There is a separate chapter of the student manual to work through each CARS level and you do at least one 1-on-1 tutoring session with your mentor for each level.
Second, we do two separate, unique, but equally important drills. Each student gets two CAR workbooks full of passages to practice on. We use these passages to complete a) Comprehension Drills and b) Speed Drills. My students do five (5) of each every single week. The one drill gradually increases speed while holding passage comprehension level constant, the other one holds timing constant and gradually increases comprehension level. If you stick with it, eventually the two meet in the middle in an almost miraculous way. At first, you could not read to the level you needed to unless you took a lot of time to do so (way more than the MCAT allows), but we used the drills to gradually decrease that time without decreasing your comprehension. Also at first, if you read the passage in the time available (3-4 minutes) you wouldn't remember or comprehend the passage to the level needed. But, the drills gradually increased what you could comprehend in 3-4 minutes until it matches what you were originally comprehending in unlimited time. The two drills meet in the middle and you can now COMPREHEND the nuances of the passage argument to the level necessary AND you can do so in 3-4 minutes.
Good luck in your studies!