Could use some advice on timing

[Shadowade]

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Just took the 6/19 MCAT and voided. 2 hours of sleep did me no good but that's a separate issue.

How do you guys manage timing? Even when I'm fresh I always cut it close on every section (except Psych) and feel that I'm not as efficient as I could be. Biggest problem today was trying to analyze data and keep track of trends for what happens when X protein gets phosphorylated or enzyme gets inhibited etc etc. typical MCAT stuff. I felt good about some things but had to guess on too many to feel comfortable scoring due to time.

I know people who finish with lots of time to spare on BIO/PS...what do you guys recommend to be able to process this stuff quicker? Just more timed passages?

 

[El-Rami]

Did you mark the hard passages and do them after you answered easier passages/discretes first?

When I took the AAMC Sample Test, I treated each section as a whole rather than focusing on spending x time on y passage. In other words, I said to myself "I have 90 minutes to answer all of the questions, so if I have to spend longer on some than others, that's OK." If I saw an outrageously difficult passage, I marked all of its questions and moved on. If I could answer half of the questions when there was about 45-50 minutes left, I felt like I was making OK progress. At the end, I chose to review all marked and then answered all unanswered questions before reviewing everything for any obvious mistakes if I had time to do so. I would often finish with about 5-15 minutes left on the section. Now, I am just some peon who has not taken the real thing, so take that as you will. Some people might say you should just focus on answering a passage in under x minutes no matter what, although I think it's fine to give yourself more time for harder passages as long as you manage time accordingly.

 

[FoodisGood163]

Hmm, I feel like it's different from person to person but I'll take a stab at this and hopefully I can help you out.

There are two things I do that save me time on all sections (except for CARS, but that's only because the strategy going into that section is different for me). Number one thing I do is go through the passage at a good pace, but NEVER linger on language that I don't understand. With the mcat the way it is now, you will NEVER understand every little thing they put in a passage. I find that I mainly pay attention to the hypothesis that is addressed in the passage and CORRELATIONS. I feel that as long as you understand 60 to 70% of each paragraph and all graphs and figures, you're in good shape. You will need to practice and practice to understand what to pay attention to in a passage, so don't feel worried if you don't get it off the bat.

Number two is dealing with the questions. If I read through a question and the answers and can't seem to eliminate any, I will mark quickly and skip it. At the end of the passage, I will go back to the question(s) I skipped and try to make educated eliminations and see if I can find the answer. If I STILL can't, I'll pick the best answer I can with the knowledge I have and move on. My strategy works kind of the same way with discretes too. If you don't get it right away, pick your best answer, mark, and move on. Never linger!

And that's about it. I've been able to finish consistently with 10 to 15 mins left on the chem/phys and bio/biochem sections along with 20 to 30 mins left on the psych/soc section with pretty good percentages. Feel free to pm me questions!

 

[Shadowade]

I always gave myself 8 min/passage and 1 min for discretes. If I ended up with more time due to an easy passage or question I would still keep track of that time if I needed it for difficult areas. I think I try to read the passage too in depth because I'm always worried about missing tricky wording that could change the answer to a question. Also maybe take too long to make correlations/interpret data. Thanks for the tips so far