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📖 CHAPTER 12: EFFECTIVE REVIEW OF CARS

8,286 words · 1 figures · ≈36 min read · MCAT CARS Review 2026-2027

Chapter 12: Effective Review of CARS

Chapter 12: Effective Review of CARS

Chapter 12: Effective Review of CARS

CHAPTER 12

EFFECTIVE REVIEW OF CARS

In This Chapter

12.1 Learning from Your Mistakes

How I’ll Fix It Sheets

12.2 Thinking Like the Testmaker: Post-Phrasing 12.3 Improving Your Timing

Pacing Guidelines

Managing Question Timing

12.4 Building Endurance 12.5 Enhancing Your Vocabulary

Reading Plan

Concept and Strategy Summary

Introduction

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After Chapter 12, you will be able to:

This final chapter is a troubleshooting guide for raising your score. Experience with the CARS section is a prerequisite for the material in this chapter. So, before studying this chapter in detail, you must practice the strategies discussed throughout this book, especially the Kaplan Method for CARS Passages from Chapter 7 and the Kaplan Method for CARS Questions from Chapter 8. For the material in this chapter to be most effective, it’s best if you have also taken a few timed and scored CARS sections, possibly on one or two Full-Length practice exams. Once you’ve built this familiarity with the CARS section—and with your personal pitfalls in the CARS section—you’ll be ready for troubleshooting! We’ll look at five proven ways to increase your Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS) section score—including some methods you’ll find useful for the science sections as well.

Hands down, the best way to improve is to learn from the mistakes you make on practice tests, which is why we begin our discussion with Kaplan’s How I’ll Fix It Sheets (HIFIS). The post-phrasing strategy discussed in the following section builds on the HIFIS, helping you think more like the writers of the MCAT. After we discuss post-phrasing, we’ll talk about a simple approach for managing your pacing on Test Day, and we’ll discuss what you can do to build your test-taking stamina. We’ll close with a discussion of one final advantage you can give yourself for CARS: a stronger vocabulary.

12.1 Learning from Your Mistakes

At this juncture, you have read quite a bit about how to approach CARS, you have had the opportunity to practice, and you may even have completed one or more Full-Length Exams. Now is the time to reflect on your performance and adjust your study plan based on your personal test-taking pathologies, which are identifiable patterns in your past errors that can help to guide your future CARS studying.

How I’ll Fix It Sheets

It can be overwhelming to try to discern what your strengths and areas of opportunity are by looking at an entire CARS section at once. Rather, take time to analyze each question you answered incorrectly. One way to help manage this process—and to keep a clear record of your performance over time—is to set up How I’ll Fix It Sheets (HIFIS). Create a document with at least four columns: question number, question type/topic, wrong answer type chosen, and “How I’ll Fix It.” In the first column, make a list compiling all of the items you answered incorrectly on the test. In the second column, identify the passage topic and question type based on the Kaplan classifications we reviewed in the previous three chapters (or, if you’re making a HIFIS for one of the sciences, include the question topic). The third column should include the wrong answer type you chose (Opposite, Faulty Use of Detail, Distortion, Out of Scope, content error) for the question. Lastly, in column four, take time to review your incorrect response and identify the specific reason why you got the question wrong and what steps you’ll take to “fix it” (i.e. avoid this mistake in the future). Table 12.1 demonstrates what HIFIS should look like.

MCAT EXPERTISE

HIFIS are a way to create and maintain a pool of data on your own performance on the MCAT. Because they’re structured as tables, spreadsheet tools can be very helpful for analyzing your HIFIS. Consider using a spreadsheet-creating program to build your HIFIS so you can add to them from multiple devices, sort them by different columns to more easily see trends, and organize them in different ways that best suit your current needs.

Table 12.1 Sample How I’ll Fix It Sheet (HIFIS)

Question Number Question Type/Topic Wrong Answer Chosen How I’ll Fix It

Full-Length 1, #12 Detail (Music) Faulty Use of Detail Misinterpreted the question stem. Next time, stop after reading the question ask myself “what is this question asking me to find?”

Full-Length 1, #21 Strengthen–Weaken (Within the Passage) (Art) Faulty Use of Detail Didn’t understand question stem. Next time, stop after reading the question to ask myself whose opinion the question is asking about and whether strengthen or weaken is needed.

Full-Length 1, #38 Inference (Population Health) Distortion Chose an answer choice that may be true. Next time focus my answer choice elimination on which choices must be true.

Full-Length 1, #53 Main Idea (Psychology) Distortion Answer choice was too narrow. Next time, use my Read & Distill steps to predict an overall goal of the passage before reading the choices.

BRIDGE

Need some help identifying the question type for your How I’ll Fix It Sheets? Don’t forget to review Chapters 9, 10, and 11 of MCAT CARS Review for thorough coverage of each question type.

The most important element of this table is the How I’ll Fix It column. Do not just categorize your test-taking mistakes with a generic I didn’t understand or careless mistake. Such comments will not give you insight into why you missed the question nor how you can avoid that problem in the future. At the other extreme, you are never going to see this specific question again, so a hyper-specific description of exactly how you would answer this question isn’t going to help you in the future either. Responses that are either too vague or too specific both result in the same problem: you’re spending this time reviewing your performance, but you’re not learning what to do better on the next test! The goal of HIFIS is to learn to identify questions in the future that are similar to questions you’ve missed in the past, and then to avoid the mistakes you made on such questions in the past. Your response in the How I’ll Fix It column should always keep this goal in mind.

To write good How I’ll Fix It responses, start by identifying exactly what you did wrong on the specific question you’re reviewing and what behavior or thought process you would change to get the question correct, then generalize that behavior just a bit by recording only the steps of how to get the right answer without the details of that specific question. The responses in the above table illustrate this technique. Take the first response as an example. This student identifies the specific mistake and what steps to take to avoid this error, “Misinterpreted the question stem...asking me to find?”." But this student doesn’t provide unnecessary details about the question or passage. In the How I’ll Fix It column, this student also labels this mistake with the general label, “Misinterpreted question stem.” In fact every one of this student’s How I’ll Fix It entries follow this formula: general label, then specific details on how to fix the problem, all with little or no information unique to the passage or question. You don’t have to follow this format exactly on every question, but it is a good default.

HIFIS make it easier to identify flaws that are becoming trends, which helps you better address these trends earlier in your prep. Consider the following pairs of “bad” and “good” examples:

Bad: I missed this because the answer choice declares that Beowulf was written by an aristocrat, but the passage said that the author was only “probably” a member of the royal court. Next time, I need to read more carefully.

Good: Misread question stem. Next time, I’ll rephrase the question stem so I know exactly what is being asked.

Bad: I missed this because I recognized “unmoved mover” from the question stem, which is in paragraph 3, but the answer they were looking for actually comes from the description of the “Central Headquarters” sentence in paragraph 4. Next time, I’ll go to the right paragraph.

Good: Referred to passage incorrectly. Next time, I’ll identify which paragraph the question is asking about and use the passage to make a prediction.

When reviewing your HIFIS, in addition to looking for trends in the How I’ll Fix It column, compare the question type/topic column to the wrong answer chosen column to narrow the scope of your future study plan. Is there a recognizable pattern you can utilize to optimize your performance? For instance, maybe looking at the question type column, you observe that you are repeatedly missing Reasoning Within the Text questions. That’s good information. But maybe by also comparing with the topic, you observe that you most often miss this question type on anthropology passages specifically. Now, not only have you identified a question type for further practice, but also you know to be on guard next time you’re facing a Reasoning Within the Text question on an anthropology passage. Further, by also comparing the wrong answer chosen column, you may identify that you frequently choose Faulty Use of Detail answer choices for this question type. Use your HIFIS to plan which passage varieties you’ll focus on in the future, what strategies you need to work on to ensure you understand the passage and questions, or to determine which chapters you need to reread in MCAT CARS Review. You want to make sure that you are moving forward with a plan that specifically supports your areas of opportunity.

In addition to the basic data we’ve discussed so far, you can optionally collect several additional pieces of data to further flesh out your HIFIS and make them even more valuable tools. You can add a column to record the time you spent on each passage and question, which can be valuable for discovering passage types, question types, or content or topic areas where you tend to fall behind. Note that when reviewing the Kaplan Review Page, the time associated with the first question in a question set will typically represent the time you spent Distilling the passage plus the time you spent answering that question. Some students also find it helpful to actually split out the one How I’ll Fix It column into two columns: one column to capture a general label for the error and a second column to record how they’ll address that error. Make your HIFIS your own by customizing them to capture data points that are most relevant to the most problematic parts of your prep.

REAL WORLD

In medical school, you’ll attend morbidity and mortality (M&M) conferences, in which physicians review clinical and medical errors, patient complications, and other healthcare quality measures to investigate the root causes of problems in order to fix them directly. These conferences are not dissimilar to creating How I’ll Fix It Sheets—you can only improve if you know what you’re doing wrong!

Troubleshooting Common Wrong Answer Trends

HIFIS are a great tool for uncovering trends among your wrong answers. But of course, diagnosing and treating your errors in this way may not be something you’ve done before. So, let’s discuss three of the most common trends among wrong answers, and what to do about them.

If you repeatedly read questions incorrectly, you are not alone—MCAT students often misread or misinterpret questions in CARS. So, if misreading questions comes up as a trend in your HIFIS, you’ll know to practice the CARS question strategy. Remember, establishing the question type is a critical component of the CARS question strategy. You might be less familiar with CARS-style content, but the tradeoff is that all CARS questions are subdivided into just a few predictable question types, each with its own predictable (and practiceable!) strategy. Rephrasing the question stem to ensure you fully understand the question is also essential. As you review your practice tests, reexamine the questions and the answers you selected that were incorrect. In hindsight, when looking at the question a second time, do you find yourself shaking your head because you simply misinterpreted what was being asked? This could indicate that you are reading the question stems too hastily and moving on to the answer choices before you even know what you’re supposed to be answering. If this is the case, force yourself to take the extra time to paraphrase a difficult question stem so that you know precisely what the question is asking. Time spent paraphrasing is not wasted time. The added clarity will allow you to Investigate more quickly, which will help you Match an answer choice rapidly and accurately. In the next section, we will discuss a review technique called post-phrasing, which is a particularly helpful exercise for any student who commonly misreads the question.

If your HIFIS demonstrates a pattern in which you keep missing the same question types, then there is an easy way to gain time and confidence on this test: start to triage those questions. First, go back and reread the appropriate chapter in MCAT CARS Review so you can recognize these question types with greater ease. Chapters 9, 10, and 11 introduced the major question types and highlighted the common question stems that fall into each type. Remember that triaging a question to the end of the set is the opposite of admitting defeat. Very often, as you answer the other questions in the set, you learn more about the author’s argument, which maximizes your chances on the triaged question. Here’s a good way to think about it: triaging a question is less like running from your foe, and more warming up before going into battle. Remember also that each question type has an associated strategy that you can practice. Many students find that their least favorite question types early on becomes among their most reliable question types by Test Day. And this turnaround starts by identifying a problematic question type using HIFIS.

Finally, don’t neglect identifying the Wrong Answer Pathologies of the incorrect answers that you chose. Simply knowing the Wrong Answer Pathologies that most often sway you from choosing the correct answer may be enough to help you avoid falling for the same traps in future tests. For example, if you know that you frequently choose Out of Scope answer choices in Main Idea questions, then you’ll know to ask yourself Is this answer truly within the confines of the passage, or does it bring in something else? before finalizing your answer for Main Idea questions in the future.

BRIDGE

Knowing your personal test-taking pathologies is essential to improving your score. In addition to looking at the question types, topics or disciplines, and how you read question stems, don’t forget to look at Kaplan’s classifications of Wrong Answer Pathologies (Faulty Use of Detail, Out of Scope, Opposite, and Distortion), discussed in Chapter 8 of MCAT CARS Review.

12.2 Thinking Like the Testmaker: Post-Phrasing

Does this scenario sound familiar? You skim through the explanation for a question that you missed, shrug, and think, “I guess I get it.” When you miss a practice question, you’ve actually made two mistakes. Not only were you tempted by a trap answer, but also you looked right at the right answer and thought, “Nah! Not that one!” To turn today’s wrong answers into tomorrow’s right answers, you need a proactive technique for reviewing questions. Post-phrasing is that technique. With post-phrasing, you go over both why incorrect answers are wrong and why correct answers are right. This strategy is especially helpful if you frequently experience the classic test-taking dilemma: I can usually narrow it down to two answer choices, and then I always go for the wrong one.

To post-phrase, open a question you answered incorrectly, and make a note of the correct answer. Now, you’ll carefully dissect the question. Begin by identifying the Type of the question. Recall that each question Type is associated with a general strategy so, if necessary, briefly review the general strategy for that question Type. Next, paraphrase the question stem. To make it very concrete, say your paraphrase out loud, write it down, or type it out. By doing this, you are essentially practicing a formal version of the Rephrase step from the question method. Your focus in this step should be to carefully decode what the question stem is asking you to do.

Once you’ve Typed the question, reviewed the best strategies for addressing that question type, and Rephrased the question, Investigate the solution. When post-phrasing, write or type out your prediction for the correct response. While you wouldn’t write down a prediction on Test Day, the post-phrasing exercise is designed to ensure you are making concrete predictions as part of your Investigation. It’s essential to take the time to write the prediction down: many students find that a poorly focused prediction keeps them from finding a Match on MCAT questions. The more you practice writing out your predictions during the post-phrasing process, the more routine making predictions will become.

You may notice that the description of post-phrasing, thus far, basically describes a regimented and very deliberate use of the Kaplan Method for MCAT Questions. But at the end, the focus will not be on matching your prediction anymore; after all, you already know the correct answer because you’re reviewing a question you answered incorrectly. Instead, turn your attention to the incorrect answers. Determine why each incorrect answer is unsuitable. Does it fail to match your prediction? Does it have a common Wrong Answer Pathology? Are there other subtle flaws in logic or reasoning that misrepresent the author’s arguments? Pay special attention to the wrong answer you actually chose. Why was this answer tempting? Why is it ultimately wrong? By taking the time to write  or type out an explanation of the flaw for each incorrect answer, you’ll become better at identifying flaws in future wrong answers. Finally, after all this, now take a look at Kaplan’s explanation and check how well your reasoning matches up.

To summarize, remember this saying: Practice alone doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Post-phrasing is that perfect practice. You are taking a question that you did not answer correctly, and you are modeling the steps, actions, and strategies that you should have used to get that question right, which reinforces those behaviors for next time. And lastly, after such a thorough review of a question, what’s the best next step? Summarize the results of this detailed, post-phrasing investigation in your HIFIS of course. You don’t have to post-phrase every question you missed on every practice exam. Instead, save post-phrasing for the questions that really deserve a thorough examination: the ones where you were stumped, where you were stuck between two answers, and the ones where you made a silly mistake that you want to forever avoid in the future.

Alternatively, a variant of post-phrasing can be used as an exercise to improve your recognition of Wrong Answer Pathologies in passages you haven’t seen yet. Consider practicing with a few passages following the steps below:

Remember, on the MCAT the right answer is not just the “most correct” answer. Each question has one right answer and three answers with objective flaws, meaning that the right answer is objectively correct because it is the only answer without flaws. Through regular post-phrasing practice, you will begin to see the patterns emerge. What seem now like very subtle flaws will soon start to seem very pronounced. As a result, you will find yourself recognizing the correct answer, the one that doesn’t suffer from any flaws, and thinking this one just feels right. Furthermore, taking the time to post-phrase will expand your awareness of how the test is written and what the expectations are for MCAT questions. Through post-phrasing practice, you will refine your thought process and your approach to passages and questions, making you better prepared for Test Day.

BRIDGE

In addition to Wrong Answer Pathologies, take time to review the Signs of a Healthy Answer presented in Chapter 8 of MCAT CARS Review. These include appropriate scope, agreement with the author, and “hedging” language that creates weaker claims.

12.3 Improving Your Timing

Proper management of the clock can make a significant difference to your score in any section, but the timing constraints in the CARS section differ from those of the other sections. Consider a few basic facts about the CARS section:

It’s a simple matter of arithmetic to see that 9 passages in 90 minutes allows you 10 minutes for each passage. Because all of the points actually come from answering the questions, though, you’ll want to ensure that you allot enough time for the questions. Passages vary in difficulty, meaning that some will certainly take longer to read than others, but as a rule of thumb you should aim to complete the Preview, Read, and Distill steps for the passage in about 4–5 minutes. Your timing will vary based on the Distill approach you Choose, but even the most intense Interrogation of a very challenging passage should take no longer than 6 minutes. Subtracting those combined ~40 minutes for reading leaves you with 50 minutes for the 53 questions, which works out to almost exactly one minute per question. Keep in mind that the number of questions associated with a passage can vary from 5 to 7, meaning that a more precise expectation for completing a passage and its questions is somewhere between 9–11 minutes.

MCAT EXPERTISE

While it is most common to have five to seven questions associated with a given passage, there have been instances of passages with only four or as many as eight questions. This should not significantly impact how you approach these passages, although—all else being equal—a passage with eight questions will give you more points for the same amount of reading.

Pacing Guidelines

Now, trying to ensure that each passage takes 4–5 minutes and each question a little less than one minute would actually be counterproductive: not only would you lose a substantial amount of time checking the clock, you’d likely heighten your anxiety each time you came across a question that takes a little extra time to get through. A better approach to managing your time is to check your timing only at a limited number of predetermined points during the section. We recommend checking the clock after every other passage. Assuming that you take 10 minutes to read a passage and answer its questions, you should ideally be no more than 20 minutes further into the section each time you check the clock. We recommend jotting down how much time remains when you start the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth passages (it should be at least 70, 50, 30, and 10 minutes, respectively). If your timing appears to go off-course, then during your review of the test, note which passages (and potentially Distill approaches) seem to have caused this trouble. Could you have triaged these time-consuming passages or distilled them differently, and answered more questions correctly in the limited time you had left?

Hitting these recommended time points does not leave you much of a cushion for going back to previous passages and questions, but this approach is by far the best way to maximize your score. Given that each CARS passage contains between 500 and 600 words, jumping between passages is far less realistic in CARS than in any of the science sections, where passages can be less than half that length. While it is recommended that you skip passages that you decide will be too time-consuming in your Preview step, we do not recommend that you leave a passage unfinished with the intention of returning later. Once you decide to work on a passage, commit to finishing it.

Managing Question Timing

The timing guidelines given so far are useful for managing the CARS section. But mastering the split between reading each passage and answering its questions can still be tricky. In your online resources, we record the time spent working on each question so you can get a sense of which questions take you longer than others. (Note that this mechanism requires you to click on the question when you begin working on it to accurately record this information.) Keep in mind that the time we record for the first question of each passage will include the time you spend critically Reading and Distilling the passage in the beginning. Thus, you should strive to have the first question of each set answered within around 5 minutes (or 300 seconds), and every subsequent question should be close to the one-minute mark, calculated as an average. If you’ve chosen to Distill primarily by Highlighting, you should expect to see that you answered your first question more quickly, and then spent more time on each question,. Alternately, if you mostly choose to Distill by Interrogating, you should expect to see a time of 6 or even 7 minutes for the first question, with much shorter times for the subsequent questions in each set. If you use a mix of methods, or if you primarily use the Outlining method, 5 minutes average for the passage and first question should be your target.

MCAT EXPERTISE

If the seconds ticking down causes you too much anxiety, an alternative way of working on your timing is to use the timer on your phone or some other timepiece to “time up”—that is, to count upwards from zero to see how much time it’s taking you to read the passage and to complete each question. Timers with “lap” functions can be especially useful because these can record how long each question takes. Generally, this method works best with only one or two passages at a time. Keep in mind, however, that an alternate timer cannot be used on Test Day!

Once you have a better sense of which types of passages and questions take you longer to complete, you should use this information in conjunction with what you’ve learned from each HIFIS to guide your now or later decisions in the first step of each method (Preview for passages and Type for questions). Beginning the section with the passages that are easiest for you will allow you to get ahead on the timing curve. Similarly,  once you’ve committed to a passage, saving the toughest questions for the end of that set will give you an opportunity to gain additional familiarity with the passage as you work on its more manageable questions. Because questions can repeat the same theme, you may even find the answer to a challenging question while working on an easier question.

12.4 Building Endurance

Preparing for the MCAT is like preparing for a marathon. You cannot run 1 or 2 miles a day for two months and then expect to be successful in a 26.2-mile marathon. Runners ramp up to the 26.2 miles, routinely running long distances in preparation for marathon day.

How often are you studying and for how long? If you are only studying in 30- or 60-minute increments, you might find when you sit down to complete a Full-Length Exam that you have not built up your endurance for that type of test. Not only do you need to study and practice regularly, but you also need to simulate the Test Day experience, which requires concentrating for 6 hours and 15 minutes of testing time. Gear up for practice tests—and Test Day itself—by periodically holding long study and practice sessions. When working on CARS, try studying in 90-minute increments to mimic the amount of time you’ll have for this section. Long study periods can also be helpful for the sciences, as you will have 95 minutes for each science section on Test Day.

12.5 Enhancing Your Vocabulary

The AAMC claims that there’s no outside content required for the CARS section of the MCAT, but in truth this is not 100 percent accurate—you may come across a question that has an element of common knowledge (the number of days in a week, for example). Furthermore, while very few questions hinge on knowing the definition of a piece of jargon from outside knowledge, a strong vocabulary on Test Day can be a tremendous asset. If nothing else, you can become more comfortable with academic writing in the various disciplines that the AAMC includes in the CARS section. Do this by familiarizing yourself with plenty of examples.

BRIDGE

While you will not be expected to know the definition of a piece of jargon from outside knowledge, Definition-in-Context questions hinge on your ability to determine the meaning of a word or phrase from the rest of the passage. These questions are discussed in Chapter 9 of MCAT CARS Review.

The Kaplan and AAMC Full-Length Exams are, of course, the best place to go to get samples of CARS-style passages and questions. But students who want to go the extra mile also have the option of practicing with outside reading.

Reading Plan

The more often you read, the stronger your reading comprehension skills become, and the faster you evolve into a more efficient reader. This practice will help you build up a wider array of words that you recognize by sight, meaning that you’ll spend less time deciphering the text. Believe it or not, reading is a skill that you can practice and improve, just like any skill. So, to  prepare for CARS, read on a consistent basis. This practice this will increase your reading speed so that you can maneuver swiftly through passages.

Set up a regimented reading schedule for at least 20 minutes a day, which is just enough time to get through two passages according to the the timing guidelines for the CARS section. Also, keep an array of reading materials handy for when you have time available. This mini-library could consist of a list of links kept on a smartphone or other wireless-enabled device. It is surprising how much time we spend waiting—for a friend at a coffee shop, for a group to go out in the evening, for a professor to arrive to class, or for a meeting. These are all examples of times that could be used productively to sharpen reading skills to prepare for CARS.

When selecting materials, try to simulate the variety of passages you’ll encounter on Test Day with a blend of texts from both the humanities and the social sciences. Use your HIFIS to determine which types of passages cause you the greatest confusion or frustration, the ones that slow you down the most on your Full-Length Exams. Focus on reading those problematic types of passages in particular; the more you read these difficult texts, the more familiar you will become with their jargon and with other conventions, and the less intimidating these passages will start to seem. Consider using one of the following online services to find academic journal articles in the disciplines that give you the most trouble:

Whenever you come across a word that you don’t recognize, stop and take a moment to look that word up and write down its definition in your own words. Keeping a list of these new terms and looking over them periodically will go a long way toward building your vocabulary. As your vocabulary expands, you will be able to either recognize words or swiftly infer their meaning, which will increase your efficiency both while Reading and Distilling the passage and while tackling question stems and answer choices.

In addition to learning the meanings of new words, reading humanities and social sciences articles will help you become acquainted with the major themes and concepts that that frequently appear on the CARS section. Familiarity with a concept can allow you to glean more from a passage when that concept is mentioned, enabling you to read more quickly if the text simply repeats what you already know. Be careful, however, not to bring in any ideas that the passage does not include when answering its questions—there’s a reason Out of Scope is a common Wrong Answer Pathology! Because there are only nine passages in CARS, the likelihood that you will have read about the exact scenario presented in a CARS passage is not high, but it is very likely that you will have read about similar topics.

Finally, any form of academic reading forces you to think critically about the ideas the author is presenting. Just as when you practice with passages in CARS, try distilling a few paragraphs of an academic article. Focus on how the author structures the argument: what conclusion does the author want the audience to reach? What evidence is used to support that conclusion? Are there any flaws in the author’s logic? Focused, regular reading will help prepare you for CARS by bolstering your reading comprehension and reasoning skills, as well as your comfort with academic texts and the challenges they bring.

Conclusion

Medical schools want to admit students with strong reasoning skills because higher-order thinking is necessary for both appropriately diagnosing patients and conducting groundbreaking research. When given a constellation of symptoms and concerns, a physician needs to generate a differential diagnosis—a list of the potential ailments described by the symptoms. From this list, the medical team must rule out unlikely diagnoses and provide evidence for the most likely diagnosis. What starts as a list of a hundred possible causes of headache—from migraines and tension-type headaches to intracranial bleeds and brain tumors—is reduced to the one most likely cause by asking appropriate questions (When did the headache start? Where do you feel the headache? Have you ever had anything similar before?), by performing a thorough physical exam (cranial nerve function, eye exam, looking for evidence of trauma), and by running appropriate laboratory and imaging tests (head CT, MRI, inflammatory markers).

Patients want to trust the expertise of their doctors, and you want to ensure that you are able to deliver the best treatment to your patients. The skills in CARS that enable you to determine the author’s perspective, to distinguish the author’s voice from others in the passage, to predict a response to a question, and to match your predictions (while eliminating incorrect answers) are the same skills that will serve you well as a physician. In the future, you may not be expected to think critically about dance theory, musicology, archaeology, and linguistics, but you will have to synthesize disparate pieces of information, consider assumptions about patient care, and respond appropriately to all parts of your patients’ questions—both what they say and what they leave for you to infer. As pointed out in this chapter, the skills tested in the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills section can always be improved through pointed and actionable review of your past performance. Congratulations on reaching the end of MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills Review. Though this book now comes to an end, for you this is merely a beginning—good luck on the MCAT, and in all your endeavors in medicine!

CONCEPT AND STRATEGY SUMMARY

Learning from Your Mistakes

Thinking Like the Testmaker: Post-Phrasing

Improving Your Timing

Building Endurance

Enhancing Your Vocabulary

The Kaplan Method for CARS Passages

The Kaplan Method for CARS Passages

PREVIEW FOR DIFFICULTY

CHOOSE YOUR APPROACH

READ AND DISTILL THE MEANING OF EACH PARAGRAPH

The Kaplan Method for CARS Questions

TYPE THE QUESTION

REPHRASE THE STEM

INVESTIGATE POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

MATCH YOUR PREDICTION TO AN ANSWER CHOICE

CARS Question Types

***Foundations of Comprehension Reasoning within the Text *Reasoning Beyond the Text Question Type Main Idea Detail Inference Definition-in-Context Function Strengthen–Weaken (Within the Passage) Apply Strengthen–Weaken (Beyond the Passage) Type**

Rephrase

Investigate

Match

Note: TheReasoning Within the TextandReasoning Beyond the Textcategories also contain a few other rare question types (described in Chapters 10 and 11 ofMCAT CARS Review*).

Wrong Answer Pathologies

Wrong Answer Pathology What Is It? Common Findings Faulty Use of Detail (FUD) Potentially an accurate statement, but one that fails to answer the question posed

Out of Scope (OS) A statement that brings in some element that the passage does not discuss (and that cannot be inferred from the passage)

Opposite (OPP) A statement that contains information that directly conflicts with the passage

Distortion (DIST) A statement that is extreme or twists the ideas in the passage further than the author would prefer

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