Questions first THEN Passage.

[Parthenon89]

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I've been practicing from the EK Biology 1001 book. And i've started to notice that a few questions from each passage do not even require passage-reading.

So i've been glancing over questions quickly before reading the passages and if i see a question that i can answer i go for it. So far its working out pretty well.

Does anyone else use this strategy? If so, hows it working out for you.

And to those who suggest NOT doing this, why so?

 

[sepho]

It's just the way EK 1001 is written. Though they come with passages, most of the questions are only designed to test your content knowledge. I don't think the real MCAT will be that way.

 

[IkeBoy18]

The passages r so long now..especially bio.. On the real mcat that I kept running out of time because i would scour the passages thoroughly b4 I would hit the questions thinking I'd be wasting time if I get 2 the questions and have to keep going back to the passage.. Or miss a question because the answer is blatantly in the passage and I skipped it over thinking I knew it all.. I would probably suggest glancing at the questions first 2 see how much u really need the passage..then go from there.. Ofcourse this advice is in lieu of not having any scores yet (june 18 mcater) so take it with a grain of salt and add it 2 the rest of your collection of mcat regalia... 🙂

 

[muhali3]

You'll have to read the passage anyways. Even if you just have to skim it, read it first. If you start looking for non-passage questions first, you'll waste time looking through each question and seeing if it's not passage-based. After you do that, you'll need to use the passage for the other questions regardless, and it just ultimately wastes more time. The first time you go through the passage, you don't need to read intensely, just know where the important information is so you can go back quickly when a passage-based question comes up.

 

[rockaction]

It's risky to answer questions before reading the passage. What if something works a certain way normally, but works a different way in the conditions described in the passage? What if you know a formula for the phenomenon, but the passage provides a different one for a different situation?

Always look at the questions in the context of the passage. If you get an honest to god stand-alone, you'll know after you read the passage and be able to work it accordingly. It's not like you'd save any time by skipping the passage and heading straight into the questions.

On the real MCAT these days, the sciences are getting a lot more reliant on the passage information. So that concretes this need even further to look at the questions in the context of the passage.