Just took Pcat for the first time

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PrePharmVet

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Just took the pcat and did good enough on every section but reading and quantitative. if anyone has tips to increase my quantitative I would greatly appreciate it. I got a 16 in quantitative and a 10 in reading help please.

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Maybe you didn't do enough practice tests/problems? If you're having issues understanding concepts, then hitting the books+doing a lot of practice problems helps.
 
with the quantitative... its a time game (I mean thats true for all sections but quan especially)

you have to learn to do problems quick or see certain patterns before finishing the problem completely.

that means learning certain fractions and their decimal/percentage equivalents, memorizing the graphs of the sin/cos/tan, exponential equations etc. Things that will save you time from trying to work the problem out in its entirety.
 
Hey PrePharmVet,

For the quantitative section, I highly recommend doing an initial sweep through the questions and only answering the easy questions that you can complete quickly. Then, after you finish all of the quick and easy ones, go through and work on the harder questions that you know how do to. After these are complete, try working on the hardest ones that you might not know how to do. This way, even if you run out of time trying to figure out the hard ones, you still have all of the points for the easier questions. This alone will put you ahead of the other test-takers who try to chug through each question in sequence. Math was my worst section, and even after running through and doing all of the easy questions first I only got a 72 on this section, but that score is a lot better than what it would have been had I tried to do each question in order.

Have you tried using the Pearson practice tests? These helped me a lot when practicing for my PCAT. The questions they ask are very similar to the actual PCAT, and they have timers for each section that help you get a feel for how quickly the actual test progresses. I think the timer is quite useful for the reading and math sections. I've also heard that using MCAT prep books for the reading section is good practice for the PCAT, but I don't have any personal experience with this resource. I hope this helps!
 
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