How to study the AAMC Question packs?

[arc5005]

Pretty simple. How should I approach the question packs? They are 120 passage based questions.

Should I sit down and do 1 whole question pack at once - 120 questions in one sitting? Should I approach these passages timed?

Or perhaps just do a couple passages at a time & timed? and then review it afterwards?

Using this:

Non-CARS
4 question passages: 6.5 minutes allowed
5 question passages: 8 minutes allowed
6 question passages: 9.5 minutes allowed

CARS:
5 question passages: 8.5 minutes allowed
6 question passages: 10 minutes allowed
7 question passages: 11.5 minutes allowed

How to Pace Yourself on the MCAT



also...has anyone actually used this strategy????

"CARS Pacing Strategy: Guess For 1 Passage
You do not necessarily need to complete all nine passages to get a competitive score on MCAT CARS . Many people will maximize their score by randomly guessing on at least one passage and focusing on getting a high percentage of the rest of the questions correct.

Also, keep in mind that there is no guessing penalty. Never leave a question blank. Even with a random guess, you have a 25 percent chance of getting those questions right.

To complete all nine CARS passages, you have about ten minutes per passage. To complete eight of the nine, you have about 11 minutes per passage."

I didnt have a problem with time/completing the CARS section for FL1 & FL2 (scored 123 and 129 respectively)... so not exactly sure how I feel about their suggestion for the CARS pacing strategy.

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[pms_testosterone]

If you didn't run out of time, no need to use a pacing strategy!
I would just do a question pack in one sitting, closed book, then review the answers afterwards (or the next day). However, it doesn't matter too much, as your score on the question packs can't reliably be used to predict your MCAT score. It's just important that you understand the questions.

 

[NecrotizingFasciitis]

For the non-cars, work through the questions in chunks. Afterwards, spend a solid block of time studying why you got answers right or wrong.

Reviewing & studying correct & incorrect answers is what will increase your score - not busting through hundreds of questions.

If you can get through all their question packs doing this, you'll do well.

IMO save the timing practice for FL's. Conceptualization is more important with the qpacks.

 

[NextStepTutor_1]

Hi @arc5005 -

I agree w/ other posters about approaching the QPacks by focusing on understanding and that if your timing isn't broke, don't fix it.

For some context on the passage-skipping strategy...the short answer is that I don't generally endorse it, but it may work for a limited subset of students. (Interestingly, the pre-2015 MCAT gave you less time per passage, so I think that advice may have made more sense in that context).

The rationale underlying this strategy is that the relationship between "time invested" and "% performance on a passage" isn't linear in general -- if you try to push your speed past a certain threshold, your accuracy will just collapse. (Imagine trying to do a passage in 3 minutes -- your performance probably would not be distinguishable from guessing). So, imagine that your "critical point" lies right in between the average of 10 min per passage that you get if you do all passages and the average of 11.25 minutes that you get if you do 8 of the 9 passages. So if you employ the passage-skipping strategy and get 90% right on the passages you do + 25% on the passage you don't (rounding up to an average of 6 questions per passage), you'd get about 44-45 questions right. If "rushing" to do all of the passages reduces your accuracy to 75% (which is still much better than guessing), you'd get about 40 questions right. The issue here is that there are a lot of "ifs" in that chain of reasoning, and it's often preferable to tackle timing problems by improving efficiency rather than jumping right into making tradeoffs like that. That said, I hope this explanation clarifies where that strategy is coming from!