Best Cars Practice Mcat

Then you can do some practice with other materials.

What CARS passages you should use

I wanted to give you some advice on which passages you should be using to get the best CARS score.

How you practice determines how you perform. So it matters a lot that you use the best passages for CARS.

Here’s the basics: if you want to get better at CARS you need to be using the passages that are the most representative of what you’ll see on the actual test.

And the most representative passages – BY FAR – are the AAMC CARS Question Packs.

These are the main practice passages actually put out by the test maker.

So what about the test prep companies? How are their passages?

Pretty mediocre, to be honest.

There is no test prep company that I have ever found that really resembles the AAMC passages very closely.

Not Kaplan, not Princeton Review, not Examkrackers, not Next Step, not Testing Solutions, not Khan Academy.

So if you’re actually in the process of learning the strategy for CARS, you need to focus on the AAMC material.

But the Question Packs only have 43 passages total!And if you’re regularly working through passages that can go pretty quickly.

So here’s how you should structure your CARS practice:

• First work through the AAMC CARS Question Packs. Space them out, review them very carefully and learn as much as you possibly can from them. This can take about 5-6 weeks.
• If you still have a while until your test date, do some passages from UWorld
• Once you’re a few weeks out from your test date, go back and re-do the Question Pack passages.

Now, why am I recommending working with UWorld passages? Didn’t I just say not to do that? Not quite.

Test-prep company passages like that are fine to do once you’ve already learned how to do CARS. But they’re not good for actually learning the strategy.

That means you need to do the AAMC material first. That’s where you will actually learn the strategy.

Then you can do some practice with other materials.

And out of the test-prep materials available, I think UWorld puts out the best CARS passages (though they’re still not as good as the AAMC. ).

Best MCAT CARS Practice Books 2022

Practicing passage problems after passage problems is essential for the CARS section on the MCAT. The CARS section does not cover any previous knowledge from your pre-med courses and tends to be the most difficult section on the MCAT. Here are the best available practice resources for CARS.

#1 AAMC

When it comes to practice problems, the AAMC should always come first. This is simply because they are the creators of the MCAT and therefore any problems produced by the actual test-makers will be most accurate to the MCAT language.

The AAMC sells 2 question packs devoted to the CARS section. Each question pack has 120 questions. They also have 4 practice tests, as well as the official guide to the MCAT, which has additional CARS practice passages.

All the CARS passages are online and formated exactly like the actual MCAT providing a test day experience for every practice session.

• Made by the MCAT test-takers.
• Formated like the actual MCAT.

#2 The Princeton Review MCAT CARS Workbook

After the AAMC, The Princeton Review CARS workbook is the best for practicing the CARS section. With almost 300 pages of practice problems and solutions, this book provides a lot of great extra practice.

Accuracy

The number 1 important quality of this book is its relatability to the actual MCAT exam.

The Princeton Review does a great job of capturing the elements of the AAMC’s CARS passages. Specifically, the length of the passages, the way certain sentences are stressed more than others, and, most importantly, the lack of interesting articles that the AAMC likes to use.

Solutions

The CARS workbook does an excellent job with reviewing passages. The solutions section reviews each answer choice, explaining why the correct answer was right and the incorrect answers were wrong.

They will also provide you the “bottom line” of the passages which is the overall theme of the passage. This is similar to a thesis for an essay. Having this “bottom line” in the solutions really helps gauge whether or not you actually read the passage properly and understood what it was trying to say.

In addition to the “bottom line”, The Princeton Review will tell you the difficulty level of the passage and whether or not you should have done that passage first or later. Being able to distinguish the difficulty level of a CARS passage is crucial for timing.

The reality is that you will only have time to do about 7 of the CARS passages properly. You will have to rush through the final 2 passages and you want to make sure you save the most difficult ones for last. You want to make sure you spend the most time on passages you know you can get 100% correct.

Finally, the solutions section offers a great chart to document your progress. This chart has you put in the passage number, the type of question you got wrong, the attractor that led you to that answer, and a place to explain what you did wrong. This helps you keep track of what kind of mistakes you are making and how you can improve.

Price/Availability

The major pitfall of The Princeton Review CARS workbook is its price and availability. Purchasing this book new can be expensive due to the lack of production The Princeton Review seems to be doing.

There are a lot of used copies you can find. However, be careful when purchasing a used MCAT book. You need to make sure you get one that is minimally marked up. There is no point practicing CARS passages that have all the correct answers circled.

Conclusion

Out of all the CARS practice problems out there, aside from the AAMC, we believe The Princeton Review CARS workbook is the most accurate study source. With great problem explanations and the ability to chart your progress, this book is a no brainer first choice for your MCAT CARS practice arsenal.

• Most accurate to the MCAT aside from the AAMC.
• Great explanations.
• Helps you keep tract of problems you are struggling with.