Amount of Time to Spend Reading Physics and Orgo Passages

[wheyprotein]

Hello, all.

I am currently taking a Princeton Review course. My physics instructor advised us to never spend more than 30 seconds going over a physics passage. Also, my orgo instructor advised us to never read the passage at all except for briefly looking over figures, tables, and things of that sort. Can anyone confirm/refute these strategies?

Thank you.

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[Kaustikos]

Hello, all.

I am currently taking a Princeton Review course. My physics instructor advised us to never spend more than 30 seconds going over a physics passage. Also, my orgo instructor advised us to never read the passage at all except for briefly looking over figures, tables, and things of that sort. Can anyone confirm/refute these strategies?

Thank you.

Here's what I want to say, but this is for myself. I find that the PS sections tend to be self explanatory without much divulging into the passages. The graphs/charts tend to give ample information about what you want to know that if you're confused, they tend to clear things up. The practice tests tend to allude to that, but I was faced with a dilemma that basically contradicted that strategy. The PS for the June 13th exam came with a passage that almost made me want to refute the verity of that strategy due to how convoluted and difficult the passage was and the questions that accompanied it. Despite this, I would highly recommend practicing this strategy because the questions don't tend to be too difficult and the passage information tends to be more or less background. I think the AAMC puts passages there to try and confuse you unless you're adapt at figuring out what the passage is trying to go off of (in terms of topic). So, yes, I do agree that glancing at the passage is usually more than sufficient.

 

[requeim]

the op's strategy seems right. you want to just look at the passage and see what it is talking about and go from there. anything more is just wasting time.

 

[DrDre2001]

Ok...wow, that is the exact opposite of kaplans strategy. Kaplan (and my instructor who got a great score) says to read the passages and take notes - what they refer to as "mapping" the passage.

I read the passage, and do NOT map the passage. That takes way too much time.

Just glancing at the passage isnt enough for me. A lot of times there's new information in the passage that you would have otherwise no way of knowing. And besides, reading the passage in its entirety usually only takes a little more than 2 minutes.

Idk though, whatever works for you.

 

[SN2ed]

I really think you should read the passage. However, if that technique works for you, then there's no real reason to stop.

 

[nfg05]

I think I read rather quickly compared to most people, so getting through a whole PS passage usually takes less than 2 minutes. Sometimes, when they have figures of some device you've never seen before you really have to read along and look at the drawing to figure out what the hell is going on. At least I do... the only time I don't read the passage is if I already know everything it's trying to explain to me.