MCAT practice passages.

[crestfall]

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I can only speak for berkeley review and princeton review, as those are the only materials I have done extensive passages with.

For princeton review hyperlearning, it seems like a majority of the questions are just free-standing. I can answer most of the questions with- out reading the passages. Now, I have only done organic passages and biology passages. Dont get me wrong, I mean I get questions wrong that if I would have refered back to the passage I would not have got it wrong. The only passages where I actually routinely go back to the passages are the ones where they are like "experiment 1", "experiment 2", and "experiment 3". Other than that it seems like most of the questions are just freestanding.

As for Berkeley review I have only done physical science books, gen chem and physics. This trend is not as prevalent with these books. But definitely still present. The only stuff I use from the passages is an equation if its given and the data and graphs. Other than that, which does account for a majority of the problems.. There are still a fair share of questions that can be answered with out any passage info.

Is this how the real MCAT will be? Also, the passages do give a lot of info about the background of the subject that we are sopposed to already know. Will this also be true on the mcat?

 

[Kinesio]

I once met with a Princeton Review MCAT instructor who told me that when doing physics passages on the MCAT (whether it.s practice or the real, actual MCAT), you should not spend more than 30 seconds looking over the passage. He would scan each physics passage, pick out a few key words, look at any relevant equations, and then jump into the questions. He said this technique worked for him with physics passages. I haven't heard any similary technique for gen chem, orgo, or bio.

 

[Mattabet]

Passages are pretty variable. Certainly there'll be some you absolutely need, but there will also be others that you can all but ignore on the first pass through. I've heard of people (as above) that would jump straight to the questions, if anything it will help to guide your reading of the passage. Personally, I'm a quick reader, and I liked to at least read through once before I hit the questions. Time wasn't much of a factor, and I would know where I had to jump back to in order to get the information I needed.

On the real MCAT, you're going to need to read passages, though you won't need to read them all entirely or thoroughly. So if your style is more question oriented, you can make that work to your advantage.