BS section help!

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Dr Dazzle

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Hey! I have invested several months into the MCAT and still haven't broken 25. I need the most help for the BS section. On my first MCAT, I was blown away by the density and length of those passages. I couldn't read or understand the BS passages fast enough and ended up guessing on 1-2 passages. This led to a 6 on the BS section score. What is your strategy for this section? Do you read all the passages during the test or simply skim them and go on to the questions? If I read each passage, I really have trouble finishing because of the length. Conversely, if I skim, I really have trouble answering questions with dense stems and complex concepts.

I would really appreciate any help/ advice!

Thanks!

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have you tried the ek 1001 bio? when i first started studying, i was like you. i was scoring 7s on the bio. after ek 1001, i got 10s. now i've graduated to tougher stuff like the princeton review & kaplan and i'm doing well. i won't have time for tbr and don't care for it.

ek bio is easier than the other materials and you want to work your way up to the title fight by fighting easy tomato cans first before you get to the contenders. to be honest, i was challenged in the beginning even by the ek bio (which many here find too easy) but it built my skills. i became more comfortable with the "dense" passages. part of reading dense passages is also not memorizing the detail but knowing where they are so you can quickly reference them as needed. start with ek bio, then move up to tpr and kaplan.

another thing i love about ek bio 1001 is it is great for content review. if i read the lecture books, that is passive and i don't actively engage in the material. when doing ek 1001 bio, i was actively thinking about it. sure i got a lot of stuff wrong, but the answers in the back of the book are really good and concise. by the end, i memorized the answers for all the questions i got wrong or thought covered great concepts. ek 1001 bio helped me to build my base knowledge so that if i read any random passage i'm not totally lost, i have some proficiency, even if it is at the simplest level.

it is going to be frustrating at first but just keep practicing. right now, skimming isn't going to help you. you gotta focus on accuracy and comfort first. speed will come later. good luck!
 
Speed comes with understanding the material. I think it is important to always time yourself when practicing but only as a reference. If you notice that certain passages are taking more time than others, even if you are getting all the answers right for those passages, you know you need to review that specific topic because it is taking you longer to recall the right information to get the right answer. Once your knowledge of the topics is built up, greater speed is no problem. Just know that if you are hanging on a question and not working through it, ie. reading it over and over, having to go back to the passage over and over, you simply don't understand that topic well enough and need to mark it down for review!
 
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Actually, I do fine on all the practice material and had a 8-9 BS average going into the actual exam. Only on the real exam do I have a really tough time with the dense material and the long question stems. I think that leads to a lower score. My question remains, do you actually read the whole passage to answer the questions or do more of a skim? I know in PS, you can skim passages.
 
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