- Today, we're gonna discuss strategies for tackling the MCAT CARS section, also known as the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills section. Many students find the CARS section to be the hardest section of the MCAT. Additionally, many students
will score very highly in the science sections only
to have their overall score dragged down by a low CARS score. Worse, this is totally avoidable if you approach your
CARS prep the right way. (mechanical whirring)
(keyboard clacking) I'm Vikram Shaw, MCAT
expert and 528 MCAT scorer. In this video, we will go
over a general overview of the MCAT CARS section plus nine different
passage study strategies you can use to maximize your score. I'll teach you step-by-step
how to approach difficult CARS passages, how to change up your MCAT CARS strategy if you don't see improvement, and how to review your practice passages to get the most out of your practice. Let's get started. What does the CARS section
of the MCAT look like? The MCAT CARS section is designed to test your
reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. The MCAT CARS contains a
slightly different format than the Chemistry/Physics,
Biology/Biochemistry, and Psychology/Sociology
sections of the exam. The other sections
contain 59 questions each which you must complete in 95 minutes. On the CARS section, you have 90 minutes to answer 53 questions
based on 10 passages. Another big difference is that there are no standalone questions on the CARS section of the exam. According to the MCAT test
developers at the AAMC, 50% of CARS passages
will be humanities-based while the other 50% come
from the social sciences. This does not mean you have
to remember history facts that you might have learned in college. In fact, you won't be required to bring in any outside information to
score well on the CARS section. Humanities passages may include
topics such as literature, art, dance, ethics, popular culture, and theater, among others. Social sciences, on the other hand, includes passages on
topics such economics, education, history,
geography, political science, psychology, and sociology. The AAMC, however, is not
testing your knowledge about a particular subject, but rather your ability to reason through an author's argument
and answer questions about a passage in a short period of time. Now that we've covered
the general overview of the MCAT CARS section, let's dive into nine study strategies you can try in order to
improve your CARS score. Note that you may have to
try different strategies or even a combination of these strategies before you find something
that actually works. MCAT CARS Strategy Number
One: focus on the main idea. The AAMC likes to
introduce complex passages with several ideas. For example, a passage may
give us the author's opinion, the opinion of someone who
agrees with the author, and the opinion of someone
who disagrees with the author. In this strategy, write
down the big picture points from each paragraph on the sheet of paper provided to you during the exam. You should use symbols,
arrows, or shorthand notation in order to jot down this
main idea more quickly. Very few people end up referring back to the passage outline
when they answer questions, but the goal of the strategy
is to encourage active reading. In other words, if you know that you have
to write something down at the end of the
paragraph you are reading, you will try to synthesize the information as you move through it and
weed out the unnecessary info. A common pitfall of this
strategy is that students spend too much time writing things down. Remember, the process
of outlining the passage should not take so much
time that it prevents you from having enough time to
answer the passage's questions. Whether or not you decide to outline each paragraph of the passage, you should spend some time
at the end of the passage doing two things: identify
both the main idea and the tone of the passage. This is the most important
step of this strategy. To identify the author's
main idea, ask yourself, "What is the takeaway point
from this entire passage?" To identify the author's
tone, ask yourself, "How does the author feel "about the subject
discussed in the passage?" If you're able to identify the main idea and tone successfully, you will
be able to correctly answer questions on the MCAT CARS section. MCAT CARS Strategy Number Two:
predict the next paragraph. In this strategy, you start by
reading the first paragraph. Then, before reading the second paragraph, you make an educated guess about what the next paragraph
is going to be about. For example, if the first paragraph introduced a famous Greek poet, the second paragraph might introduce another famous Greek poet, talk about an example of the poet's works, or criticize the poet's work. The important part of the strategy is not making the right prediction, but it is rather
recognizing whether or not your prediction was right. Let's look at the difference
between those two. The first is a guess while the second tests
your reading comprehension. By working through passages
using this exercise, you will find yourself grasping the author's trail of logic more easily, which will help you
answer both big picture and detail-oriented questions. If you find yourself having trouble sticking to the strategy,
cover up the next paragraph with a piece of paper to prevent peeking. MCAT CARS Strategy Number
Three: classify each sentence. MCAT CARS passages are often confusing as several ideas may be introduced and the author's argument
might be hard to follow. This strategy helps you
to decode these passages that the CARS section
likes to throw at you. In this strategy, you classify each sentence
of a paragraph as: a topic sentence, the sentence introducing the
main idea of the paragraph; an example, a sentence
that supports the main idea of the paragraph with concrete evidence; an explanation, a sentence
that supports the main idea of the paragraph without necessarily having concrete evidence; a side note, something
related to the main idea of the paragraph, but not essential; a new idea, CARS passages often
introduce competing ideas, and this is a new idea within a paragraph; extra information, something
that is not necessary to the main idea of the paragraph. Once you start classifying
sentences this way, you'll be able to wade
through the murky waters of CARS passages to find
the important information needed to answer questions. Try this strategy on
a few untimed passages to get a feel for its use. It doesn't have to be a
strategy that you always use, but it is a helpful
exercise to gain perspective on the anatomy of CARS passages, especially if you are in a rut or score plateau for the CARS section. MCAT CARS Strategy Number
Four: finish passages quickly. A lot of students notice that they do the best on the CARS passages
at the end of the section when they've almost run out of time. That seems counterintuitive, but there's an explanation for this. Under extreme time pressure, you are forced to focus on
the big picture and main ideas of the passage without getting
lost in the small details. By focusing on the big picture, as is recommended in strategy number one, you will get more questions right and be less susceptible to trap answers. To apply this strategy, try taking a few passages
timed at eight or nine minutes. Remember, the normal time for
a CARS passage is 10 minutes. This will force you to read quickly, maybe even skim some sections, so that you have enough time
to answer the questions. If this doesn't work for you, we can try the opposite approach
in strategy number five. Just to reiterate, I've said
it and I'll say it once more, every strategy doesn't
work for every person. Try a strategy a few times
to get a feel for it, and if it doesn't fit your thinking style, move on to another. MCAT CARS Strategy Number Five:
take more time on passages. Pretend you sit down to
take your CARS section, but the MCAT gives you the
option of unlimited time. That's right, you have as
much time as you want to try and get the questions correct. Would you select this option? This strategy emphasizes untimed practice and gives you a chance to
reason through harder passages while applying any of
the other strategies, except strategy four, of course. The benefit of untimed practice is you will be able to better
identify your weaknesses by tracking how much time you
spend on certain questions or aspects of answering questions. MCAT CARS Strategy Number
Six: look for text evidence. If you look at the answer key for nearly every AAMC CARS question, there is one thing in common: they all refer back to a
piece of text evidence. They have to do this in order to make sure that their answers are 100% correct. Use this piece of information
to your advantage. Knowing this makes our job much easier. We know that the support
for the correct answer is somewhere in the passage, we just have to find the text
evidence that supports it. So, in this strategy, you
don't highlight anything from the passage as you read through it. Instead, in order to mark an
answer to one of the questions, you have to highlight the text evidence from the passage that you are using to support your answer choice. Then, during your test review, check to see how closely your highlights align with the text evidence
provided by the answer key. For example, let's say the
text of a passage reads: "Throughout history,
people have cultivated "and grown various forms of
plants for self-sustenance. "Some historians believe "that there was a discrete transition "from a hunter-gatherer population "to an agricultural population, "although genetic evidence
shows that the two populations "may have co-existed. "Rather than classify the populations "based on the two categories, "which is unnecessarily restrictive, "it is possible, and likely, "that hunters also farmed
and farmers also hunted." Now, let's say this is
the question we get. "Which of the following viewpoints "does the author most likely agree with? "A, the transition from
an agricultural population "to a service-oriented population "has only begun in recent years. "B, a more appropriate
method of classification "might be a spectrum on
which hunter-gatherer only "and agriculture only
represent the extremes. "C, populations practicing
only agriculture "may have existed far before "a need for hunter-gatherers arose. "And D, the genetic
evidence is unsubstantiated "and is likely a result of
specimen contamination." Now, let's see how this text
evidence strategy works for us. The question is asking us to determine what the author agrees with, so we must first determine
what the author thinks. Which sentence contains
the author's viewpoint? The first, second, or third? If you said the third
sentence, you are correct. Though the author never explicitly states that this is what he or she believes, the words unnecessarily restrictive indicate that the author disagrees with both the discrete transition theory and the co-existence theory. Let's look at answer choice A. "The transition from an
agricultural population "to a service-oriented population "has only begun in recent years." Is there any text evidence supporting a service-oriented
population in recent years? No, service is not mentioned
once in the passage. Answer choice B says, "A
more appropriate method "of classification might be a spectrum "on which hunter-gatherer only "and agriculture only
represent the extremes." Can we highlight a sentence
that supports this? Yes, we can highlight sentence three, which shows that the author believes there is some sort of happy medium. Therefore, choice B is correct. As an exercise, walk
through choices C and D and demonstrate to yourself
why a lack of text evidence indicates that they are
incorrect answer choices. Try this strategy on
a few untimed passages to see how well it works for you. This is another great
strategy many students have success with it, especially
if they are in a CARS rut. MCAT CARS Strategy Number Seven:
create an example passage. In this strategy, begin
by taking a CARS passage using any of the other
available strategies. Now, read through the answer
choices and explanations. Reset the passage and with
the right answers in mind, go through the passage again, this time highlighting
any and all information in the passage or question
that would have helped you get the questions right
the first time around. So, if you missed a key
piece of text evidence that helped answer one of
the questions, highlight it. If you missed the least
likely in the question stem and therefore missed the question, go ahead and highlight that
part of the question stem. Now, once you've gone through
the entire passage again, you have an example passage, or a passage that you've
approached perfectly. Do this for a few passages ranging from easy to medium to hard. At the end, you should
have a handful of passages that you can refer back to and see how you answered
specific types of questions. MCAT CARS Strategy Number
Eight: read the questions first. In this strategy, you
click through the questions before you read the passage. While doing so, you write
down any key paragraphs or bits of information that
you should be looking for while you read. For example, if one question
refers to paragraph four, make sure you understand paragraph four once you start reading in addition to how paragraph four fits in
with the rest of the passage. The benefit of this strategy is that you will be
able to guide your focus while reading the passage
on topics or paragraphs that are directly referred
to in the questions. The one pitfall of this strategy, which can be avoided by making sure you don't look at the answer
choices of the questions, is that seeing a misleading answer choice can affect your reading or
interpretation of the passage. MCAT CARS Strategy Number Nine: challenge reading and vocabulary. You are not alone if you struggle
through MCAT CARS passages covering philosophy or literature. If you identify reading comprehension as the limiting aspect
of your CARS section, this strategy is helpful. It is only helpful, however, if you are strongly committed to spending 20 to 30 minutes every day reading good material, in addition to a few
extra minutes making sure you understand exactly
what you are reading. In addition to reading comprehension, many students find
themselves missing questions because they did not know the vocab. While some vocab words can be
determined from context clues, it never hurts to build your vocabulary for the MCAT CARS section. Whenever you encounter a new vocab word while taking CARS practice, write it down with its definition, make flashcards, and study them. By now, we have covered
the general overview of the MCAT CARS section, and you have a toolbox of study strategies to attack your practice problems and increase your MCAT CARS score. If you found this video helpful, give it a thumbs up and subscribe so you don't miss out on new videos. And if you'd like to receive a free MCAT question of the day, so that you can get in
every last bit of practice before test day, click the
link in the description. Thanks again for watching
and will see you next time! (upbeat music)
