Hi,
First of all, thank you for posting the strategies for CARS. I read through your post, and it was really good and I am on Day 9 right now. I am roughly a month and half away from my actual MCAT test, but I just have some burning questions here that I really need to ask.
First is about timing/pacing. I know it was very important. I actually took the MCAT once before and unfortunately I got a 5
. Indeed, pacing was the thing that I did not pay attention to. When I took my old MCAT, I remember I only had 15 minutes left when I still had 3 passages to do
. What I did was to take 7 minutes to spring through 2 of them and completely guessed for all 6 questions of the last passage. As you know, that didn't end so well. On your post you said we should spend 9 minutes for the 5 questions passage, 10.5 minutes for 6 questions and 12 for 7 questions. I don't really know the structure of the new MCAT verbal, but one thing I am afraid is that is that going to go over the time limit for the new one? I know for the old MCAT verbal, that timing will go over time limit for sure. So what I did was that I give myself 7 minutes for the 5 questions passage, 8 minutes for 6 questions and 10 for 7 questions. However, my accuracy is horrible. I can finish them on time but I can only get 2/5 right or 2/6 right... If I do the passages based on your timing, the accuracy is pretty decent. However, I calculated the timing based on the actual full length test. The practice test 1 has 5 passages contain 5 questions and 4 passages contain 7 questions. Based on the timing you suggested, the total time it is going to take will be 93 minutes, which will be a little over the time limit. I would like to know what I should do with the timing at this point? The timing I use right now is 9 minutes for 5 questions passage, 10 minutes for 6 questions and 11 for 7 questions. This timing works the best for me at this point. However, I am still constantly getting 8 or 9. So any suggestions for the timing? Should I stick with my current one or still use the one that you suggested? Also, should I try to go faster in my following practice?
Second is about the strategies you teaching in each day's post. Of course, they are all great strategies. However, in each day's assignment, you suggest us to do 2 passages (so far) under timed condition. I would like to know what exercise do you suggest to incorporate the strategies you teach to our everyday practices? If you could answer my questions I will really appreciate it!
Best,
Chris
@christopher_2520 - Thanks for writing and I'm sorry it's taken us so long to get to it. We've been short staffed as of late and I've been traveling. To get to your questions, I'll outline our timing strategy below using an excerpt from a recent article we wrote:
"Timing and pacing are the two biggest ingredients in a top-tier CARS score. It doesn’t really matter how well you read, analyze, or answer questions if your timing is off. If you have to rush through the last two or three passages, it will be exceedingly difficult if not near impossible to score in the 128+ range. Thus, we believe that from day one of your CARS preparations, you have to first and foremost be focused on your timing. So what does this mean? 1.)
Always do your practice passages under timed conditions. How well you can answer an untimed passage is of little value in preparing you for the CARS section. The only thing it succeeds in doing is over-inflating your confidence. 2.) Use the correct timing intervals when doing practice passages. Some people think, “Well, there are nine passages, and since there are ninety minutes for the section, I have ten minutes to spend on each passage.” This is a
very bad idea because it does not allow you to build your CARS pacing intuition.
CARS passages have either 5, 6, or 7 questions associated with them. Let’s assume you give yourself 4 minutes to read each passage. With 10 minutes total per passage, this leaves 6 minutes for answering questions. For a five question passage, you can spend 72 seconds on each question (6 minutes/ 5 questions) and still be on track to finish the test on time. But for a six question passage, you only have 60 seconds (6 minutes/6 questions). Even worse, for a seven question passage, you have just 51 seconds (6 minutes/7 questions).
(4 minutes per passage x 9 passages = 36 minutes for reading passages.)
Hopefully, it’s clear how confusing this can be if you treat each passage the same. If you answered all of the questions on the CARS at a 5 question passage rate (36 minutes for reading passages + 63.5 minutes for answering questions), it would take you 99.5 minutes to complete the test, 9 minutes over what you’re given. In contrast, if you answered all of the questions on the CARS at a 7 question passage rate (36 minutes for reading passages + 45 minutes for answering questions) it would take you only 81 minutes to complete the test, leaving 9 minutes on the table that you could have used to improve your score. We’re going through all of this to show how important it is that you answer questions at the correct pace. A one size fit all approach to timing does not work.
90 minutes total for the CARS section – 36 minutes for reading passages = 54 minutes for answering questions. This breaks down to a little over a minute per question. Thus,
For a passage with 5 questions, (4 minutes for reading the passage + 5 minutes for questions) give yourself 9 Minutes
For a passage with 6 questions (4 minutes for reading the passage + 6.5 minutes for questions) give yourself 10.5 Minutes
For a passage with 7 questions (4 minutes for reading the passage + 8 minutes for questions) give yourself 12 Minutes"
The timing we recommend is to be used during your first weeks of doing practice passages. Overtime, you won't want to be thinking about how much time you're spending on a passage, but instead build up a pacing intuition. Some passages are harder on the CARS than others, and come test day, you're going to want to spend more time on the harder passages than the easier ones. It's possible you'll spend 12 minutes on a hard 5 question passage and only 9 minutes on a 7 question passage. 8.5 minutes being rounded to 9 minutes is a difference of 30 seconds, 10.2 to 10.5 is a difference of 12 seconds, and 11.9 minutes is a difference of 10 seconds. These aren't that big of a deal early on in your practice (30 seconds extra spread over 5 questions is only 6 seconds). Most people will really struggle at the beginning to finish passages within these time limits. That's why we set them as training parameters. When you're easily finishing passages within these limits, you won't need the limits any more and will be able to decide for yourself how much time you want to spend based on the difficulty of the passage. We talk about this on Day 25, that once you get to taking full-length practice tests, you shouldn't be worrying about the timing in terms of questions per minutes. Instead, focus on difficulty and timing.
In terms of practice, we recommend a stair step approach to increasing how many passages you do a day to build stamina. You may need to increase the number of passages you do per day if your test date is closer. Maybe try taking 3 or 4. We see these passages at the workshop where you can try applying these strategies. Best of luck and let us know how we can help!
