2019 AAMC CARS QPack Vol. 1

[ABirdInTheHand]

Does anyone else have a hard time understanding the explanations that AAMC provides? I have always found CARS passages extremely difficult to comprehend, but when AAMC's explanations are just as hard to understand, it's rather discouraging and makes it difficult to get better.

Any advice would be great.. regarding CARS practice/MCAT material in general!

Thanks!

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[ABirdInTheHand]

For cars they are afuelslt better than the other sections. It’s actually good in a way they aren’t perfect because it forces you to think on your own and make your own conclusions and logical jumps which is far more active.

The issue I am having now is that I just can't seem to comprehend the CARS passages. If I understand that passage, I do very well on the questions and can reason through answer choices keeping in mind the main idea of the passage, where certain ideas are located in the passage, and any change of tone or varying opinions etc. When I get to a passage I don't understand, I feel like it's usually a 25% or 33% chance I get the question right.

When I review my answers, I almost always end up saying, "If I could have understood the passage, I would have gotten this question right." My reasoning is nearly flawless, I just usually don't understand what I am reading.

 

[Cornfed101]

What exactly is causing your lack of comprehension? For example, it is words you are unfamiliar with? Don’t just keep plowing through passages hoping that it gets better on it’s own. You have to determine where the lapse is and work on that. Take 30 min to reread the passages if you have to until you understand them, then work on speed

 

[ABirdInTheHand]

What exactly is causing your lack of comprehension? For example, it is words you are unfamiliar with? Don’t just keep plowing through passages hoping that it gets better on it’s own. You have to determine where the lapse is and work on that. Take 30 min to reread the passages if you have to until you understand them, then work on speed

It is a combination of words I am unfamiliar with and the way the author writes. For example, if an author writes a long sentence with multiple commas and moves clauses around like yoda when he talks, that's when I have a hard time with the passage.

 

[Dochopeful13]

The issue I am having now is that I just can't seem to comprehend the CARS passages. If I understand that passage, I do very well on the questions and can reason through answer choices keeping in mind the main idea of the passage, where certain ideas are located in the passage, and any change of tone or varying opinions etc. When I get to a passage I don't understand, I feel like it's usually a 25% or 33% chance I get the question right.

When I review my answers, I almost always end up saying, "If I could have understood the passage, I would have gotten this question right." My reasoning is nearly flawless, I just usually don't understand what I am reading.

Are you by any chance having difficulty with philosophy passages? I’m usually pretty good with social sciences passages but the philosophy psssages might as well be in Russian I have a terrible time comprehending those.

 

[ABirdInTheHand]

Are you by any chance having difficulty with philosophy passages? I’m usually pretty good with social sciences passages but the philosophy psssages might as well be in Russian I have a terrible time comprehending those.

Yes, anything about philosophy, politics, and literary history. The jargon and writing style trip me up to no end.

 

[Dochopeful13]

Yes, anything about philosophy, politics, and literary history. The jargon and writing style trip me up to no end.

Totally ageee. Someone on here told me to start to read philosophy passages everyday without answering questions. I’m
Hoping this helps.

 

[ABirdInTheHand]

Totally ageee. Someone on here told me to start to read philosophy passages everyday without answering questions. I’m
Hoping this helps.

Where do you go to access those passages? I've been looking at doaj.org

 

[Dochopeful13]

Where do you go to access those passages? I've been looking at doaj.org

Use the jack Westin free passages. You can sort the passages by subject as well.

 

[oncotraum]

CARS Vol I seemed more difficult to me than all of the other material that I used, and I agree that some of the explanations did not make sense! Just continue chugging along and trust that all of your practice will lead you to a good score come test day!

 

[ABirdInTheHand]

So, I have taken two Kaplan practice tests the past 2 and a half weeks I scored a 505 (128/124/128/125) and then I got a 504 (128/125/127/124). I'm glad my CARS score went up. And I've been getting about ~60% on the first CARS pack and I have two passages left.

Well... today I took an AAMC practice test and could not seem to process anything during the first two sections, especially CARS.. I thought I bombed C/P and CARS. Then my brain started to actually function for the last two sections, and I felt like I did really well and could actually process what I was reading. I ended up getting a 507 (129/122/128/128) and I am so disappointed. I feel like all my studying has been useless tbh and that I can't get a better CARS score.

I took the actual MCAT once before (a year ago) and got a 504 (129/123/128/124).

Im baffled that I got a 507 just now, because I did decently on the Kaplan exams, considering they're pretty deflated.

 

[Blueprint MCAT Tutor]

I know it's extremely disappointing for CARS, but the rest of your scores are sensational. Can I ask which AAMC exam this was?

 

[ABirdInTheHand]

I know it's extremely disappointing for CARS, but the rest of your scores are sensational. Can I ask which AAMC exam this was?

Yeah, of course. This was AAMC's FL 1 practice exam!

 

[Blueprint MCAT Tutor]

In my opinion, and my experience with teaching several dozen students, that tends to be the hardest one. Now that doesn't mean you won't see passages like aamc FL1 CARS on your exam, but I would say they're more representative of the harder passages you'll see and AAMC sample is more representative of the easier passages you'll see.

What is your CARS strategy? How are you approaching the passages to analyze them? Do you have a strategy for timing or do you kind of play it by ear? How do you review CARS, if at all? Have you found any patterns in the types of mistakes you make? If so, have you made adjustments in your strategy to help correct those mistakes? I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but the more information you can give me, the more I can hopefully guide you!

 

[ABirdInTheHand]

In my opinion, and my experience with teaching several dozen students, that tends to be the hardest one. Now that doesn't mean you won't see passages like aamc FL1 CARS on your exam, but I would say they're more representative of the harder passages you'll see and AAMC sample is more representative of the easier passages you'll see.

What is your CARS strategy? How are you approaching the passages to analyze them? Do you have a strategy for timing or do you kind of play it by ear? How do you review CARS, if at all? Have you found any patterns in the types of mistakes you make? If so, have you made adjustments in your strategy to help correct those mistakes? I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but the more information you can give me, the more I can hopefully guide you!

Really appreciate the feedback. I never really had a strategy for CARS. I just read the passage in around 4 minutes, try my best to understand it, and answer the questions. I noticed that I can usually answer ~75% correct when I actually understand the passage and that I can reason through trap answers and out of scope answers.

As for the mistakes I make, I found that I don't quite key-in on what AAMC is asking for in the question i.e. Their explanation emphasized a word in the question and I didn't emphasize it when trying to find the answer. Another struggle I have is simply going back through the passage to find the answer. I basically do this blindly, because I almost never know where to look in the passage for the answer.

I used to have an issue with timing for CARS when I took the real MCAT for the first time, but I have been better with my timing this second time around.

When I review CARS, I notice that 90% of the time, I tell myself, "If I only understood the passage, I would have gotten this question right." So, reviewing has been frustrating because my reasoning is usually sound, I just have a hard time comprehending what I read.

The past week or so, I have been trying to follow Princeton's strategies and some strategies from Nick Zehner's Testing Solutions 8-day free trial. their advice is pretty solid, and I can see it being very useful, but it can only be applied well if I know what the passage is saying in the first place. I have also been asking myself (as I read answer choices) "Does this REALLY answer the question?" or "What exactly IS the question asking?" These questions help me figure out if an answer choice is out of scope or just touching on the wrong idea.

I think I have more things to share about my issue with CARS, but for the most part, that's everything. The main issue I have is just comprehending the passage.

 

[Blueprint MCAT Tutor]

Thank you for posting such an in-depth reply. I think a big thing for you is going to be to develop a specific strategy on how to attack the CARS passages. There are two ways to go about this: 1) look around on SDN or Reddit and see what strategies other people recommend. You can take an entire strategy or mix and match different ones to find something that works for you. 2) You can look at your own mistakes and see what you could have done differently to avoid such a mistake. Whatever you need to have done differently, start adding that into your strategy.

For me, I took option 2 when I took the MCAT myself. I would see what kind of mistakes I was making and then make a change in my strategy to account for that. I also had issues sometimes with understanding the entire passage. If the first paragraph was confusing or I couldn't pick up on the main point, then the entire passage didn't make sense. To combat this, I started analyzing the passages paragraph by paragraph instead of just as one large passage. I would try and understand each paragraph on its own and then see what connected it to previous paragraphs. What I found was that ideas that are repeated multiple times are going to be extremely important and are typically what they ask questions about. So, if I saw an idea in a new paragraph, that was mentioned in a previous one, I always highlighted that. Highlighting will help you be able to reference the passage quicker as well. Also, at the end of each paragraph, pause for a second and do a one-sentence summary in your head of what that paragraph was about in your own words. Doing so will help organize things in your mind and also help you reference faster.

As far as misunderstanding the questions, I found the biggest help to myself, or my students was to rephrase the question in my own terms. I never moved on to the answer choices until I fully understood what the question was asking. I think a major issue students have is that they kind of understand the question and then they go to the answer choices and get confused because they don't know exactly what is being asked. So, to help alleviate this issue, I rephrase the questions and even sometimes rephrase the answer choices.

I think comprehension tends to be the major issue for most people, so don't feel like you're alone or incapable. You can definitely do this and you have spend a good deal of time now analyzing your issues. When you're reviewing, see what mistakes you make and then amend your strategy so that you can avoid those mistakes in the future. I hope that helps and if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reach out. Keep up the amazing work and you will improve, I promise!