question for those of you who took MCAT

[smileman]

hi. as i was studying for the mcat science passage, it seem that most of the question depend one way or another to outside knowledge and it can be answer without reading the passage itself...how many of you felt this way too????

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[Patiently Waiting]

"Some" of the questions can be definitely answered without reading the passages, but many ask you to incorporate your knowledge with the info provided in the passages. One reason why excelling on MCATs requires a strong reading skill.

 

[BUmiken12]

There was a big thing about not reading the PS passages and people doing very well, but I tried it and it didn't work for me. I think most of us that have taken it can say that the passages must be read for the BS because aspects of the experiments, results, etc., but there are those who didn't read the PS passages and did well. I don't know how they did it though; the passage seemed imperative to me.

 

[kam730]

I would recommend at least skimming the passages. Although it may be possible to answer a particular question w/o reading, the answer might be plainly stated in the passage and much time and energy would be saved from just going ahead and reading it. Everyone has a different system so take as many practice exams as possible and find what works best for you. Good luck.

 

[Sweet Tea]

hmmm-- I had the opposite experience with the PS. I think I only had to calculate something twice on the actual MCAT-- all the other answers were found in the passage (obviously, i'm not talking about the discrete questions). Great news for me b/c VR was definetly my strong point!!

 

[laviddee]

here's what i think for what it's worth...

this might be the most important exam in your life up to this point. you're given a passage with questions that follow the passage. are you seriously going to pay $180, study your butt off, and not even read the passage? that's a dangerous game to play- and more than likely you'll be the one starting a thread titled, "those of you with less than a 24mcat..." (nothing against those under a 24- but the point is that it's not a score any of us want to see on the mcat)

sure you could probably get a decent score if you wanted to be cool and not read the passage. but man, you have the allotted time to read and answer-- why be lazy and DEFINITELY miss something. i promise you this, if you don't read the passage, you will miss answers you shouldn't.

don't worry about new ways to beat the exam. work with what's given to you, and you will kick the living daylights out of that exam.

is my sargeant slaughter tough attitude fooling anyone?
dave

 

[DW]

well, i think a better way of approaching this debate is what are the questions associated with said passage. Say if the passage is some long rant about elements on the moon, but a question is the how much will be left of element X after blank period of time? I mean, i hope none of use who have come this far need to read a passage to figure out half lives, just find the table you're looking for and move right along.

I say look at the questions first, then the tables/charts/reactions, to see how intensely you'll have to read the passage. If its dealing with Le Chatelier's principles in the Haber process, you can figure that out easy. If its dealing with intracellular cytokine expression levels in type one versus type two immune reactions, unless you work in a immunoregulatory lab, you might wanna go back and dig out some info from the passage.

 

[coolwaters]

I was my experience that it is definitely worthwhile to read the passages - in BOTH bio and phys sci. all the way through, before answering questions ( unless you only have a couple minutes to go at the end of the test). One way I was able to relax when I spent time reading the passages was to tell myself I had 2 minutes just to look at the passage before I even glanced at the questions. Especially in phys. science this was helpful. You get 100 minutes, so 2 min/psg plus one minute per question = 99 minutes. Knowing you're not "wasting precious time", but rather spending a reasonable amount of time - time that you have enough of, might help you to concentrate on the passage, extraction the info you need, and move on to the questions in an efficient manner. This leaves you with enough time to revisit the passage later as you're answering questions as well.

That's my take on it - of course it all depends on you and what works best for you. We're all different in this respect.