A CARS Passage Pick-Me-Up :)

[Ad2b]

I work for a very large group of lawyers (commercial, civil and one lonely EEOC) along with all the paralegals, contract specialists, contract admins, and my boss, who is the chief legal beagle.

For kicks and giggles, I wanted to get their thoughts on a CARS passage from Kaplan.

Bar none, every lawyer came back and said, "Man, that's the crap on the MCAT?" and everyone of them said, "Yea, I struggled with that."

These are lawyers. Bona fide, JD carrying, high powered lawyers and they said it was hard.

So if you are beating yourself up because your CARS is not where you want it to be? Take some comfort in knowing that those far smarter than me, struggled.

Talk about validation Booya!

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[Ad2b]

Adding another comment made: the passage that I gave to the lawyers to read was from a book by Winston Churchill. One of the lawyers got curious and used our BFF "Google" to find it. He then had some other advice for me.

Read Economics, the Washington Post oped pieces, Psychology Today; read opinion pieces/essays on literature writers (Thoreau, Whitman, Chaucer), painters (Picasso, Rembrandt, etc), philosophy (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle), history and music. Ask yourself, what are they trying to tell me, what would weaken or strengthen this? What would be the antithesis of everything the writer put down?

For science passages, I just pulled this up: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329843/

Find others

 

[fallingclouds]

@Ad2b Thank you for sharing this!!

 

[Ad2b]

Here's a link for Plato: http://www.emersoncentral.com/plato1.htm

Walt Whitman: http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/reviews/memoranda/anc.00204.html

Napoleon & Animal Farm: http://englishtutorhome2.blogspot.com/2013/04/analysis-animal-farm-compare-how-orwell.html

Malthusian Economics: http://www.economist.com/node/11374623

 

[Jack Westin]

@Ad2b try showing them a passage from AAMC CARS Questions Pack Vol 1 or 2. Kaplan passages are not necessarily representative of AAMC passages. Some of their passages may be but I wouldn't count on it.

I'm assuming you didn't give them a time limit either. Add that to the mix and their frustration will really kick in!

To their defense, the MCAT has a very distinct pattern that takes effort and time to adjust to. Preparation is absolutely key to doing well on CARS. You may know of several people who didn't prepare at all and ended up with really high scores but that's not normal and definitely not recommended.

In any case, I'm sure if you or any of the lawyers you showed the passage to prepared well, CARS would be just like any other section on the exam.

 

[Ad2b]

@Jack Westin - agree 100%. They were curious as to "how hard is the MCAT" so I gave them a sample passage from Kaplan. It gives them a flavor. I'd love to through them a science passage but they see my drawings all over my white board painted office anyway (I get many questions!).

They all agreed and iterated what you said, "Boy, doing that under time constraints?" replete with raised eyebrow. If I pay for Kaplan again, I'll pull up the AAMC passages and give that to them - great idea! Right now, my access is gone and I can't.