My Mcat is in 5 days. I'm pretty confident in myself. Except for one thing- I can never finish the Physical Sciences Section in time. I always end up with 5 minutes left and 2 passages undone. So I just do the best I can on those passages. I still have been making decent scores (my last 3 scores were a 29, 29, 30). And I do great on VB and pretty well on BS. Its just the physical sciences that trip me. I've tried the approach of doing the discretes first and that helped a lot with my timing. The last AAMC practice test I took, I only had about 1 passage that I had to guess on in the PS Section. But it's still an issue for me, and it's making me doubt myself. Any advice?
Timing Issues
- Thread starter JBtt
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Keep practicing, your speed will improve in time. But, after the test try and pick out the questions or passages that took you a lot of time and see why they did.
I tend to have more of an issue with Physics problems- they take me a bit longer. But other than that, it's just a general issue with timing on all the passages. There's no specific topic or anything that slows me down in particular.
one thing that I've noticed about my own timing issues is that I spend too much time on calculation based questions where I can use my intuitions and test taking skills such as elimination in order to come up with the right answer....
so what Im trying to say is that, just because you just numbers on question, it doesn't mean that you really have to calculate anything, try to eliminate some answer choices based your background information.
so what Im trying to say is that, just because you just numbers on question, it doesn't mean that you really have to calculate anything, try to eliminate some answer choices based your background information.
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Yeah definitely keep an eye on the clock. If you're spending forever on a calculation... it's probably best to move on.
general tips:
-don't get caught up in passages and/or problems
-try to use logic to eliminate extreme answer choices (like Jason 12 said); this will at least improve your chances of guessing the correct answer
-if there are any long/complicated equations you have trouble remembering, write them down at the top of your scratch paper as soon as you get it.. that way you have it for reference later and don't have to spend time recalling it
-if a passage introduces an equation, make note of what the equation is used for (ex. to find the velocity in a particular scenario), but don't worry about fully understanding it or what all the variables mean (yet). Only worry about this if you're asked about it in a question (doesn't always happen).
-look through old practice tests/passages and look for patterns -- example: 'ok, a few problems had me link electric forces and torque together, I should get used to doing this in case I need to make this connection again in the future'
Good luck
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