What is your strategy?

[lmladdno84]

Looking for any tips/suggestions...

Chem/Phys: Discretes first. Go back to first passage, and work from there. I skip any question that includes #'s in the answer choices to save for last.

CARS: Read the first couple of sentences to try and gauge the subject matter/difficulty. I'll then decide now/later.

BIO: Discretes first, go back to passage 1.

Psych/Soc: Discretes first, go back to passage 1.

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[OrdinaryDO]

Seems like you are following the strategy given by prep companies, but hey, if that works for you then go for it!

However, I think it is a waste of time skipping through all of the questions just to answer 8 or 10 discrete questions near the middle and end of a 59 question exam section. I went in order, with the exception of CARS, which I did skip a harder passage to save for last.

 

[Fedekz]

You'll waste a lot of time skipping through the passages to find the FSQ. Just power through the exam, most people find themselves short of time to begin with

 

[Dreamstoo]

I would never recommend people to go through discretes first especially on this new test and the way it's formatted.
C/P- I usually never had trouble with timing on this section. I finish usually with 5-10 minutes to spare. Sometimes I will skip heavy conceptual passages for calculation heavy passages.
CARS- decide now/later. So I remember hearing this in my TPR course. When I stopped ranking now/later/killer, I started doing a lot better. If I realize it's absolutely absurd, I would chose all C for the answer choices and mark them. Then move on. Although this happened far more often on TPR CARs then any AAMC passages. Almost every CARs test I've done for TPR, I had a killer passage.
B/Biochem- I weirdly enough have trouble with timing on this section. I honestly believe I could score within my target range (which I'm sadly not doing yet) because of the speed I read passages and how I often feel rushed answering some questions because of my slow speed and apparently lack of knowledge at times.
Psych/Soc- I usually finish with about 8-12 minutes to spare. Some of the TPR Psych/Soc were far more in depth/complicated then the AAMC FL. I didn't do so well on the AAMC FL Psych/Soc but I was mostly distracted by my poor B/Biochem section. Fatigue may have played a factor, going over the exam today.

 

[El-Rami]

You'll waste a lot of time skipping through the passages to find the FSQ. Just power through the exam, most people find themselves short of time to begin with

I agree. The strategy of skipping to FSQs never made sense to me, especially with the new exam format (1 question/screen). What I do is mark the obviously difficult passages as I come across them and come back to them when I finish the other content. I see FSQs as something that can help make up for any time spent on a harder passage because I gauge my progress by number of questions answered in a certain amount of time; FSQs are normally easy enough to be answered in well under a minute. If I see a ridiculous FSQ that would require too much time, I make an educated guess and mark it before moving on. If I can't figure it out through POE, then I just choose a Designated Guessing Letter.

Hard passages take longer than easier ones, so I don't really understand the point of allotting only 10 minutes per passage no matter what.

 

[moesman777]

I personally don't do the discrete questions first because a) it saves time to start from the beginning and just go through, its not like you're gonna skip questions entirely, and b) they act as a nice break from the passage based questions when they are dispersed throughout the science sections.