🎯 4.2 How Will Skills 1 and 2 Be Tested?

4.2 How Will Skills 1 and 2 Be Tested?

4.2 How Will Skills 1 and 2 Be Tested?

The differences between Skills 1 and 2 require a different approach to assess whether you have acquired the reasoning skills that will help you be successful in medical school and as a physician. This section explores how the skills are tested for each of the four question types as well as how these questions will appear on Test Day.

Skill 1

Skill 1 questions are fairly simple. These are often easy points on Test Day as long as you have conducted a thorough and effective content review prior to Test Day. However, getting Skill 1 questions correct on Test Day is only a small piece of earning a high score; you will have to be proficient in all four skills. Skill 1 questions can be separated into the following categories:

• Discrete questions

• Straightforward, direct questions, either addressing relationships between concepts or identifying a single detail or characteristics regarding a concept.

• Questions that could stand alone from the passage

• Very similar to discrete questions, often thematically related to the passage.

• Require identification of a single concept or relationship without a multi-step reasoning process.

• Questions that require data from the passage

• Require minimal analysis of data from the passage, often connecting information from the passage to scientific concepts

• Identification of a scientific concept with a graph or table may be required.

• A mathematical equation may be presented, and you may be requested to use this equation to solve a problem.

• Questions that require the goal of the passage

• Skill 1 questions are unlikely to require this level of analysis. When they do, the questions are simple and require identification of a relationship between a scientific concept and a fundamental piece of information in the passage.

Skill 2

Skill 2 questions are extremely common on Test Day. In fact, this was an extremely common question type on previous versions of the MCAT. Skill 2 questions can be separated into the following categories:

• Discrete questions

• Require you to understand a particular concept and then link that concept with the task of the question.

• No passage is associated; thus, the scope of the answer is limited to the scope of the question.

• Questions that stand alone from the passage

• Much like discrete questions but often thematically related to the passage.

• May require application of knowledge related to the passage but not specifically mentioned in it.

• Questions that require data from the passage

• Likely to require calculations, evaluation of data, connection of the data with scientific principles, and use of scientific data and knowledge to draw conclusions related to information presented in the ­passage.

• May require interpretation or analysis of graphs, tables, or diagrams.

• May require you to apply information obtained from the passage to a new situation not presented in the passage.

• May ask you to analyze the relationship between two variables in terms of causation and ­correlation.

• Questions that require the goal of the passage

• Will require you to interpret the passage as a whole and connect the passage with your knowledge about scientific principles or your knowledge about a natural or social phenomenon.

• May require you to identify arguments about cause and effect as supported by the passage or new ­evidence provided in the question stem.

• Information may be presented in the question stem that either strengthens or weakens the argument made in the passage. You will be asked to identify how this new information is related to the passage as a whole.

• May expect you to draw conclusions from the information presented in the passage or evaluate the validity of a conclusion based on evidence from the passage.