I know all the bio material and am doing well on Kaplan bio tests but the aamc bio passages are really hard!!!!
Help on bio passages
- Thread starter John2448
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What helped me is to read the material and look at the data carefully, observe any general trends on your first glance, but dont make too much of a big deal of it and don't freak out of the passage seems totally incoherent (it's set up that way to mess with you and you can miss some really easy points that way). Highlight what you believe to be the main points and if the passages turn out to be jargon-laced and confusing, take a piece of scratch paper and see if you can summarize the key results in a few words on paper (writing things down really helps my mind process information). You should write stuff like gene1 is related to such and such result. When you look at the questions and aren't sure about the answers, go back to the passage, examine the applicable sentences/data if you aren't sure and if there are borderline options, eliminate the really obvious dud choices first. Also, another thing that helps is if you have a firm grasp over biology fundamentals.
If you haven't taken the time to get a solid content review of biology topics (check the aamcs website) I recommend doing it. Go through videos on each fundamental subject matter, for example, know the hormones and where they are produced, that mutations affect genes and dna, where the krebs cycle, etc, glycolysis take place, and how hardy-weinberg equilibrium problems work and what the five major assumptions of it are. Make flashcards too to embed the concepts and little details in your mind. You'd be see surprised how many questions you can answer without even needing to read the passage and strong content review really brought down the amount of errors I was making. Also, get examcrackers 1001 bio questions. They ask lots of little nitpicky bio questions and sometimes knowing little nitpicky details can help you understand curveballs that are thrown at you and really detail-oriented questions (sometimes if you don't know little details it can really hurt your score). I made bio my best section with these instructions.
If you haven't taken the time to get a solid content review of biology topics (check the aamcs website) I recommend doing it. Go through videos on each fundamental subject matter, for example, know the hormones and where they are produced, that mutations affect genes and dna, where the krebs cycle, etc, glycolysis take place, and how hardy-weinberg equilibrium problems work and what the five major assumptions of it are. Make flashcards too to embed the concepts and little details in your mind. You'd be see surprised how many questions you can answer without even needing to read the passage and strong content review really brought down the amount of errors I was making. Also, get examcrackers 1001 bio questions. They ask lots of little nitpicky bio questions and sometimes knowing little nitpicky details can help you understand curveballs that are thrown at you and really detail-oriented questions (sometimes if you don't know little details it can really hurt your score). I made bio my best section with these instructions.
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We can give much more specific feedback if you can pick a particular AAMC passage that you found really hard and explain how you approached it and why it was hard.
They frown on discussing particular AAMC questions in general discussion threads, so hop into:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/aamc-questions-the-whole-thread-is-spoilers.1057364/
And give me some more info and I'll see if I can help.
Doing well on kaplan isn't enough....I would say kaplan FLs and section tests are very close to real deal (took it on March 22) with verbal like passages...see if you are doing effective post game analysis. I definitely agree with the approach of mrh125 in attacking the passage....I would like to add that your reasoning will get better/more confident and you would start to look for right kinds of information in the passage if you do effective post game analysis. Go over every question correct and wrong. For the correct ones, run through the thought process of why each choice is wrong and why the correct choice is correct.. For the wrong ones, give yourself another chance to solve now not under timed conditions. Make note of this mistake and redo the Q in a week to see if you can solve it. By doing this 1) you are actively reducing your weakness 2) know what kinds of Q you are getting wrong 3) you are improving your critical thinking skills. It is very crucial that should go over the correctly answered Qs to compare your thought process with solutions.. The main idea behind post game analysis is to improve critical thinking skills.
it may not be obvious why doing effective post game analysis would help with dealing with tough aamc....but it does and it did atleast for me....you get more confident with your reasoning and that would result in you getting less freaked out.....hope it helps...
it may not be obvious why doing effective post game analysis would help with dealing with tough aamc....but it does and it did atleast for me....you get more confident with your reasoning and that would result in you getting less freaked out.....hope it helps...
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This may be obvious but after you do an aamc test, look over it very carefully and take notes of your mistakes. Literally, notes. Read those notes before attempting another test. I found that while doing the practice tests I thought they were hard but then when I checked my work the mistakes I made were always easy and resulted from overcomplicating something that was right in front of me. Sometimes putting aside all the knowledge in your head and using what is on front of you to answer will really help. A lot of times, the answers are in the graphs or in the questions if you look for them.
