How to Review MCAT CARS and Improve Your Score
/Learn how top scorers review CARS practice questions
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Part 1: Introduction
As you begin studying for the Critical Analysis and Reasoning (CARS) section of the MCAT, you may be wondering how in the world you’re going to approach it. Isn’t it just something that some people are just good at and some aren’t? After all, there’s no real content to review like the other three sections, which makes CARS a much more difficult section to study for.
In addition, CARS can be trickier than critical reading sections that you may have encountered on tests like the SAT or ACT because CARS takes passages a step further than comprehension. Instead of comprehension, you’ll be asked to pick between multiple answers that could be true but only one answer choice that is correct. CARS is a big reason why the MCAT is a hard test, and you’ll need to use high-yield CARS MCAT strategies to perform well.
Many students hit the feared “score plateau” on CARS sometime in their prep. It seems that no matter what they do, they can’t seem to increase their CARS score and break out of the plateau. So, what can you do to continue improving?
The key is to work smarter and not harder by learning how to review CARS passages after you take them. In this guide, we’ll outline the types of questions and answers that CARS likes to ask, provide detailed examples of how to answer sample passages, and show you how to create a review sheet that will help maximize your score.
After reading through this guide, you’ll be well on your way to achieving an MCAT score that can get you into medical school!
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Part 2: CARS Question Types
The CARS section of the MCAT uses three main question types:
1. Foundations of Comprehension
2. Reasoning Within the Text
3. Reasoning Beyond the Text
Each type of question comes with its own challenges, but you can still take solace in one fact that is always true: no matter the difficulty of a question, the correct answer will always be supported by text within the passage! Now, let’s go through the three types in a little bit more detail.
Foundations of Comprehension
Questions within the “Foundations of Comprehension” category will test if you have a fundamental understanding of the meaning of the passage. This means the MCAT will ask you detail-oriented questions. These types of questions typically have question stems like “According to the passage” or “All of the following are true except…”.
The next type of question under the “Foundations of Comprehension” category will test you about the function of a part of the passage. For example, the question might ask you, “Why did the author include ____?” These types of questions test if you can follow the logic of the passage.
The third and final type of question in this category asks for the main idea of the passage. Simply put, these questions test whether you understand the purpose of the passage as a whole.
Reasoning Within the Text
“Reasoning Within the Text” questions ask you to synthesize multiple parts of the text in order to develop a reasonable conclusion. These questions primarily include inference questions and use words or phrases like “imply”, “suggest”, and “most likely to be true”.
Imply questions are a common place that we see students get tripped up on the MCAT CARS section. The test writers want you to make an inference that makes sense but is not correct or supported by the passage. Be wary of these types of wrong answer choices!
Reasoning Beyond the Text
Finally, questions within the “Reasoning Beyond the Text” category require you take the passage information and extrapolate to a broader meaning or apply the information to a different context. These questions bring in new information and ask what the author would say about it given the passage or provide different answer choices and ask which most closely resembles information from the passage. One common CARS “Reasoning Beyond the Text” question gives four options and asks which one would most likely strengthen or weaken the author’s main argument.
Other CARS Question Types
There are two other common types of questions to give special consideration. The first is “negative” questions that include not or least. (Note: This is where reading too fast can cause you to miss easy points on the exam!) Many questions will say, for example, “Which of these is least likely…” If you are rushing too quickly, you may lose sight of the “negative” and pick an incorrect answer. This can happen even if you understood the passage well, and there’s nothing more frustrating than leaving points on the table. Look out for these types of questions and eliminate all of the true answers before selecting the “correct” one.
The second type of question to pay special attention to is the Roman numeral question. On these questions, you’ll receive three options (I, II, and III), and then the answer options (A-D) will give different combinations of the numerals, such as “I and III” or “II only”. These questions are more difficult because you could know that option I is correct and option II is wrong. However, if you’re unsure about option III, you may still get the question incorrect.
The first strategy to handle these questions is to start with the number (I, II, or III) that you are most sure about and eliminate the answer choices that do not include that number. Another strategy is to check if two options contradict and eliminate answer choices that include the contradicting options. Finally, it is important to note that all three roman numerals could be correct, so don’t discount “I, II, and III” as an option if it’s presented!
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