Preparing for the MCAT may seem daunting. But for the science-based portions of the exam, your preparation path is conveniently outlined in your premed prerequisites.
Completing biology, biochemistry, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, psychology and sociology during your undergraduate years provides you with the foundational skills necessary to succeed on the first three parts of the MCAT.
But when it comes to the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills — or CARS — section, the path to developing a strong foundation may be less clear. For the CARS section, you have 90 minutes to answer 53 questions that test your understanding and interpretation of short reading passages.
These passages, often between 500 and 600 words, test you in comprehension, analysis and reasoning within and beyond the text. As such, it makes sense that taking humanities-based classes may help you prepare.
[Discover three ways to prepare for the MCAT as a premed student. ]
But with so many types of humanities courses to choose from, how do you decide which ones will help you develop the skills necessary to achieve a high score? Review these essential skills and class suggestions to help you develop a solid foundation for the CARS section.
1. Develop comprehension with poetry analysis: To evaluate your foundations of comprehension, the CARS section test your understanding the key information in the passage and how you draw meaning from rhetorical devices, text structure and word choice. Perhaps no other form of literary analysis can help you strengthen these skills as effectively as poetry, given that it uses myriad literary devices to convey meaning.
Devote a semester to taking a poetry class and carefully combing through poetic structures and word choice for their surface and deeper meanings. This can train you to develop a nuanced sense of how conscious decisions the author makes dictate the overall message and impression of a work.
[Learn how to match MCAT prep to your learning style.]
2. Learn reasoning within the text with philosophy: Philosophy is a discipline that is famous for carefully structured, complex arguments. From the classics of Plato to the more modern essays of Michel Foucault, philosophical texts ask readers to review the argument or claim the philosopher makes and judge it according to specific criteria.
And that is exactly what the MCAT stipulates you do in the CARS section so as to test your reasoning within text.
During your undergraduate studies, be sure to take an introductory philosophy class or a philosophy course that specifically focuses on reasoning. By learning to analyze the intricacies of philosophical works, you will become adept at locating arguments within a text, identifying how an author chooses to support his or her claims and evaluating whether that support is effective or problematic. These abilities are critical to earning a high score on the CARS section.
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3. Master reasoning beyond the text writing fiction: In addition to helping you cultivate improved writing skills for the medical school admissions essays you will soon pen, enrolling in a fiction-writing course can prompt you to explore alternative endings, different perspectives and the ways in which events culminate for a final effect.
Similar to how the CARS section tests two aspects of your comprehension, it will also test your reasoning beyond the text in two ways. First, you are tested on how you can take information from the original passage and apply this to a new situation. Second, the CARS section will test how you take new information from a test question, add this to the original passage and then analyze the effects.
By crafting your own works of fiction, you learn how the subtle construction of detail affects the overall outcome of the text. Any feedback you receive from your classmates or instructors can also assist you in exploring how new information and perspectives can lead to fresh meanings.
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Undergrad Courses to Take for MCAT Success originally appeared on usnews.com
