Tips for the most elusive section of the MCAT

MCAT CARS Tips

General Tips for CARS

  • While it’s probably ok to take a break from some of the science subjects while you’re working on something else for the MCAT, you never want to lose your momentum on CARS. A lot of the patterns and mistakes you make are only easy to see if you can track them day after day, and by taking long breaks between CARS sessions, you won’t be able to really understand what’s going wrong since the issues may be new every time.

    What I usually recommend is having most days you aim to do 1-3 passages, and then once a week doing a full 9-passage block. That way you’re not losing progress in between your big CARS practice sessions.

  • This is a 7.5-8 hour exam, and if you only begin working on CARS shortly before your exam, you may not have the mental capacity to read that many (often) boring passages right in a row. Just like prepping for a marathon, it takes time to be able to sit in a chair and read that many words in a relatively short amount of time, and you’ll want to start prepping for that mental challenge as soon as you can.

    Likewise to my point about making it a daily habit, this also means that if you take a pretty long break from CARS, you’re probably going to lose a bit of that stamina. It’s important to prep your brain for this exam, and for CARS, treat it like you’re about to run a marathon.

  • While this advice applies to (and is mentioned in several other places in my website) the entire MCAT, it’s an important thing to keep in mind when beginning your CARS practicing.

    The best answer choice is one that: relates back to the passage, only contains factual/correct information (based on what you’ve been told), and answers the question. Most people are pretty good about getting down to two good answer choices, and by sifting through what’s left to see which answer choice checks those three boxes the best can help eliminate any internal bias or mistakes you may be making.

  • Again, this is also true for the entire exam, but going through the answer choices with the intent of proving them wrong will help you from picking something you’ve already ruled out. Once you are confident that there is a better answer choice, rule the worse one out!

    You can even think of picking your answer choices as picking the “least-worst” answer choice!

  • Closer to your exam you’ll want to try to time every single passage/CARS block you do just to make sure you’re not grossly out of time with the constraints of the exam, but during most of your practice, feel free to try doing passages both timed and untimed.

    Timed practice will probably cause you to be a bit more inaccurate, so you’ll catch yourself making assumptions you can’t be making, but it’ll also begin to reinforce an internal clock that knows when it’s time to move on from a question. Untimed practice is your chance to truly get in an practice your strategies and mental pathways to refine the most accurate way for you to get answer choices that you can work on speeding up in timed practice.

  • While you do want to eventually make sure that you’re doing passages timed, you don’t immediately want to jump into actual exam pacing. This can be a dramatic enough of a change compared to doing them untimed that your brain starts doing entirely different things for timed passages vs untimed.

    I recommend starting with a 15 minute timer and trying to stay true to your usual strategies as possible, and speed them up over time, rather than immediately trying to fit your strategies into a 10 minute window.

  • On the MCAT, you don’t get points for leaving questions blank or answering more difficult questions, so try to do all of the easier questions first! If it’s been 2 minutes and you still are unsure of a question, pick the answer that you feel the best about, flag it/write it down, and move on with your life.

    When I was heavily tutoring for the MCAT, I actually graphed the amount of time each question took vs the accuracy of those questions and found that there is 0 correlation between how long you spend on a question and the likelihood you get it right. It’s a timed exam, and the longer you spend on a question that you’re not likely to get right in the first place, the more time you’re taking away from other questions you probably have a much better chance on.

  • Since the passages will each have a different number of questions, this 10 minute time-limit can be slightly flexible, but you want to use 10 minute checkmarks to make sure you’re doing the 9 passages on time, rather than tracking how much time you’ve spent per minute.

  • If there are multiple people or ideas present in a passage, make sure you can understand each of their view point. Does the author agree with them? Does this person the author just mentioned support the main idea of the passage? Do these two people agree with each other?

    Often the MCAT will ask questions that require you to gauge whether or not two people agreed with each other, or will ask you to guess whether or not someone mentioned in the passage would support some random, seemingly non-related quote. If you try to make sure you’re keeping track of everyone’s viewpoint, these questions and tracking the main line of the passage get easier.

  • By strategy, I mean things like deciding how fast you’re going to read passages, if you’re going to take notes/make summaries of paragraphs, reading through the questions first, etc. You won’t know what strategy works best for you until you’ve tried them, and you may be surprised at what works best for you.

    For example, I’m a pretty fast and comprehensive reader, but the tactic that worked best for me was reading through the questions first and taking my time reading the passage, rather than going quickly. I also have had students who hated my strategy, and so we tried something else that worked really well, like reading much faster and taking short little summaries of each paragraph.

    Find what works for you! There’s no “one-size-fits-all” for the MCAT, especially CARS.

  • If the author says something is shiny and an answer choice says it’s expensive, we have no idea if the shiny thing the author is talking about is expensive, so we can’t pick it.

  • The wording they use on the MCAT is confusing a lot of the times, so it may help to try to identify the heart of the question (i.e. what specifically is being asked about) and then rewording and simplifying the question in a way that makes more sense to you.

    This is hard to do at first, but over time, you’ll get better at interpreting the language the MCAT uses and this becomes really easy with practice.

Various Passage Strategies to Try

And why/who it might help!

If you struggle with comprehending passages:

Most of my advice in this section is geared towards giving your brain something to do while reading, rather than simply just sitting back and reading the passage. Keep in mind that, while it’s best to try to have a consistent strategy on the MCAT, some people use two different strategies depending on the type of passage! I recommend trying out several different strategies, because as mentioned above, you never know what will work until you try it!

  • Pretty simple and common strategy, where you just create a quick one sentence summary for each paragraph. I recommend actually writing it down, as just trying to keep it in your memory probably won’t work since you’ll have 9 passages on your brain.

    Pros: Makes compartmentalizing the different parts of the passage easier, usually aids in comprehension, makes it easier to fill in missing information if you didn’t understand a paragraph. Also reduces the need to re-read passages since you can easily find information using your summaries.

    Cons: Usually takes a long time, often has a learning curve with how detailed your paragraph summaries need to (or shouldn’t) be.

  • Obviously very similar to the last strategy, but addresses some of the problems and is more of a middle-ground strategy if you like summarizing but don’t want to do it every paragraph.

    Pros: Still allows you to compartmentalize the passage piece by piece instead of one big picture, less work/time than doing every passage.

    Cons: Sometimes is hard to create a summary if 2 paragraphs have very different tones or ideas.

  • You’ll still be creating a summary, but instead of stopping to create a summary every paragraph, you’re stopping to create a summary of the info you just read every time you see a transition word (however, therefore, continually, on the other hand, etc.).

    Pros: Typically does a better job of organizing your summaries by tone, rather than by paragraph, which helps understanding how the author feels about what they’re saying.

    Cons: Takes practice, as you may not catch all transition words at first. Can also be time consuming if there are lots of transitions in a passage.

  • After each paragraph, write down the function of that paragraph (was it evidence, a new idea, a reversal of tone, an example, the main argument, counterpoint, etc.).

    Pros: Helps ensure you understand why the author mentions each topic, rather than simply understanding what the author is saying. Also makes it easier to read through dense material since you’re simply asking yourself why the author mentioned each thing, rather than fully understanding what is being said.

    Cons: Time consuming, especially without practice, and can lead to overthinking. Also requires enough mental power that may not be necessary since many of the things you map won’t even be asked about. Hard to sustain for 9 passages without building pretty good stamina.

  • After finishing the passage, try to identify the following four things: the purpose of the passage, the main argument, the structure (how does the argument change, does it stay constant, where is evidence/examples/counterexamples), and tone.

    Pros: Another good comprehension builder, that also can help with the critical reasoning that a lot of the questions ask about. Gets you to think a bit like the test-makers.

    Cons: Time consuming, can result in formulaic responses if you’re tired or running out of time that aren’t actually beneficial, and potentially leads to overthinking/too much work, especially in determining the structure and tone.

  • Skim the passage super quickly just trying to understand the layout and main idea/argument of the passage, then go back and read the passage again as you normally would, more focused on details.

    Pros: Skimming often makes the second readthrough easier, typically making comprehension easier. Makes the more difficult passages easier to digest. Avoids rereading irrelevant/non-important parts.

    Cons: Can backfire if the first pass ends up being too shallow/doesn’t actually accomplish anything, time-sensitive, not for you if you’re not great at identifying what matters on a skim.

  • This strategy is usually very hit or miss on if it helps people or not, but it can possibly help with people who still really struggle with passage comprehension as it hopefully shows you what you’re supposed to be looking for when reading through the passage. Before you start the passage, quickly read through the question and write down either a word, location, or main idea of the question to look out for in the passage. Then as you go through the passages, it should become easier to find said information.

    Pros: Can be very fast if done properly, should make some questions that are easy to find in the passage easier, prevents fully passive reading, avoids doing “too much work”.

    Cons: Often leads to people struggling with questions that talk about the main idea or argument of the author, as well as understanding the tone of the author. Also can feel like a waste of time if you don’t find anything useful from the questions. Definitely requires practice.

  • This isn’t necessarily a unique strategy but more-so a combination of two other strategies. This one hopefully addresses the problems posed by going through the questions first by allowing you to understand the tone/main idea/argument of the author before finding things to look out for in the questions. Skim the passage looking for main ideas and tone first, then do the rest of the question first strategy.

    Pros: Gets the benefits of the questions first strategy without losing track of the main idea of a passage.

    Cons: Time consuming, and can be a waste of time if you don’t find anything important when going through the questions to look out for or if your skim doesn’t help your understanding of the main idea.

  • Start off by reading two passages, then immediately try to go and answer any questions that apply to those two passages. This is mainly beneficial for overthinkers who tend to struggle finding minute details that some questions ask about. This is probably the least common strategy that any of my students have used over time, but those that have swear by it.

    Pros: Can be speedy, makes it easier to answer questions that are rooted straight in specific places in the passage.

    Cons: Can lead to wrong answers if you make assumptions about things you haven’t read yet, often leads to broken understandings of the main idea of the passage, and can feel frantic.

My last bit of advice as far as strategies are concerned:

Feel free to mix and match or hybridize some of the strategies! For example, I was weird and liked to look at the questions first for all types of passages except for fine arts, architecture, and politics. For some reason, I noticed my questions-first strategy didn’t work for me there, so I instead would use the skim-then-read strategy if it was one of those topics.

How I recommend going through questions and answer choices:

While this specific series of steps has slightly evolved over time, I typically had a somewhat procedural way of going through the answer choices that typically did a pretty good job of preventing me from making any dumb mistakes or picking answer choices for poor reasons.

My first bit of advice: You’re job is to pick the best answer choice available, which often is easier to do if you think about it that you’re picking the answer choice you hate the least. I can definitely understand why people think the AAMC’s reasoning for some answer choices is “subjective”, but the reasoning that incorrect answers are wrong is usually much more concrete and less subjective so it’s often easier to look at answer choices through a process-of-elimination viewpoint rather than a “which one has the most support” viewpoint.

My second bit of advice: To build consistency, I had a specific order of steps that I would go through each answer choice. Over time I didn’t need to do this every single time I answered a question, but I used it incredibly often.

  1. On your first pass through the answer choices: Passage support. you’re eliminating answer choices that have no support in the passage, either they mention something that is not mentioned in the passage at all (and therefore we have no idea if it’s right or wrong) or it outright says the opposite of what the author was saying. This is where I recommend looking for some of the things that I mentioned below in the next section, like words that tell you how often something has happened, any occupations, etc., in the answer choices that may be off from what the passage actually stated.

  2. On your second pass through the answer choices: Does it answer the question? You’re eliminating answer choices that don’t actually answer the question at hand. Sometimes the information in an answer choice will make sense with what a passage said, but it won’t actually answer the question when another one does both.

  3. On your third pass through the answer choices: Specificity. If there is still somehow two answer choices that you haven’t eliminated from the first two passes, then pick the one that is more specific to the passage or the author’s main point. Whether or not an answer choice is “vague” rarely matters and should never be the first reason you eliminate an answer choice, but it can be a last minute tie-breaker.

As an aside, I also recommend doing something very similar for the C/P and B/B sections (wherever you can), just specifically adding a step before the passage support step where you’re first checking to make sure that each answer choice is scientifically correct (based on your own content knowledge) first. Picking scientifically correct answer choices is the most important thing in the science portions of the exam!

Other things in the passage or questions to look out for…

  • Any time they mention someone’s job, highlight it or at the very least take a mental note of it. They may ask about what that person may think of something, but they want you to think of their answer through the lens of their occupation if they’ve mentioned it.

    For example, if they mention that someone is a publisher of novels, but then they’re asking about what that person thinks about some other book, since they’re a publisher, their job (and way of making money) is publishing successful books. So even if they think this new book is dumb, if they think it’ll make money, they’ll publish it.

  • Anything modifying word that is extreme is one you should be cautious of (not entirely rule out or ignore, just be cautious of). Words like, “always, universally, never, etc.” are finite in that they are saying something happens 0% or 100% of the time, so if an answer choice tries to state that the same thing happens “most” of the time, it’s wrong. If the passage told you it happens every single time, then only pick an answer choice that says it happens every single time.

    Likewise, don’t make the opposite mistake, trying to pick an answer choice that states that something “always” happens, when the passage never explicitly stated that it did. Even if the passage seems to sort of imply that something has happened a ton of times, that doesn’t mean that for sure we can state that it always happens.

    For example, if a passage is talking about how people who stayed in Amsterdam were dying of the plague like crazy, even though the implication is that most people died, we cannot say that all people died.

    In general, any time they tell you how often something has happened, take note of it, and make sure any answer choice you pick matches that same language.

  • Often you’ll have a passage that will compare two things together, like two artists. Just make sure that you are sort of keeping a Venn-Diagram running in your head (or in your notes if you decide to take notes) to be sure you’re squared on how the author feels about each individual. They will often try to trick you by swapping up in an answer choice the author’s view point of each thing in the comparison, so it’s important to make sure you know how the author feels about each component of a comparison.

    For example, if the author says Picasso was boring and Van Gogh was eclectic, an answer choice may swap those to say Picasso is eclectic and Van Gogh was boring. They’re hoping to trick you into saying, “yeah I remember the author said one was boring and the other was eclectic” and picking the wrong answer, so make sure you’re keeping track of which is which.

  • Words like, “however, on the other hand, conversely, continually, moreover, etc.” are key words in helping you determine the author’s views on things. Based on the word that the author picked, if it’s a reversal (like “however”), that means they probably feel oppositely of what they’re about to say compared to what they had said before. If it’s a continuation (like “moreover”) that means they probably feel the same way about what they’re introducing vs what they just talked about.

    This is useful especially in passages that you don’t really understand what’s going on, because it allows you to at least understand how the author feels about things. If you understand that the author was in favor of something in the first paragraph, and then starts the second with a “however”, that means they probably feel negatively about the things that are said in the second paragraph, and that may be enough for you to answer any questions that may arise about the info in either of those two paragraphs.

  • Sometimes it’s hard to track the tone of the author, but if you carefully look at the words that they are using, they’ll often slip in an adjective or two that will have enough of a connotation that you can get a good idea.

    For example, if an author states that, “the bread was incredibly dry”, the use of incredibly tells you that they feel strongly about it. If they said “the bread was unfortunately dry”, that instead leads you to believe that they wanted it to be good but it wasn’t, which is a bit of a different viewpoint that outright hating it in the former example. Weird example but I’m hoping you can see that adjectives can be really important in helping you decipher the tone of the author or people who are speaking.

  • This is somewhat similar to what goes on in B/B passages, but basically you need to make sure that you properly have aligned cause and effect relationships. If A caused B, you can’t say that B caused A.

  • If they say that a war happened between the 5th and 7th century, that’s the only time period that we can answer questions about. So if they mention weapons from the 10th century in an answer choice, we have no clue what is true or isn’t true of those weapons since the passage only talked about 5th to 7th century weapons.

    Time periods are important to pay attention to!