CARS vs. Verbal Passages

[Nyle]

Hey doctors/future doctors,

I am a student at ASU studying for the new MCAT. A large part of my MCAT studying revolves around learning by doing (in other words, taking practice passages/tests and spending days analyzing my results). Unfortunately, I have a very limited amount of book material for the new MCAT and I am projected to run out of CARS practice passages, BUT I have several of my friends' old MCAT material. I have never looked at the old MCAT or dealt with it all and wanted to know if I could use the old MCAT's verbal passages to study for the new MCAT's CARS section. Would that be useful? Would that be a waste of time? If anyone could shed some light on this issue, I'd greatly appreciate it! Also, since I have a lot of old MCAT books, would I be able to use any of the old material to study for the new MCAT (keep in mind, a lot of my studying is via practice passages/tests)?

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[Nyle]

Also, I'm new and haven't explored the numerous threads on SD, so if there are any similar threads, please feel free to post a link

 

[Singhp]

As someone who took the old mcat last year and taking the new one this year, I've found CARs to be almost identical to verbal passage-wise. The questions are actually more direct in the CARs section than the trick questions on the old verbal. Timing also has become less of a factor as you have much more added time (30 minutes) relative to added questions (40 to 53). Personally I would use mcatquestion.com as they have a lot of decent practice passages, but you have to buy them. The older verbal practice wouldn't hurt you, in fact it may help you as you are practicing a harder section under more-time restricted conditions. I would definitely recommend looking at a good amount of CARs passages as well though, as the topics for the passages have changed as well. For the sciences, I would ditch the old material man, there are too many changes to the bio section (hefty addition of biochem) and removal of topics from the Physics and chem that would be annoying to nitpick from. Don't use the old books in my opinion, you would have to waste your time checking if each subject you study is even on the new exam. Good luck on your exam