Would you mind me asking what study strategy did you use for CARS practice? I’m choosing between various prep programs, but they are all so expensive. I don’t want to waste my student loan on something that wouldn’t help me. I would so appreciate you sharing your experience and hearing your recommendations on how to score that high in CARS. – Cam”
- Scoring high in the CARS section is very important because Canadian medical schools really care about you getting a good score. To be eligible to apply to some schools e.g. OOP to Calgary, you need to achieve a minimum score of 128 out of 132. The average score for individuals accepted to McMaster was 130!! Do not take the CARS section lightly. If you take the CARS seriously, you can open up your chances at multiple schools.
- Don’t take any lecture-style prep classes. The classes teach techniques that don’t particularly help. e.g. one company teaches the weird strategy of purposely not answering questions for one of the passages. I don’t think the ones popular at UBC are worth your money.
- Get the Next Step 108 CARS! I tried other companies and liked Next Step the closest to the official AAMC practice passages.
- In the early stages of your practice, take it easy. Take your book with you out to the sundeck or lounge on your bed and do a couple passages at a leisurely pace. Just try to read carefully and really understand what type of questions they like to ask.
- Take your time with each passage rather than skim.
- In later stages, I recommend practicing by completing an entire section instead of random passage .The Next Step 108 CARS groups passages into timed sections.
- In the last few days before your real MCAT, do nothing but CARS passage after CARS passage. It’s too late for you to cram any science knowledge in so you might as well do lots of CARS.
- If you’re preparing way in advance and don’t want to waste CARS passages yet, the Reading section of the old SAT is pretty similar and good for practice. Practice until your eyes blur.
- Lastly, I want to say you don’t have to be good at English to score decently in CARS. Your university English course grades are not good predictors of CARS performance.
Hope you do well on the MCAT!
Shanna