Question for those getting high 20's and 30's on Practice MCAT

[thomasfx10]

My questions is regarding passage triage and mapping. Do you passage triage and/or map?

Kaplan says do the discreets first, then hit the passages (PS & BS). Then skim the passages doing the easy ones first then saving the hardest last.

Their thoughts are if you get hung up on hard passage, you could use that time to get the easier ones done ...

For Mapping ... Map out passage (Very Briefly) ... Look at questions first (PS & BS Only)

Just wondering how the 30+ elite are nailing their passages ...

Thanks!

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[flodhi1]

My questions is regarding passage triage and mapping. Do you passage triage and/or map?

Kaplan says do the discreets first, then hit the passages (PS & BS). Then skim the passages doing the easy ones first then saving the hardest last.

Their thoughts are if you get hung up on hard passage, you could use that time to get the easier ones done ...

For Mapping ... Map out passage (Very Briefly) ... Look at questions first (PS & BS Only)

Just wondering how the 30+ elite are nailing their passages ...

Thanks!

I wouldn't consider myself a 30+ elite but all of my practice exams have been > 29 with highest of 34. I did use the technique of doing the discrete questions first but triaging (as in jumping around from easy to easy to hard) can be a huge waste of time especially if you're already struggling with time. What I do is I try to finish the discrete questions within a very rapid pace. usually finish all 13 discretes in about hmm 6-7 minutes? then I spend those extra 5 minutes just slowly going through the passages one by one. If i end up hitting the harder passages I just spend more time on it (spend like 10 minutes instead of regular 7 and half minutes for the really tough ones). It's been working out pretty okay for me, I haven't reached my mid 30s goal yet but am seeing slight improvements.
Mapping for the sciences CAN work especially when I draw diagrams of huge mechanism plots in the passages. Mapping for the VR is a huge waste of time since you don't have time to be doing all that Bull. The VR passages are a lot huger than PS and BS passages so don't even try wasting your life mapping them. Highlighting seems to be helping me the most with VR and mini-maps (i'm talking mostly diagrams and very brief wording) for the BS and PS. Last thing you want to do is run out of time mapping and start panicking Good luck

 

[thomasfx10]

Thanks for the post. I was mapping VR and did find myself running out of time. I will try sticking to highlighting.

 

[startoverat40]

i do the discretes first. on AAMC Practices I can do them in about 10 minutes, but on Kaplan FL it takes 3 to 5 minutes longer. i have to try to get those done faster on the MCAT.

so far i haven't had to jump around the passages. i just push through and try to finish them in time. if i were to really get stuck on a question or a passage, i would skip it and hopefully have time to come back to it later. don't leave it unanswered though, just pick a letter and mark the question.

i don't look at the questions before reading the passage, i think it would be a waste of time. if however i'm running out of time at the end with 1 passage to go, i go through the questions and try to answer them without the passage. if i need a piece of info from the passage, then i try to fish for it quickly. this hasn't happened to me on the AAMC practices, but on the Kaplan FL, cause they're harder and i get slowed down.


on VR i don't do the kaplan passage mapping cause it slows me down too much. i'm not a super fast reader, so i don't have much time for writing out summaries. i try to remember the passage long enough to ansewr the questions. i highlight names of people and names of theories or key points. try not to highlight more than a couple things per paragraph, otherwise you'll have too much and won't be able to find anything anyway. i don't look at the questions before the passage. i just read the passage and try to understand as much as possible. i try to finish reading each passage in 4 to 5 minutes, with 3 to 4 minutes left to answer qeustions.

 

[Le Boudin]

I've been averaging ~38 on the AAMC FL's and I have to say I never try to skip around or anything. That jsut seems like a greater waste of time.

Also, I often don't even read the passages, you can look back for key words and "Reaction 2" or whatever if the Q calls for it, but most of the passage content isn't even covered in teh Q's anyway.

I just did AAMC #9 and there was a passage where they had a long "Experiment 2" section complete with several chemical reactions and paragraphs of detail--not a single mention of it in the Q's.

 

[ridethecliche]

Why do you guys do the discrete questions first?

Asking out of curiosity.

Thanks!

 

[SN2ed]

There are tons of posts in the 30+ thread that address your questions.

 

[startoverat40]

Why do you guys do the discrete questions first?

Asking out of curiosity.

Thanks!

because all questions are worth 1 point, so get all the points you can from the discretes, then move on to the passages. passages can slow you down, so if you are running out of time, and you have 1 passage and the last set of discretes still left to do, you will miss a lot of points. but if you already did all the discretes and then lost time on the passages, at the end you might just have 1 passage left to do, which you might manage to answer the questions without the passage or by just skimming it.

 

[skiing]

I averaged a 38 on my practices.. I don't map any of my passages - I think thats a confusing waste of time.

For verbal, I have an okay score of 10-12 on my tests. There are two types of questions: specific and general quesitons. Specific quesitons require specific knowledge of passage details. General questions are inferences or themes from the big picture/meaning of the passage.

So I start by prereading the questions and marking (in my head) questions that require me to "plug and chug" passage information so I can highlight that information or find it in the passage during my first read through (eg a question such as "the author provides the most support for which of the following" requires you to search out each of the following and mark them. A questions such as "the passage mentions all of the following except: I. Beans II. Rice III. Carrots" will require me to be on the look out for the words beans/rice/carrots). At the end all the question stems usually have the same theme to them, so I don't necessarily have to memorize 2-3 questions, just 2-3 key concepts to look out for and highlight. Then I read the entir epassage quickly for MEANING. Along the way I might stopg or going slowly to answer the questions I marked, or just highlight the key things I was on the look out for. Now, having finished the passage in one read, I can easily answer the big picture questions, and I know where the important specific things are in the passage, so I can easily find them and go back to them.

For bio, I just read for meaning. If you understand what they're trying to say and the experiment, then it shouldn't be too hard. I think practice makes perfect - I've done over 100 verbal passages (timed) and taken all the FLs twice, and I can definitely say that my memory and ease of understanding has gone up a lot. It's all practice. I started out getting 8's on my BS, now I'm getting 12-14's.

Orgo is all mechanisms - if you know mechanisms, you don't need to know anything else. All orgo passages come down to "what is going on in this reaction" and figuring out where electrons are being pushed, then answering the questions from that. My friend got a 15 on BS and he said he never reads orgo passage, he just looks at mechanisms. I'm more or less the same, although I do read the words just to get an idea of whats going on in case theres a "context" question.

For PS, again I just read the passage and answer the problems. If you know your concepts well, you should be able to easily figure out "whats going on" and the "big picture" and "meaning" of the passage. Usually they describe some sort of mechanism or some application of a basic concept you should already know well (titrations, redox reactoins, etc).