How I went from 124 to 130 in CARS (Without being a natural reader)

Hey everyone! This summer I wrote the MCAT and was able to score a 523 (129/130/132/132) after writing the MCAT two years ago and scoring a 513 (130/124/129/130). The first time I wrote the MCAT I struggled heavily with CARS. I practiced and practiced but it seemed like there was nothing I could do to increase my CARS score. Second time around, I tried new strategies, had a new mindset, and was able to beat CARS. Now, I want to help as many people out there struggling with CARS because I know how tough and frustrating it can be. Hopefully, some of my tips can help you out and feel free to comment any other questions. I also made a YouTube video explaining my strategies if you prefer a video format.

Intro:

As the title suggests, I am not one of those students who grew up reading books for fun, and I am definitely not someone who has a so-called "innate reading ability." I've zoned out while reading passages countless times and often envied those who claimed CARS just came naturally to them. However, I have learned that it is absolutely possible to improve on CARS even without this natural ability.

To stay organized, I will split this guide into 3 main sections: comprehending the passage, answering the questions, and your mindset. In my opinion, these are the 3 main areas where students struggle and if you can improve at these 3 areas then you are on your way to a great score. Also, remember that these strategies are just what worked for me but the best strategies are the ones that work best for you so try some out and see what works best.

Part 1: Comprehending the passage

Let's start with how to comprehend the passages. This was the area I struggled with the most when I wrote the MCAT for the first time as someone who is not a natural reader. Struggling to comprehend what is going on in the passages is a common issue and can really tank your score. In general, your goal should be to efficiently interpret the author's message, their arguments, and summarize an overall main idea. I get it, the passages are boring, the passages use words you've never seen before and sentence structures that are objectively confusing making you feel like you are reading a different language. But it is possible to improve this skill with the right strategies and practice! Here are my personal tips.

• If you are really lost with CARS, I would first focus on comprehending the passages and extracting the main idea before worrying too much about how to answer the questions or how long it is taking you (you can build up to these steps later, but I find it is best not to overwhelm yourself at the start). To practice this, I would first start by trying to create small sentence summaries of each paragraph in a CARS passage and then using them to form a main idea. You can use free resources like Jack Westin to practice this first
• My goal was to create a storyline of what was going on in the passage, connecting each paragraph together and forming a main idea.
• Here is a hypothetical example of how I tried to approach passages. Let's say a passage starts by introducing a female author who did not get a lot of recognition due to sexism. I would read the paragraph and then say to myself "ok female author not getting recognition due to being female." After reading the next paragraph I might add to the storyline by saying "there were many other female authors that did not get recognized." I might add to this by saying "ok the author thinks this is wrong." I might finish the story with "we must care about this issue now due to existing sexism," and finally summarize a main idea along the lines of "many female authors unfairly ignored due to sexism, we must care now." Once I felt confident in this storyline I went ahead to the questions
• Overall, I recommend you practice cutting through the weird language and sentences to get at what each paragraph and passage as a whole are actually trying to say. Once I was able to create this story and main idea, then the question became much easier. This was the key breakthrough that allowed me to improve in CARS
• I do not recommend skimming the passage. I would spend around 4:30-5min deeply reading the passage and translating the wording to create a storyline and main idea that made sense to me
• I did not highlight anything mainly due to personal preference as I found it distracting and stopped my momentum when trying to build the storyline but I know some people recommend highlighting names or dates so they are easy to reference looking back

Part 2: Answering the questions

In all honesty, once I figured out how to create these storylines and extract the main ideas, the questions became much easier. Sticking with the previous example, if a question asked "which of the policies would the author favour," then I am automatically looking for an answer that highlights female authors' work more (simple example but gets the point across). However, you may feel confident in comprehending the passages already and still get stuck when answering the questions so here are some of my tips.

• I recommend slowly reading the question and translating it so you understand exactly "what is the question asking." Then, I would read each of the options and ask myself "is this what the passage said." I know this may seem silly or too simple but the overall process of building the storyline and main idea, telling myself "what is the question asking," and then reading the options and asking "is this what the passage said," was very successful for me
• You will start to notice common trick answer options where you might say to yourself "this could be true in theory but the passage never said this," or "this is the opposite of what the passage said," or "this looks like what the passage said but it skews the logic too far," or "the passage sort of alludes to this but maybe another option is directly said in the passage." Remember, an answer is only correct if the passage says it, not if you think it is correct (you might even have a completely different opinion than the author).
• In general, it is not usually a good idea to pick the most extreme answer options (i.e., the ones that say "never" or "always"). If it is this option, then it will probably be super obvious (i.e., the author will just keep hammering the point and use very extreme language), but if the author doesn't say it explicitly then you can't overextend their opinion
• A quick mental trick I used was telling myself "ok, some part of this passage will directly prove one of the answer choices," or more simply "the answer is somewhere in the passage." This helped calm me down a bit and made me determined to find where in the passage would prove one to be right

Here are a couple methods you can use when struggling with 50/50s or tougher questions:

1. If one answer is definitely right and definitely proven in the passage, try not to overthink and justify another option that "also maybe could be right." I know it can be tempting when another option could be justified but this is usually only with an added step of logic. From my experience, the answer that could be 100% confirmed by the passage with the least logic was much safer and I would just ignore my feeling of "oh well this other option maybe could be right too." You can also bank time on easier questions that you can 100% confirm the answer to rather than overthinking and wasting time for harder questions.
2. If you can't find a great answer then try to use process of elimination. If any part of the answer is wrong, contrary to the passage, or not said in the passage, then the whole answer is wrong. I answered some questions where I read all of the options and couldn't find any that seemed like the right answer but I was able to prove that 3 were wrong so I just said "well I don't know exactly why this last one is right but it must be."

• Practice is key to improving CARS. The best practice questions are from the AAMC directly (qpacks, diagnostic tool, full lengths). Personally, I found that 3rd party CARS had good passages in that they were boring and hard to read which made good practice, but I found that the questions often had strange logic, unlike the AAMC. I liked using Jack Westin and UEarth for extra practice but I didn't focus on the questions that just seemed like too much of a stretch.
• After practicing, it is also important to review your questions to find out exactly why you are getting questions right and wrong. Once you see patterns in the questions you are getting wrong, you can develop strategies to ensure you don't make the same mistake again. Are you struggling with grasping the main idea (in which case you might need to practice reading comprehension more) or do you understand the main idea but are still falling for trick answer options (e.g., picking answers not supported by the passage). Also, seeing patterns in correct answers can tell you what you are doing right and give you some confidence.

Part 3: Your Mindset

CARS is a huge mental game and your mindset can play a much larger role than you may initially think. It is absolutely crucial that you are completely locked in and focused while reading the passages. You can't do this if your mind is wandering or if you are too frustrated, anxious, or stressed. I get the stress of CARS (especially as a Canadian). I get how frustrating it can be. I get that you wish it never existed. Go ahead and vent your feelings but at some point, that line of thinking is just going to be counterproductive. If you hate it so much, then beat it, the best revenge on CARS is beating it (trust me I know). Here are some mindset tips:

• Find some way to stay engaged while reading.. You can get a 2/6 on the first passage and then get 5/6 or 6/6 on the rest and still get a great score, but if you let that first 2/6 get in your head that's when you will start to spiral. If a passage is hard then let it be hard. You know on the real test you will see at least 1 super hard passage, it is how you approach it and let it affect you that will set you apart. On my real test, I found passages #4 and #5 very tough and thought my test was about to spiral. I took 30s to compose myself and said "forget about those two, you have 4 more that you can crush and still do great." This was the turning point that allowed me to succeed.
• Don't let 1 or 2 hard passages throw you off. You can get a 2/6 on the first passage and then get 5/6 or 6/6 on the rest and still get a great score, but if you let that first 2/6 get in your head that's when you will start to spiral. If a passage is hard then let it be hard. You know on the real test you will see at least 1 super hard passage, it is how you approach it and let it affect you that will set you apart. On my real test, I found passage #4 and #5 very tough and thought my test was about to spiral. I took 30s to compose myself and said "forget about those two, you have 4 more that you can crush and still do great." This was the turning point that allowed me to succeed.
• I always took a ~5s break between passages to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and clear my mind for the next passage.
• Overall, you need to find some way to stay calm while doing CARS. After all, none of the practice or strategies will matter unless you can stay calm on test day (not saying that to scare you but as a way to figure it out before test day). I performed best when I had a clear mind free from distractions (you can't be ruminating on how much you hate CARS while writing it, or worrying about how a bad score will hurt your future). Meditation may help with keeping a clear and non-judgemental mind while doing CARS. However you do it, try to find a way to keep yourself calm and focused (save your frustrations for after the test).
• While studying, try to stay positive. The first time I wrote the MCAT I was so stressed about CARS, I put so much pressure on myself to improve, and it ended up hurting more than helping. This time, I said to myself "I'm done with the constant stress, I am going to do my best, I am going to practice and put everything I have into it and that's all I can do. If it doesn't work out then at least I did everything I could." This positive and calm mindset really helped me throughout.

Conclusion:

Sorry for how long this guide turned out, but I hope there was something that could help you out. Feel free to comment any questions, or suggestions for future posts or videos and good luck with studying!