Originally posted by Cerberus
Anybody got advice on overcoming the amoral, godless, heathen, infernal, trickery of the harder MCAT questions? Advice on that whole "being a good test taker" thing would be appreciated🙂
quick, "my finals just finished," (inebriated) advice:
-in any questions that offer two directly opposing answers, the anser is usually one of the opposing choices
-in any questions that offer absolute answers (categorized by "always" "never" or "categorically") the correct answer is most often not those answers
-in any questions at the beginning of a group after a passage, don't re-evaluate your initial knee-jerk reaction
-in any questions at the end of a group after a passage, thouroughly re-evaluate your knee-jerk reaction
-if you dont know a rule/equation/law, use direct relations (ie if you feel a factor would detract from the requested total, take it to the -1 power (divide by it), if you feel a factor would increase the requested total, take it to the 1 power)
-if you have no idea hat's going on, rely on units; see what you need to do to convert units given to units required and make the necessary conversions
-trick questions can generally be identified and dealt with by out-of-context simplicity (for example, if you've just gotten to the last problem in a very hard passage and it seems ridiculously easy, be very very cautious)
-beware the passage that has 7 questions, 6 of which were plug-n-chug or rooted in very basal knowledge. In other words, be wary of that #7. the reason for this is intuitive: the MCAT is designed to differentiate applicants, not lump them together; hence a problem set of low difficulty has very little value- it will only be included in the test if it can set a boundry between aware, informed takers and those coasting through, hence one hard (very hard) question is to be expected, especially on the passages where all the other questions are easy.
-on a bit more sublime level: realize that all questions on this dreaded test were written by human beings looking to create a test not based in simple memorization; this means that often the answer that seems least likely if you just read through the answer list (especially at the end of a hard section) will be the correct answer in an attempt to create a "trick" question at the end of a section of questions related to a passage or at the end of a section of questions that are "not related to a passage"
*** most importantly, remember its just a test. its one step in your life, not the culmination of it***
hope i helped,
time for a my favorite toast:
"to what comes next"
🙂
