Reading comprehension and writing portions

[WSUWarrior012]

If you guys could give me your best advice, what do you suggest is the optimal way to prepare yourself for the reading comprehension and writing portions?

I am more concerned about the writing portion than reading comprehension because they can give you literally ANY health related topic. For one of my Kaplan practice tests, the writing prompt they gave me was "Discuss a probable solution to the epidemic of AIDS of West Africa." I know a little bit about the physiology of the AIDS virus, but I don't know what kind of answer they would look for. Would writing your knowledge about biological facts of the topic help you or hurt you? For example, for the prompt example I just stated, if I said some facts along the line of "The AIDS virus is a ssRNA virus that inserts into the host DNA by reverse transcriptase and this virus replicates during DNA replication of the host DNA." Would this be something that they would look for? Your knowledge of biological or chemical facts or do they want something more broad than that?

As far as reading comprehension goes, what would be the best course of action to prepare for that? Would just doing a bunch of practice reading comprehension problems from online and PCAT prep books be sufficient enough to prepare for it or should I take other action as well?

Thank You

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[WSUWarrior012]

Anybody lol

 

[87asu]

.

 

[bmclinn]

For the essay they don't care about your specific knowledge, especially scientific because that's what other sections test. They want to see you support your solution/argument, and other general writing strategies (thesis, topic sentences, etc). It's more about organization, not content.

 

[WSUWarrior012]

They want a solution to the problem, and what you stated above does not address an issue. Also just to add to the above statement, intergrase introduces a newly replicated viral dna double helix into the host dna. Reverse transcriptase is only used to produce a viral dna copy from the viral rna. Giving information that is not correct is an easy way to lose points when all they want is a creative solution.

I thought that HIV starts off as a ssRNA then uses reverse transcriptase to convert to DNA then it binds to the host DNA. Ahh looks like I need to touch up on that. But anyway, thank you for your feedback that gives me a bit more of an idea of what to base my writing around.

 

[WSUWarrior012]

For the essay they don't care about your specific knowledge, especially scientific because that's what other sections test. They want to see you support your solution/argument, and other general writing strategies (thesis, topic sentences, etc). It's more about organization, not content.

Yeah I had a feeling. The only thing I'm worried about is getting a topic that I have no familiarity with!