Some background:

I know this might be hard to believe now, but coming into the MCAT I knew CARS was going to be my “weak spot”. I remember studying for SAT reading and not doing as great as I wanted (I don’t even remember if I broke 700 for SAT reading lol), but actually, I knew it was because I didn’t do as many passages as I should have. So, I knew that MCAT CARS is actually just a numbers game—it doesn’t matter how many “tips and tricks” the test prep companies throw at you, if you don’t do the passages, you’re not gunna do well. I think by the end I did around 200-300 passages, all of the timed.

Coming into MCAT CARS, I knew I was gunna have to practice this section, hard, and honestly, I think I would’ve been happy with a 128, especially based on how hard Reddit hyped this section up.

Why am I telling you this? Here’s the thing: anyone can score a 130+ on CARS. If I can, you can too–most people start CARS practice way too late. That said, you can’t improve your score if you start practicing timed passages too late, and you can’t improve your score by reading gimmicky test prep company tips.

So? What did I do?

For the 2 weeks or so, I actually used the Princeton Review CARS book. I actually read their tips and tried to follow it (lol); I feel like it wasn’t working out that well for me though, because taking notes on every paragraph (as they had suggested) and writing down bottom lines/main ideas was taking way too long. I knew that it was taking too long, because around this time I also started doing passages from EK (the old Verbal Reasoning version). I’d do the full test in one sitting, timed, and I remember when I first started, it was a struggle to finish the 7 passages in the allotted time of 1 hr (I did this because this was the “old MCAT” CARS, and that was the format that they had, and I felt like being able to do ~7 passages is probably good endurance training)

Around week 3 or 4, In comes Reddit and SDN, and I found the 90-day-guide to a good CARS score on SDN. Because I only had 10 weeks, and only 6 left by the time I found the guide, I didn’t follow the whole 90-day plan. However, I highly recommend a look-see if you don’t know the resource, I feel like the guy had pretty good advice (though I think I’m giving fairly similar advice here), but if you’re someone who likes the different types of problems broken down, then it’s a good read.

I personally did not benefit that much from breaking down the question types (I didn’t retain much of the different question types and the strategies to navigate them), HOWEVER what I found MOST helpful from his guide was how to go over your answers. At some point I was probably spending around as much time or more time going over answers than doing problems, but as I got better and better at it, there were less I have to go over! It was definitely really frustrating at first, but as I got better (and the AAMC CARS qpack and FL’s are easier than some of the questions I was doing too—more about that later), I was spending less and less time, and reviewing the answers and understanding AAMC logic is a huge contributor to that.

General Tips

• Take a deep breath and count to 3 before each passage. This I took from the SDN guide–you will feel all sorts of anxiety and nerves on your test day, and spending the few seconds to breathe before each passage helps clear your mind. I didn’t do this perfectly on my test day (re: nerves), but when I did remember to do this it helped me immensely
• Not 100% necessary but do the last passage first! I read this somewhere on Reddit, but someone suggested you do the last passage first (works for the other sections too!), then go to #1. That way, by the time you’re halfway through, you feel a little bit calmer knowing that you have the last passage already done. The MCAT is a mind game–just gotta beat it.
• Start your study days with CARS–I find that if I start my day with anything else, it’s hard for me to do CARS at all that day (to me, it’s so painful to do haha–I do NOT enjoy it!). After a while, it just becomes habit…
• CARS every. day. — again with the last point, make it a habit. In the beginning, I was probably spending 1-3 hours on it a day. As my test day crept up and I became more confident with CARS, I spent less time. But in the beginning, it was definitely necessary for me to be spending that kind of time.
• Try to stay engaged with the topic. It’s hard, but I tried to be at least a little bit interested in what the author was trying to say. That helped retention a lot for me.
• While reading, ask yourself: Why is the author writing this? What does the author want me to know? What are each of these paragraphs saying? Here’s the key though, think about this while you read but don’t write anything down! I think I might have jotted down or highlighted a few keywords, but that was extremely rare. Writing things down disrupt the flow of your reading and can slow you down.
• Eliminate the wrong answers first–usually I can get two out of the way immediately, and then between the last two, a quick reference to the passage would tell me which answer is right.
• Always practiced TIMED! This is so important–Do each 5 question passage in 9 minutes, 6 question passage in 10.5, and each 7 question passage in 12 minutes. Do this even when you’re doing the (annoyingly formatted) AAMC passages. Time yourself so you intuitively know what 9, 10.5, and 12 minutes feel like.

Resources Breakdown

My favorite ones: Princeton Review, EK, UWorld, and of course, the *gold standard*, the AAMC.

• Jack Westin
  • Thoughts: For those of you who don’t know, JW is probably most famous for his “MCAT passage of the day”. On each passage there is 5-7 questions, in a format that is same as the AAMC. You can check your answers right afterwards and there’s usually some discussion to the side once you hit submit for each answer. This can be a good warm-up exercise every day to get your brain going, but I did not commit to this; just did these sporadically.
  • Pros: New passage every day, serves as pretty good practice, AAMC formatting for practice
  • Cons: Sometimes kind of convoluted, logic is unclear
• Kaplan–passages from their full lengths
  • Thoughts: I would not use this until you’ve exhausted everything else to be honest. I can’t really recommend it because to me doing Kaplan is like a glorified word search. Everything is in the passages and sometimes they have weird/confusing logic. I did do their passages from their full lengths BECAUSE I wanted to simulate the full length experience. However I didn’t take the score too seriously and didn’t even bother going through my answers after taking them because I know it’s just not going to be worth my time.
  • Pros: More practice is always good (?)
  • Cons: Kind of a glorified word search… yike!
• Princeton Review–Hyperlearning CARS Workbook
  • Thoughts: Hands down the best resource I used during my CARS prep! And also psst you can likely find a free PDF version of it online somewhere. If you use the old CARS (called Verbal Reasoning) version (I think it’s 70 questions 60 minutes?), it’s actually pretty similar to the newer edition of the TPR workbook, so it definitely still works!
  • Pros: It’s harder than the actual MCAT in my opinion–if you can do this within the alloted time and understand all the explanations (and probably get like.. 80-90% accuracy?) you’ll definitely be set for the MCAT.
  • Cons: In terms of availability, it’s kind of hard to find, since the Hyperlearning workbooks are supposed to come with a TPR course, so they don’t sell these standalone.
• Testing Solutions
  • Thoughts: So this is the company that also wrote up the 90 Days to CARS SDN post, and I thought that post was great, why not try out their CARS passages? They offered a handful for free, and I thought it was alright. At that point I already have UWorld and the TPR hyperlearning book, so I didn’t think it added additional value (also some of the questions felt Jack-Westin-esque and there were errors in the samples!)
  • Pros: It’s in the AAMC format, the passages/questions asked are similar-ish to AAMC.
  • Cons: Some errors in the sample, additional cost (not really worth the extra expense if you already have other materials)
• UWorld
  • Thoughts: When you buy UWorld, it comes with all of the different subject areas, including CARS. I thought this was a great resource as well and I did finish all of the UWorld CARS passages in my prep. Sometimes if I have 10-15 mins extra, I’d just pull one up to do.
  • Pros: Good for practicing individual passages, for timing, good explanation, and in AAMC test format.
  • Cons: Passages varied a lot in difficulty in my opinion, and it’s not the most representative of AAMC material, but still relevant and very good!
• AAMC
  • I mean, self-explanatory… you can’t do the MCAT without this. I won’t go through the Pros and Cons because you NEED to purchase this if you want to succeed at the MCAT.
• Exam Krackers–Old 101 Passages Verbal Workbook
  • Thoughts: This is the old CARS book from EK and it’s the first book I started on. I did passages from here every day when I started practicing CARS, and these are great “burner” passages just to get your timing down (if you don’t want to waste TPR or AAMC passages).
  • Pros: Cheap! TONS of passages, good for getting down your timing.
  • Cons: The workbook kind of goes “off the rails” towards the end in terms of the quality of the questions. There were also typos (ie, the answer key would say C but the explanation would match the reasoning for choice B) close to the end. But the first 2/3 of the book is good!

Misc. Questions

How did you feel during/after the exam?

• I think I was lucky in that I felt that my CARS was pretty easy–the exam reaction on Reddit made me doubt myself a little bit though. However if I were to predict my score right after my exam I would’ve said 128+. The perfect score was still definitely a surprise!

What were your Practice FL scores like?

• My Kaplan full lengths were ranging 128-129 (I didn’t take these too seriously, see my resources breakdown)
• My AAMC full lengths ranged from 128 (FL2) to 131 (FL3).

Can reading daily help improve your CARS score?

• I got this tip before I started my CARS prep–“oh just read the New York Times! or journals!” I’m not saying that it won’t help, but if you’re on a time crunch, you’re definitely not going to see the results by reading the NYT for 10 weeks. The issue with this is that, even if you read a lot and improve your speed reading, there’s nothing to check your understanding of what you’re reading, not in the way the MCAT does.
• That said, if you’re a freshman and thinking about the MCAT far in advance, by all means–read the academic journals and the New York Times.
• Personal experience–I didn’t read much NYT or journals at all. In undergrad I was not a lit/English major, so I also didn’t read more than I needed to for class. I do read some NYT, books, journals, and of course textbooks, but I didn’t go out of my way in particular to prep for CARS in terms of outside reading.

Conclusion

I hope this was helpful–I have written another MCAT guide on my blog. I wish you the best in your journey, feel free to drop me questions down below!