Quantitative Ability Tricks and Tips

[Incitatus]

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I'm reaching out (with three days until my test) to see it anyone might be able to suggest what resources other than Dr. Collin's guide (which l did not purchase) are good for some fast and dirty tricks to the PCAT's Q.A. problems?

I've got a strong background in physics and plenty of calculus practice, and have the Kaplan self-study prepbook, but I find myself taking too much time in analyzing the practice problems, and in my practice tests, this has hurt me...

Any and all help and Input is greatly appreciated. 🙂

 

[harmonidrum]

I'm reaching out (with three days until my test) to see it anyone might be able to suggest what resources other than Dr. Collin's guide (which l did not purchase) are good for some fast and dirty tricks to the PCAT's Q.A. problems?

I've got a strong background in physics and plenty of calculus practice, and have the Kaplan self-study prepbook, but I find myself taking too much time in analyzing the practice problems, and in my practice tests, this has hurt me...

Any and all help and Input is greatly appreciated. 🙂

There is no real "shortcuts" for the quant section, other than lots of practice. I think Dr. Collins' packet does a thorough job with his practice tests, the Pearson exams are good too. The quant section is my main concern for the upcoming exam as well even though I've gone over the Collins and Pearson, it has been my lowest scoring section consistently.

 

[Brit in NC]

I'm reaching out (with three days until my test) to see it anyone might be able to suggest what resources other than Dr. Collin's guide (which l did not purchase) are good for some fast and dirty tricks to the PCAT's Q.A. problems?

I've got a strong background in physics and plenty of calculus practice, and have the Kaplan self-study prepbook, but I find myself taking too much time in analyzing the practice problems, and in my practice tests, this has hurt me...

Any and all help and Input is greatly appreciated. 🙂

I have my test tomorrow morning :S Quant is definitely where I am tripping up - i get most right, but I never finish the practice sections. I know it probably doesn't help your nerves to say it, but you'll probably be faster on the test day with all the adrenalin running through you (make sure to take a good snack to keep your blood sugar up over the break!). I did the CLEP test for Calculus, and found that whilst I struggled to finish all the practice exams I finished with time left over in the actual thing, so I am hoping the PCAT will go the same way.
Make sure you know all the rules for the exam (eg, log rules, rules for exponents, even stuff about fractions, product rule, chain rule, all that fun stuff), skip anything you don't immediately know how to tackle and come back to it later.
Kaplan kind of sucks for the quant section (study wise), though the test in the back wasn't bad (so many typing errors though! I was hung up on trying to work some out and lost half my time!), if you have a good precalc textbook everyone says go back to that and practice problems from that.

I know it's not focused for college level study, but I also recommend www.Khanacademy.org
they have a section on their site for practicing questions, look at the practice section (they have a thing called a knowledge map- all the precalc and calc stuff is towards the bottom, pick and choose from the possible exercises). If you time yourself with a visible timer you may speed up without realizing it 🙂

Ok that's all I can think of now, I hope maybe something helped! Good luck!

 

[Timbo]

I've been practicing so that I can do most Pearson practice math problems without stopping to think. I read the question, know immediately what to do, and do it. But a lot of questions STILL take me over 2 minutes to solve. Even those with little arithmetic, those that only involve simplifying some algebraic expression, have so many steps that it can take me up to 3 minutes to work out. I'm really at a loss at what to do. People say to round and estimate, but not many questions allow that either because the choices are all extremely close to one another or they're all left in fraction form with square roots.

 

[Incitatus]

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[sde780]

I ran out of time as well.

In the last 15 minutes I skipped through the calculus and complicated log problems that were left, did the easy algebra and then went back and guessed on some of them, a couple I rushed through and made educated guesses. Got an 85% in quantitative in my preliminary report.

However my composite is a 79, I sucked at chem and bio