You have eight months? Great! Plenty of time. For the next four months, pick two legitimate publications (No People/paparazzi mags please) that you'd never ever read (Time, WSJ, New Yorker, Scientific American, Men's/Women's Fitness, NatGeo, Atlantic, etc) and READ THEM. This will build up stamina to be able to tackle inherently boring passages on the MCAT. Take every godawful, boring, disgusting article and swallow them whole, chew them up, digest them. Highlight them, annotate them, put yourself in the author's shoes. Try both supporting and opposing positions after reading. Read, read, read, and read some more. Every time you successfully complete an article, reward yourself with an Oreo or whatever food reward makes you happiest. Every day you fail to read your article, eat something you hate (kale salads, bittermelon, etc).
Jokes aside (but food rewards really work at changing behavior), the best CARS testers are people who read critically on a broad range of topics on a daily basis outside of school. So become one of those people in the next 4 months.
This is my strategy for CARS when I take it this Saturday.
Before I start the section (aka click continue) take your scratch paper and mark out the times. I prefer to take 9 min per passage so I have time to go back for my marked questions. Start 1:30, 1:21, 1:12, 1:03, 0:54, 0:45, 0:36, 0:27, 0:18, last passage finished by 0:09, I have 9 minutes now for marked questions. Check the time every 2-3 questions to make sure you're on track (within +/- 2 min)
1. Read the passage. Completely. From beginning to end. Like really read. Mouth the words AS you are reading it, while you say the words in your head. Listen to yourself as you read. Earplugs make it easy to hear your inner voice. Reading it aloud in your brain will make you SLOW down and really process the content. There's plenty of time now, 10 minutes per passage + Qs. Don't rush through.
2. If you easily discerned an overarching main idea/argument or thesis/position statement, highlight it. Same with the main idea of each supporting paragraph. Any specific, emphasized detail or example put forward by the writer. You shouldn't take a long time to do this, just gut reactions.
3. Read the question. Think what your gut reaction answer would be. Don't take too long on the gut reaction (literally 5 sec), just reactionary thing. Your gut tends to know best.
4. Read the answers. Apply golden rule and cross out as soon as an answer violates the Golden rule (if any small bit is wrong, the whole thing is wrong and move on)
5. If you have more than one answer remaining, check the passage, pick an answer, move to the next question.
Do the passages in order, and the questions in order. If you spend more than a minute on a question, or if you're unsure of an answer, mark it using the testing software and MOVE ON. You'll have time to come back if you want if you did like I did and set aside time for it.
