Anybody doing well in CARS? Help> B Appreciated - MCAT - UWorld Forums For USMLE, ABIM, ABFM, and NCLEX Forums

Dear whoever reading this,
would appreciate your help with CARS, even comments or suggestions or if you could go over one passage together
Working on Jack Westin passages now

hey, what aspects of critical reasoning are you struggling with?

Hey, thank you so much for the response.
TBH, I am not sure! coordination between timing and tackling questions in a way that I can use my MI to answer the questions and going back the right time.

please email me if you could direct me to the right path.
[email protected]

zpvg981022 wrote:

Dear whoever reading this,
would appreciate your help with CARS, even comments or suggestions or if you could go over one passage together
Working on Jack Westin passages now

Hey there, first, you are not alone. Struggling with the same thing. Canadian here, so really need a great score. Taking my exam this June, but I can see some improvement in my practice so far.

First thing I did is to improve my timing. I followed "practice without timing" and it ruined everything. So I strongly recommend: start earlier on your timing skills. I followed this: 5 Questions-9 minutes, 6Q- 11 minutes, 7Q- 12 minutes. I followed this from the TS 30 day guide. I made a small change, instead of using 4 minutes to read the passage (ESL/slow reader) I took 5 minutes to read the passage.

Second, DO NOT SKIM READ the passage. Read the passage properly, do not pay attention to minute details, just understand and map what the author is telling you. Follow the tone, keep an eye where he/she is changing the topic and check why it is done. Trust me, it sounds a lot, but you will get it with practice. Believe me, I started to enjoy reading boring passages. I made effort to read and understand at least 75% of what the author is trying to convey.

When you do that, while answering the questions, you can easily eliminate 2 -3 wrong answers. When you come across some tricky answers always remember: DO NOT bring the outside knowledge. When you understand the passage you can clearly see that something is added in that trickiest answer which is not from the passage. Also look for extreme answer choices like "never, always, etc.." .

And for the reason this is called as CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND REASONING: when you face hard questions, my friend, bubble it, move on , it is hard to do so, but yeah, you have to. Come back once you are done with the rest, and try your best to read into the answers and you will get the answer right. Or, hey, at least you did not waste your time on that and missed the easiest one.

Please feel free to let me know if you want to practice together.

BTB JW is soooooooooo expensive TBH.

KC

aoko230670 wrote:

zpvg981022 wrote:

Dear whoever reading this,
would appreciate your help with CARS, even comments or suggestions or if you could go over one passage together
Working on Jack Westin passages now

Hey there, first, you are not alone. Struggling with the same thing. Canadian here, so really need a great score. Taking my exam this June, but I can see some improvement in my practice so far.

First thing I did is to improve my timing. I followed "practice without timing" and it ruined everything. So I strongly recommend: start earlier on your timing skills. I followed this: 5 Questions-9 minutes, 6Q- 11 minutes, 7Q- 12 minutes. I followed this from the TS 30 day guide. I made a small change, instead of using 4 minutes to read the passage (ESL/slow reader) I took 5 minutes to read the passage.

Second, DO NOT SKIM READ the passage. Read the passage properly, do not pay attention to minute details, just understand and map what the author is telling you. Follow the tone, keep an eye where he/she is changing the topic and check why it is done. Trust me, it sounds a lot, but you will get it with practice. Believe me, I started to enjoy reading boring passages. I made effort to read and understand at least 75% of what the author is trying to convey.

When you do that, while answering the questions, you can easily eliminate 2 -3 wrong answers. When you come across some tricky answers always remember: DO NOT bring the outside knowledge. When you understand the passage you can clearly see that something is added in that trickiest answer which is not from the passage. Also look for extreme answer choices like "never, always, etc.." .

And for the reason this is called as CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND REASONING: when you face hard questions, my friend, bubble it, move on , it is hard to do so, but yeah, you have to. Come back once you are done with the rest, and try your best to read into the answers and you will get the answer right. Or, hey, at least you did not waste your time on that and missed the easiest one.

Please feel free to let me know if you want to practice together.

BTB JW is soooooooooo expensive TBH.

KC

Hey! Awesome tips. I would love to do some CARS together. Email me: [email protected]

Also Canadian so need a solid score too!

aoko230670 wrote:

zpvg981022 wrote:

Dear whoever reading this,
would appreciate your help with CARS, even comments or suggestions or if you could go over one passage together
Working on Jack Westin passages now

Thanks so much for your advice and your insightful comments.
Please email me if you have time to go over a passage.
[email protected]

Thanks

Hey there, first, you are not alone. Struggling with the same thing. Canadian here, so really need a great score. Taking my exam this June, but I can see some improvement in my practice so far.

First thing I did is to improve my timing. I followed "practice without timing" and it ruined everything. So I strongly recommend: start earlier on your timing skills. I followed this: 5 Questions-9 minutes, 6Q- 11 minutes, 7Q- 12 minutes. I followed this from the TS 30 day guide. I made a small change, instead of using 4 minutes to read the passage (ESL/slow reader) I took 5 minutes to read the passage.

Second, DO NOT SKIM READ the passage. Read the passage properly, do not pay attention to minute details, just understand and map what the author is telling you. Follow the tone, keep an eye where he/she is changing the topic and check why it is done. Trust me, it sounds a lot, but you will get it with practice. Believe me, I started to enjoy reading boring passages. I made effort to read and understand at least 75% of what the author is trying to convey.

When you do that, while answering the questions, you can easily eliminate 2 -3 wrong answers. When you come across some tricky answers always remember: DO NOT bring the outside knowledge. When you understand the passage you can clearly see that something is added in that trickiest answer which is not from the passage. Also look for extreme answer choices like "never, always, etc.." .

And for the reason this is called as CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND REASONING: when you face hard questions, my friend, bubble it, move on , it is hard to do so, but yeah, you have to. Come back once you are done with the rest, and try your best to read into the answers and you will get the answer right. Or, hey, at least you did not waste your time on that and missed the easiest one.

Please feel free to let me know if you want to practice together.

BTB JW is soooooooooo expensive TBH.

KC

zpvg981022 wrote:

Dear whoever reading this,
would appreciate your help with CARS, even comments or suggestions or if you could go over one passage together
Working on Jack Westin passages now

I found a lot of useful advices from users on reddit, I'll list the most important ones here:

-Use the reading strategy that you've been using all your life. it definitely takes some practice to get yourself comfortable in honing and applying the reading skills you've built up all these years in this scenario.
-Confidence is huge in CARS. You have to have the following attitude: "If I Find Something Confusing, Everyone Else Finds It Confusing." Be confident in yourself.
- Don't find the passages interesting. your job to find the author's main idea, gather key information from the passage, and answer some questions.
-You don't need to write anything down. your brain will guide you back to the general area of the passage that you need for a later question. Trust your brain. The key to answering more questions correctly is to read the passages in an engaged manner,
-Read the first paragraph. Hypothesize to yourself what you think the main idea of the entire passage is.
(and my favorite

-spend as much time as you need dissecting the c**p out of it. Don't even look at questions yet. Just keep reading and rereading for an hour if you need to. Slow down. Think carefully. Think "what is the point of this paragraph? What is the purpose of this detail the argument? What is the argument?" Then go to the questions and see how you do. Keep repeating this exercise and you'll find yourself getting faster and faster.
-If a question is giving you trouble, see if you can quickly eliminate any options, then guess and flag it for later. Do not get hung up on any one question