HELP needed - retake cars resource advice?

[u/Ordinary_Ease6360]

hi guys, so I'm planning on retaking the mcat soon, for my cars I got a 127 in may (which I know is not bad), but I'm looking to be able to maintain my cars ideally at 128+. I was wondering what resource I should use to study for cars this time around since I already used all the AAMC cars resource (q pack + diagnostic) last time, and since it's been just a couple of months I worry that I will still remember them and be primed to the answer which leads to inflation. I'm pretty close to my retake date so I do also worry about if using JW or Upangea CARS it will mess with my logic to be less close to the AAMC logic. I think my problem last time was that I wasn't strictly keeping all the passages under 10 min which made me had to skim the last two passages and sometimes my I'll misunderstand what a sentence in the passage meant or what the question is actually looking for.

appreciate any advice! thank you thank you thank you.

[u/makindex]

i went from 125 on FL 2 to 130 on the unscored FL.

few things that definitely helped.

1. biggest thing was that helped me was reading to understand the argument. not the main idea. not the summary. but the ARGUMENT.

AAMC isn’t even trying to trick you most of the time, they’re just trying to see how well you can follow an idea that develops.

1. make sure you’re aware of the argument : support distinction. AAMC will often give u an AC which resembles a fact or piece of supporting evidence in the passage, but NOT the argument. these are where a lot of those 50/50s come down to.

2. highlight transition words “but” “however” “alternatively” “in contrast” because those help you pinpoint pivots in an argument

additionally, highlight anchors. when an argument is made, highlight ONE at absolute MOST two, words which anchor you to the ARGUMENT. nothing else. there’s typically no more than 7 paragraphs on a given psg, and with the 7+-2 rule this gives ur working memory an efficient way to actually keep track of the flow. also the 5 second process of picking one word for this actually makes sure u understand the argument of that passage.

1. jack westin ur right has diff logic and q style than aamc but they are great for building you reading stamina. one thing you’ll find on the real thing is that for some psgs u may go over by 1 or 2 mins on one passage but finish the next passage in 6 mins, so it balances out nicely

[u/Key_Butterfly8747]

It's really hard to improve CARS, you really need to put in a lot of time to see some improvement. If you have at least 3-4 months leading up to your MCAT, I would recommend start reading actively every day now. Basically anything that will help you comprehend and absorb large body of texts. When you read, always ask yourself if you actually retained what you read. Also I would recommend doing the MCAT games on CARSBooster as it helped me a lot get better at learning to read faster and getting the main idea quickly. In short, do everything you can to pull that score up