Approach to the difficult science passages on AAMC practice tests

[redrosesfi]

My question concerns the 2 official AAMC practice tests: I feel like I have content down well, but when I approach a difficult science passage on Chemical sciences or biological sciences, it is really hard to grasp what is going on in the passage. As I read these, I normally jot down notes on paper. When the passage is very detailed, I find myself writing so many notes. Is that the best strategy? or is the best strategy to skim the passage?

My normal approach to C/P passages have been to look+answer the questions that I can first, and then go back to the passage to read it carefully.

For Bio passages, I read it carefully from the get-go, jotting notes down, then going to the questions (because more of the questions come from the passage rather than pseuo-discrete ones, I've observed).

For both, the hard passages are just difficult to grasp, especially under timed conditions. Any advice out there on how to best approach a difficult science passage containing lots of detail?

Thanks.

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[MCAT-MVP]

Some students find writing notes when they read a passage really helpful and others find that it takes up too much time and they don't end up using them and everything in between. I think you really have to figure out what works best for you when it comes to taking notes when reading a passage.

I am not sure what your notes look like exactly, but one tip that I can give you about note taking while reading a passage is to use pictures, arrows, symbols, etc.. instead of lots of words for your notes (if you do use words only use 1-3 words to represent something). That should shorten up your note taking time which will give you more time to answer questions.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Gurby]

C/P and B/B are my worst sections, so maybe I have no business in posting advice here. But here is my approach when I hit one of those brick wall passages with a billion things upregulating/downregulating/etc a billion other things.

If I'm more or less understanding the passage and feel like I'll be able to answer questions about it, I'll try to go through and read the entire thing before starting on the questions. If I'm getting overwhelmed by the passage, I'll look at the questions. Often times there will be a few questions you can pick off just through previous knowledge, and a few questions you can pick off by just referring to specific parts of the passage (interpret this graph, etc). Then for the 1-2 questions where you actually need to understand what's going on in, I'll take a quick stab at them and see if I can answer before marking and moving on. Come back at the end and try again (or guess) after you've done the rest of the test, so you won't waste time on a question you're probably going to get wrong anyways.

If you're aiming for a 528 this method isn't for you, but that's how I damage control on passages where reading will be low yield and I'll probably just get the questions wrong anyways after spending an inordinate amount of time.

 

[exposedbrickcampaign]

I didnt read the OP or the replies...just the thread title. My answer, the only one that exists: keep practicing problems, review weak topics, work your way thru problems then review them

 

[redrosesfi]

Thanks for the pointers. I have been practicing problems and reviewing my answers. When reviewing, I can understand why a certain answer is the way it is, but that is only after taking my time reading and understanding the passage, without time constraints.

 

[smr]

I didnt read the OP or the replies...just the thread title. My answer, the only one that exists: keep practicing problems, review weak topics, work your way thru problems then review them

Of course I agree practice is important but I think it is easy to develop bad habits if you aren't careful. I just took the April MCAT and scored 95+ percentile. I would say you should REALLY keep in mind how little time you are going to have to get through this test. You simply won't have time to read through and fully understand every science passage, but fortunately you also don't need to because you can often get answers from just the graphs or just certain sections.

I personally think taking notes, unless you are months out from the real exam, is a bad habit. I honestly don't think you will have time during the exam. Skimming can also get you in trouble because a lot of questions have answers choices that not surprisingly have choices that perfectly correspond to what you would pick if you skimmed a passage or graph. For example, up is down and down is up, something easy to miss if you don't read the graph correctly. I think you just have to carefully but quickly pick which parts of the passage to focus on. From my experience with both official and non-official material, there tends to be a LOT of filler that is just there to waste your time and confuse you.

For every section except the CARS of course, I think you can get the right answer without referring to the passage too much. My advice is to get used to doing this with your practice tests and keep in mind that time is going to become VERY important.

 

[redrosesfi]

Of course I agree practice is important but I think it is easy to develop bad habits if you aren't careful. I just took the April MCAT and scored 95+ percentile. I would say you should REALLY keep in mind how little time you are going to have to get through this test. You simply won't have time to read through and fully understand every science passage, but fortunately you also don't need to because you can often get answers from just the graphs or just certain sections.

I personally think taking notes, unless you are months out from the real exam, is a bad habit. I honestly don't think you will have time during the exam. Skimming can also get you in trouble because a lot of questions have answers choices that not surprisingly have choices that perfectly correspond to what you would pick if you skimmed a passage or graph. For example, up is down and down is up, something easy to miss if you don't read the graph correctly. I think you just have to carefully but quickly pick which parts of the passage to focus on. From my experience with both official and non-official material, there tends to be a LOT of filler that is just there to waste your time and confuse you.

For every section except the CARS of course, I think you can get the right answer without referring to the passage too much. My advice is to get used to doing this with your practice tests and keep in mind that time is going to become VERY important.

I'm guessing then that when taking practice tests as well as your actual exam, you did NOT fully read the whole passage, just took out the bits and pieces that looked important to you? Or did you actually read the whole passage? Thanks.

 

[smr]

I'm guessing then that when taking practice tests as well as your actual exam, you did NOT fully read the whole passage, just took out the bits and pieces that looked important to you? Or did you actually read the whole passage? Thanks.

Yep. I started practicing with the NS exams and their passages are probably most similar in length to the official passages, so I learned with those to not read the entire passage if I could answer the questions without doing so. On the real exam I almost even ran out of time for the Psyc section and I usually had almost 45 minutes left on all my practice tests. I don't know if anything out there really gives you a good enough idea of how LONG every passage is on the real exam. The things that make the practice exams hard seem to be mostly different from what made the real test hard and time vs length of each passage was probably the most obvious complication.

To be more specific, I would try to answer each question using as little of the passage as possible. If the question asked about some protein pathway, I would skip to the paragraph describing that pathway. Like I said, I think you will find that a lot of the passage is filler.

 

[arlo]

I have a similar question as OP. My problem is I am doing horrible on bio/biochem passages. My other two sciences are about the same and the scores have been consistent. I am 1/3 done with the section bank and I am getting used to interpreting the data. Is there anything else I should do to improve my bio passages? I took the EK 4 FL today and my percentage for the bio section dropped by like 8% from my aamc unscored. Any tip on test taking strategies or other stuff I should practice to improve on this section? Thanks!