I genuinely thought I did worse on this section this time srdkgnhrsokhgnsoeig (for reference I went from 123 on FL1 to 129 now)
My science sections are at least solid though thank god
Just basically what the question asks. I noticed that a lot of times when I do FLs, I get questions that seems like super confusing and convoluted and one I notice a lot is that they make it very vague.
However, when I review it and look at the answer, it was actually really easy to do and it just seems like they wrote the question in a way to shake you in the test and ruin your confidence when you actually try to answer it for the first time.
Is there any way to clear the fog that the AAMC puts up and help with my reasoning on these kinds of questions?
Went from 504 to 513 which is honestly great despite the fact that it felt like the majority of the fucking questions I was like guessing on (especially when the fatigue hit in P/S) but honestly, I think I might actually be set for the science sections 🥹 on a side note, the physics sections actually feel a lot easier than i expected
Now, ig I just need to grind CARS even though I felt really good this exam on it sighhhh
Also for the people who ask what caused the jump. it was mostly strategy compared to the last one since i lost to a lot of 50/50s
I'm kinda stuck on what to do between my FLs
All I was able to do is review my FL, and then write down my mistakes, make Anki cards about it and review from there and also tightening my strategy on questions I shouldn't have missed. But afterwards, I'm like pretty stuck from there.
All I've been doing from this point until my FL is just redoing my section banks from two weeks ago to get a higher score (going from 65% to 90 now woohoo) to just practice my test taking strategies, and just working on my CARS score. Is there anything else I should focus on between FLs?
For some reason, while reviewing my first FL that I did yesterday, I feel really anxious that I am not gonna get the score I want, which is a 515 and that despite getting a 504, which is an okay score, I'm getting insane imposter syndrome that it was just pure luck and I got easier questions.
I am really trying keep a growth mindset to keep pushing and learn all I can from it but for some reason I am getting a low sense of self-efficacy and it is killing me.
This is kinda just a statement, but I notice a lot of times like especially when reviewing my FL, my answering logic is fine but I lose a lot of questions because I just struggle to read the passage and get the main idea and then map out how the passage is like. Should I drop the highlighter and just write down the main idea on my booklet as I do it? Should I just read the paragraph and highliight key words as I read and then map out the passage in my head as I do it?
I know for sure my biggest weakness in CARS is just my reading and retrieval of specific stuff when the passage asks for it. Because in passages on my first FL, when I understood what it's talking about, I absolutely rock it. But for passages that are more vague, I fumble; when reviewing under no pressure and looking at the passage and trying to answer again, it makes way more sense to me and I get the answer more easily. For some reason I struggle with encoding the passage structure and what it is talking about when I have to read within 4 minutes...
I want to know how to improve from my FL scores similar to how others are able to get an exponential increase in their scores? I have the breakdowns in the following screenshots.
I feel like my CARS needs the most work since I felt really rushed at the end and overall that section dragged my score the farthest down. Any advice on what to do to improve on that section will be especially great!
But for the science sections, my timing was good and I felt like I was fairly confident; I had enough time to finish and then review with roughly 10/25/15 minutes remaining respectively for each science section. Just my P/S had some really close calls so that one I feel maybe needs some more work. I feel like the mistakes can be easy to fix, and I can improve for my next FL by hopefully a couple points. I'm just wondering on what to do to help improve my score for the next FL?
I will say, that the first passage of the QPack was insanely dense and abstract that I did not get the main idea at all and was getting a headache 😭 But, I did way better than I thought (after improvising the main idea from the questions) and with roughly average timing.
Ahh, I have good hopes for how I'll do on this qpack and my FLs. Probably time to rest now though, because that was my fourth passage today (finished qpack 1 with 53% lol)
Hey all, while searching around I found a pretty good database that links essays and whatnot that (at least in my opinion) feels a lot like CARS passages. You can check it out here. Obviously, these won't be representative of what the AAMC provides but I feel like it'd be good for those like me who struggle with the reading aspect of CARS and trying to have a good recall and map.
I know I made like 500 million posts already about CARS, I literally have no talk to about this so this is my only place to let it out. But like I've deadass done 5 passages today. Only 2 out of 5 of them I managed to get around 80%. But majority of my scores are stuck at around 40%. I do not know why I struggle this hard to get good at CARS.
I literally have 30 questions left from qpack1 and I cannot even confidently say that I will do well in them and just make this entire qpack worthless since it feels like I am not even improving at all...
Like please can someone explain what I am doing wrong. My entire strategy is to try to lock in and read the entire passage. While I read, I highlight important bits of the argument that the author gives to help me stay dialed in since I notice I drift or skim through passages easily otherwise. I try to formulate a main idea of what the author said. Then, afterwards, when I go the answers, I read the question, try to localize it based on a paragraph or restate the main idea and make prediction of what answer I want and eliminate the ones I know for sure are incorrect. Though, it seems like I miss the mark almost every question.
Like I'd settle for at least 125. But I can't pull through and I'm just spiralling further and further. Like when I first did the CARS diagnostic, I managed to get at least 60% consistently, this qpack just keeps making me lose 3/5 questions. I think I'm genuinely struggling to review or something, I always hear people like say, oh just recognize their patterns or oh just make a strategy for the same question type but most often if not, I don't recognize those patterns and it bogs me down. I hate that this section is taking a toll on my overall confidence and I really want to be able to pull through and manage to get a good score, but I can't say for sure.
Just going through qpack 1 and I'm 85/120 questions in with 53% average, and like I struggle trying to be consistent at all. There are some passages where I rock them and get like 100% no problem and others where I get 40-60%. And even so, I only manage to get 100% because the questions are moderate difficulty or lower whereas I get cooked a lot on the harder question sets. It's really frustrating since I think I have a decent strategy but AAMC logic is always cooking me somehow 😞
I will say I am definitely getting a bit cooked by the physics in there, I was someone who does not really have a good physics background, especially when it comes to answering abstractly to a new situation, I struggle with that a lot with physics because I don't understand their principles too well. Is the physics qpack any harder or is supposed to be easier, cuz I need to know if I need to stress on physics more or not
I'm going between passages 8 and 9 since that's when the passages started getting easier in qpack 1, but I need some help in like trying to narrow my reasoning down because for some reason I'm like second guessing myself a lot with the logic. I can read passages just fine and understand the main idea at least 80% of the way; I can easily guess which answers are obviously wrong, and get down to two answers a lot of times. But the two answers I pick are really hard to split between and I think it's mostly just down to scope within the passage information.
This is kinda listed in the order of the screenshots but:
Like in P8, Q52: My reasoning was that, we want to promote more nonsupervisory involvement to help with businesses (very rough reasoning for the sake of brevity in this post). B felt against my prediction and C is out of scope. I was stuck with A and D, but I picked D because like it would help in involvement, but the thing is that, it's too broad, it doesn't talk about the production process, which A focuses on. Which was frustrating, because I considered it but I couldn't confidently say so.
Then in P9, Q56: I knew that A and C are not matching at all to the passage so I ignored them. Back to two now. I was conflicted between B and D. I knew schemas are mental frameworks that help us bring general information regarding situations (kinda helped from the pankow ball knowledge lmao) but I picked D. But then I double checked the passage and was like "hmm did we even talk about how to cope in these environments?" then like an idiot I decided to pick B, and be like this probably works better than D, then I review and find out that it was actually just contradicting to the end and I misunderstood this answer choice, it wasn't even in scope of this paragraph.
Lastly, P9, Q57: I was absolutely appalled at why I did this. I even highlighted: "script that not only aids in comprehending and remembering information but also helps guide behavior" and I was like "yo this might be it," but then I decided to focus on the line: "this active script available to the reader is that it provides general information," so I was like okay maybe C is better like a chud.
But like the theme is that between these three examples, I just either get way too narrow or too broad. Which is frustrating, because I know I can excel in CARS, I literally got 5/5 the next passage only because I was hyperfocusing on the answers (and they answers were a little easier tbf).
But the reading isn't hard. However, the answering part is the other half of the battle I keep choking on. I'm just losing to stupid mistakes like this. Does anyone have any advice that could help me improve from this or fix this mistake? I feel like it's super fixable I just don't know exactly how to.
The first five passages were just some bullshit, I managed to finally crack a 83% but I kept messing up to really close calls or doubts because some of the wording was off from what the passage says. It really is hard to understand their logic sometimes.
So I finished both section bank 1 and 2 (67% and 80% respectively for them) before I even started on my first FL just to get a good idea of what AAMC logic lies ahead for me, but I want to know like what do you guys do afterwards? My test is on 7/25 so I have a lot lying for me but is it just a good idea to get started with the qpacks that I think I would be most weak in? (Like physics for example with me)
Do you guys ever decide to redo the section banks to see if you can do better than last time? I'm curious on what to do!
So I finished both section bank 1 and 2 (67% and 80% respectively for them) before I even started on my first FL just to get a good idea of what AAMC logic lies ahead for me, but I want to know like what do you guys do afterwards? My test is on 7/25 so I have a lot lying for me but is it just a good idea to get started with the qpacks that I think I would be most weak in? (Like physics for example with me)
Do you guys ever decide to redo the section banks to see if you can do better than last time? I'm curious on what to do!
I'm seeing like some people saying they fly through like hundreds of cards in a single day whereas with me, I'm stuck doing like roughly 100 cards per hour (at most) because i usually slow down to make sure i remember the stuff rather than breezing through them through mere exposure. but is there some secret method i dont know about?? I am not particularly quick with Anki so I'm not sure if it's just a skill issue or not
last time i complain about this since im having like an insane fit over it but im like hard stuck at 43% now from passage 3-5. it's so hard not to get your confidence broken from this lmao, like either they give you an easy passage to read and seemingly easy but really convoluted logic in questions or a really hard passage and you stumble majority of the questions because you had zero clue what the author was even talking about
but noticing on older posts in the subreddit on how other people say they tend to do way better on the latter half of the qpack and their fls with CARS rather than this qpack so I'll trust the process here and hope I'll be a-okay 😭
I'm having conflicts about how I want to do my FLs. I was considering on doing my first two fls at home then the rest at a library, but my only issue is that the library on weekends open at 10 am at the earliest (which sucks imo since I want to emulate getting over my 8 am brainfog) so I am not sure if it's just more worth it to do my fls on the weekend at home at 8 am and just have like pseudo test like environments. I just mostly wanted to get rid of the feeling of context-dependent memory but I'm not sure if it can be helped.
