Tips from anyone?

[heisenberg308NA]

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Hello everyone! I just took the PCAT for the first time the other day. After months of being mega worried about the bio and chem sections, I did waaaay better in these particular sections than the others (76 and 82 respectively). Relatively, these scores may not be the best but for now I am satisfied with them.

Anyways, I did not take nearly enough time preparing for the reading comprehension or quantitative ability sections. I've always been good at the reading comprehension portions of standardized tests throughout secondary school, and I've never had any trouble with any type of arithmetic. However, I'm not the fastest worker, and I noticed at the end of these sections I still had at least 10-12 unanswered questions. It was super deflating to see my scores so low in these sections when I knew the material, all because of my work rate!

TL;DR: does anyone have any tips to be more efficient on these sections (quantitative ability and reading comp)?? I'm fairly confident with the material, it's just my rate of work that needs improvement. I've been reading articles from TIME and some news stations but I'm not sure how much this would help me w/ actually answering questions for the reading part. And as for the QA section goes, all I could think of doing is working out problems against a clock. Any tips at all would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Thestrugglez]

*Copied from my comment under another post, with additional content*

TPR MCAT Verbal passages really prepare you for the RC section. Don't get too caught up with the RC strategies. Do whatever works best for you.
I practiced a few of those (a while back) and got a 97 on my CR (my highest score along with QA).

When doing practice passages on paper, try to do an 8 question passage in <8 min, since it takes longer on the computer to scroll through and whatnot. This will give you sufficient time to finish the test. Whenever you miss a question, make sure you understand why your reasoning was wrong, whether it's because your reasoning is different from the author or whether you were misguided by deceptive answers. Whenever you get a question that you can't figure out due to 2+ answers that are both seemingly correct, pick the less extreme one and move on so that you don't waste too much time.

***If after all that you still struggle to finish the section in time, pick the most difficult passage and just ignore it. Fill in random answers and come back to it if you have time at the end.

Additional tips that may help with those who struggle with time:

1. When running low on time, make sure you at least answer the questions that ask you "What is the tone in paragraph X" or "Which of the following words most likely represents the meaning of "_____" in paragraph X." since these questions do not require you to read the whole passage and merely a paragraph.

 

[Mimrose]

For math, I think the best thing to do is to try and speed up how quickly you can do the problems.
How I went about it is first sweep through, I only did the problems that I knew immediately or that were very simple problems that I could solve within 30 seconds.
Second sweep through, I began working on the longer problems that I knew how to do.
Third sweep, I did the hardest the problems that I was kinda unsure about but had time to try them, and then when I had like 5 minutes left I quickly checked over my work.
Ended with a 97% so I think making sure you do all the ones you know correctly and then estimating with your gut on the hardest ones is the way to go! Don't forget there are 8 experimental questions mixed in with them that don't count!

For RC, I would read different passages and from different sources. I borrowed my friend's MCAT book and read passages there and it helped me get better at reading, although I've always been a fast reader so it was mainly the difficult questions that slowed me down.