How to Review MCAT CARS and Improve Your Score

Learn how top scorers review MCAT CARS practice questions with proven strategies for passage analysis, mistake tracking, and score improvement.

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Table of Contents

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: CARS Question Types

a) Foundations of comprehension

b) Reasoning within the text

c) Reasoning beyond the text

d) Other CARS question types

Part 3: CARS Answer Choice Types

Part 4: CARS Sample Passages

Part 5: Structuring a CARS Review Sheet

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Part 1: Introduction

As you begin studying for the Critical Analysis and Reasoning (CARS) section of the MCAT, you may be wondering how in the world you’re going to approach it. Isn’t it just something that some people are just good at and some aren’t? After all, there’s no real content to review like the other three sections, which makes CARS a much more difficult section to study for.

In addition, CARS can be trickier than critical reading sections that you may have encountered on tests like the SAT or ACT because CARS takes passages a step further than comprehension. Instead of comprehension, you’ll be asked to pick between multiple answers that could be true but only one answer choice that is correct. CARS is a big reason why the MCAT is a hard test, and you’ll need to use high-yield CARS MCAT strategies to perform well.

Many students hit the feared “score plateau” on CARS sometime in their prep. It seems that no matter what they do, they can’t seem to increase their CARS score and break out of the plateau. So, what can you do to continue improving?

The key is to work smarter and not harder by learning how to review CARS passages after you take them. In this guide, we’ll outline the types of questions and answers that CARS likes to ask, provide detailed examples of how to answer sample passages, and show you how to create a review sheet that will help maximize your score.

After reading through this guide, you’ll be well on your way to achieving an MCAT score that can get you into medical school!

A few months out from your MCAT and your practice scores won't budge? Plateaus are more common than you think. In this clip, Dr. S explains what a plateau is telling you and how to break through it.

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Part 2: CARS Question Types

The CARS section of the MCAT uses three main question types:

1.     Foundations of Comprehension

2.     Reasoning Within the Text

3.     Reasoning Beyond the Text

Each type of question comes with its own challenges, but you can still take solace in one fact that is always true: no matter the difficulty of a question, the correct answer will always be supported by text within the passage! Now, let’s go through the three types in a little bit more detail.

Foundations of Comprehension

Questions within the “Foundations of Comprehension” category will test if you have a fundamental understanding of the meaning of the passage. This means the MCAT will ask you detail-oriented questions. These types of questions typically have question stems like “According to the passage” or “All of the following are true except…”.

The next type of question under the “Foundations of Comprehension” category will test you about the function of a part of the passage. For example, the question might ask you, “Why did the author include ____?” These types of questions test if you can follow the logic of the passage.

The third and final type of question in this category asks for the main idea of the passage. Simply put, these questions test whether you understand the purpose of the passage as a whole.

Reasoning Within the Text

“Reasoning Within the Text” questions ask you to synthesize multiple parts of the text in order to develop a reasonable conclusion. These questions primarily include inference questions and use words or phrases like “imply”, “suggest”, and “most likely to be true”.

Imply questions are a common place that we see students get tripped up on the MCAT CARS section. The test writers want you to make an inference that makes sense but is not correct or supported by the passage. Be wary of these types of wrong answer choices!

Reasoning Beyond the Text

Finally, questions within the “Reasoning Beyond the Text” category require you take the passage information and extrapolate to a broader meaning or apply the information to a different context. These questions bring in new information and ask what the author would say about it given the passage or provide different answer choices and ask which most closely resembles information from the passage. One common CARS “Reasoning Beyond the Text” question gives four options and asks which one would most likely strengthen or weaken the author’s main argument.

Other CARS Question Types

There are two other common types of questions to give special consideration. The first is “negative” questions that include not or least. (Note: This is where reading too fast can cause you to miss easy points on the exam!) Many questions will say, for example, “Which of these is least likely…” If you are rushing too quickly, you may lose sight of the “negative” and pick an incorrect answer. This can happen even if you understood the passage well, and there’s nothing more frustrating than leaving points on the table. Look out for these types of questions and eliminate all of the true answers before selecting the “correct” one.

The second type of question to pay special attention to is the Roman numeral question. On these questions, you’ll receive three options (I, II, and III), and then the answer options (A-D) will give different combinations of the numerals, such as “I and III” or “II only”. These questions are more difficult because you could know that option I is correct and option II is wrong. However, if you’re unsure about option III, you may still get the question incorrect.

The first strategy to handle these questions is to start with the number (I, II, or III) that you are most sure about and eliminate the answer choices that do not include that number. Another strategy is to check if two options contradict and eliminate answer choices that include the contradicting options. Finally, it is important to note that all three roman numerals could be correct, so don’t discount “I, II, and III” as an option if it’s presented!

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Part 3: CARS Answer Choice Types

Now that we’ve gone over the types of questions that are typically found in CARS, let’s dive into the types of answer choices— namely wrong answer choices—that CARS often presents. In general, CARS likes to present enticing answer choices that will separate the casual reader from the critical reader. However, if you can identify the types of wrong answers that are most often presented, you’ll become more adept at avoiding these misleading choices.

We’ll discuss five common wrong answer choice types here:

1. Opposite. One common type of wrong answer choice gives the opposite answer of what the question asks. If you pay close attention to the passage and the language of the question, these will be among the easiest to eliminate. However, as discussed above, CARS often asks questions using not or least, so look out for these words.

2. Unrelated. The second type of wrong answer choice provides an option that is not related to the passage. This answer choice could be something that is typically associated with the topic of the passage but is not actually discussed within the passage. Therefore, if you read and comprehend the passage thoroughly, this type of answer choice should also be easy to eliminate. If you ever think that you’re answer choice might be unrelated, go back to the passage and double check what the author actually wrote.

3. Extreme. The third type of wrong answer choice is one that presents an extreme. These answer choices will often use words like “all”, “every”, or “never”. Most of the time, you can rule these out because CARS usually tests you on more nuanced opinions. While these answer choices can be correct on occasion, you’ll need to make sure that the extreme viewpoint is clearly supported by the passage.

4. Beyond the sphere. The fourth type of wrong answer choice is one that is related to the passage but is beyond the sphere of knowledge encompassed by the passage. What do we mean by sphere? Think of the words, ideas, arguments, and examples of an MCAT passage as existing within a sphere. Anything that cannot be concretely tied back to the passage should not be in the sphere.

A common wrong answer choice that students pick exists just outside of the sphere. These are often difficult to eliminate because they may make sense logically based on our preconceptions. CARS likes to bait students into extrapolating too far from the information presented in the passage. Since CARS requires no outside knowledge, every answer can be found in the passage. Therefore, the best way to avoid these types of answers is to ground your answer choice in specific text from the passage.

5. Misused passage information. The fifth and final type of wrong answer choice presents information that is mentioned in the passage but does not directly answer the given question. This type of answer is the most challenging to avoid because you may recognize the content of an answer choice from the passage. However, you have to ask yourself if that answer choice makes sense in the context of the actual question being asked.

These are roughly the five types of answer choices that CARS uses. The only way to get better at avoiding these traps is through continued practice and reviewing not just the correct answer but why the wrong answers are wrong. You may also find it helpful to make your own classifications of wrong answer choices in a way that makes sense to you. At the end of the day, if you can clearly and concisely explain why one answer choice is correct and why the other three are wrong, you’ll begin to see an improvement on your MCAT CARS section. 

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Part 4: CARS Sample Passages

Let’s now go over two example passages and the corresponding questions. Try to first answer the questions yourself, and then as an added bonus, we’ll show you how a 132 CARS scorer reasons through each answer choice. As a warning, these passages are likely the longest and most difficult you’d receive on an MCAT exam. Practicing with difficult passages, however, is one of the best ways to improve your score! 

CARS Sample Passage #1

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves.

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. The planet Mars revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world. Long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence.

Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there.  Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from time’s beginning but nearer its end. The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars.

The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence. It would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. 

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-bye, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

Material used in this test passage has been adapted from the following source:

H.G. Wells (1898). The War of the Worlds. Harper and Bros, New York. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm. 

1.     Which of the following reasons are not given for why Martians will invade the Earth?

A)     Their planet is cooling too quickly to sustain life

B)    They are jealous of the conditions of Earth

C)     Human beings have exterminated whole races

D)    Their intelligence exceeds that of humans

2.     From paragraph 3, we can infer that: 

A)     The author was born before 1900

B)    The earth will become colder over time

C)     The equator is the only place where life exists on Mars

D)    Mars does not have four seasons

3.     If true, which of the following would most strongly challenge the main idea of the passage?

A)     Martians have also exterminated other species on their planet

B)    The earliest recorded writings about Mars date back to 1826

C)     71% of current university scientists believe there is life on Mars

D)    A new and proven dating method has shown that the Earth is older than Mars

4.     The author’s opinion toward human beings can be best characterized as: 

A)     Critical

B)    Indifferent

C)    Unrelenting hatred

D)    Unforgiving 

5.     Based on the arguments in the passage, what would the author most likely say about war?

A)     War is never justified

B)    Desperation causes wars

C)     Wars are inevitable

D)    There is not enough information in the passage

6.     The author mentions monkeys and lemurs to:

I.               Illustrate the human view of Martians

II.             Give examples of forgotten species

III.           Make a comparison to human beings 

A)     I only

B)    III only

C)     I and III

D)    I, II, and III 

Answer key for passage #1

1. The correct answer is C. This is a “Foundation of Comprehension” question that contains not in it, so we should go through each answer choice and eliminate the answer choices that both appear in the passage and answer the question. Paragraph 3 explains that Mars has cooled to a point that is not conducive to life (choice A is incorrect), Paragraph 2 says that the Martians regarded Earth “with envious eyes” (choice B is incorrect), and the first paragraph references the intelligence of the Martians, while the last paragraph discusses their “mathematical learning” (choice D is incorrect). The passage mentions that humans have exterminated other races like the Tasmanians. However, that has nothing to do with why the Martians will invade Earth (choice C is correct).

2. The correct answer is B. This question falls under “Reasoning Within the Text” because it asks us to infer. Looking at paragraph 3, the end of the 19th century is mentioned, but there is no information about when the author lived (choice A is incorrect). The equator is also mentioned and inferred to be the warmest part of Mars, but there is no information about where life exists on the planet. As such, it would be too far of a jump to reason that the equator is the only place where life can exist (choice C is incorrect). The paragraph also mentions Mars’s “slow seasons” but gives no information about the number of seasons (choice D is incorrect). The paragraph states: “The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbor. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter.” Here, the author states that Mars is cold, and earth will soon follow (choice B is correct).

3. The correct answer is D. This question falls under “Reasoning Beyond the Text” because it asks the reader to consider how new information fits in with the passage. For this problem, it is beneficial to first think about the main idea of the passage. Our summary is that human beings have ignored the prospect of intelligent and superior beings on Mars because of their self-centeredness, and the Martians have been planning an invasion due to the pressing physical condition of their planet. Now let’s see which answer choice most directly challenge this summary.

Martians exterminating other species on their planet does not challenge the main premise (choice A is incorrect). The author says that no one in the 19th century believed in intelligent and superior life on Mars. However, the author doesn’t say that people did not know about Mars (choice B is incorrect). Furthermore, the author admits that “At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves.” Therefore, Choice C does not challenge the passage’s main idea. However, part of the author’s main argument is that Mars is older than Earth and thus closer to its end, which has caused Martians to want to invade Earth. Therefore, a revelation that Earth is older than Mars would challenge the premise of the passage (choice D is correct).

4. The correct answer is A. This question falls under the “Reasoning Within the Text” category. Choice B is the opposite of the right answer since the author is very opinionated and talks directly about the faults of human beings (choice B is incorrect). The passage does not provide any information about whether or not the author is forgiving (choice D is incorrect). Choice C is enticing because the author berates human beings, but Choice A is a more precise characterization.

5. The correct answer is B. This question falls under the “Reasoning Beyond the Text” category. It is too extreme to state that war is never justified (choice A is incorrect). Furthermore, the author makes no value judgments on war or conflict besides condemning the extermination of other races. The passage does say, “The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts.” This doesn’t necessarily mean the author believes all war is inevitable (choice C is incorrect), but it does suggest that the author would agree that desperation can lead to war (choice B is correct).

6. The correct answer is B. This question falls under the “Foundations of Comprehension” category. The passage says, “And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us.” This makes it clear that the way Martians see humans is similar to how we see monkeys and lemurs, not the opposite (choice I is incorrect). There is also no information suggesting monkeys and lemurs are forgotten species (choice II is incorrect). The only correct statement is that humans are compared to monkeys and lemurs because they are seen as lowly, just as monkeys and lemurs are seen as lowly (choice III is correct). Therefore, the correct answer is Choice B.

Note: We’ll structure a review sheet in the final section of this section

CARS Sample Passage #2

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks.  The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles. During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold. We had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there. Our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet. I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning.  

Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time. After relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.

I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, “like stalwart soldiers.”  The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others. How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back!  But, to the little ones at least, this was denied. Each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.

I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon: his absence was a relief to me.  I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did at last.

One afternoon, as I was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing. I recognized almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose en masse, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted.  A long stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead.  I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.

I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my disposition; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature.  All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise, —I had been looking out daily for the “Coming Man,” whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there he was.

He stood at Miss Temple’s side; he was speaking low in her ear: I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy. I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt.  I listened too; and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said: its import relieved me from immediate apprehension.

Material used in this test passage has been adapted from the following source:

Charlotte Bronte (1897). Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. Service and Paton, London. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm.

1. Information from the passage suggests that Mr. Brocklehurst:

A)     Disliked the author

B)    Was the principal of the school

C)     Revealed the author’s secrets

D)    Was respected in the school 

 2. In paragraph 2, the word “great” most nearly means:

A)     Large

B)    Important

C)     Older

D)    Distinguished

3. The author is most concerned with her:

A)     Reputation

B)    Material needs

C)     Education

D)    Safety 

4. The revelation that Mr. Brocklehurst brought extra supplies for many of the girls would:

A)    Strengthen the author’s viewpoint

B)    Prove the author’s viewpoint

C)    Not affect the author’s viewpoint

D)    Refute the author’s viewpoint  

5. The author describes Mr. Brocklehurst’s physical features to:

I.               Provide the reader with a mental image

II.             Reflect his internal characteristics

III.           Make a comparison to a familiar object 

A)     I only

B)    I and III

C)     II and III

D)    I, II, and III

6. Based on the passage, the relationship between Miss Temple and the girls most closely resembles the relationship between:

A)     A general and soldiers

B)    A boss and employees

C)     A tennis instructor and pupils

D)    A doctor and patients

Answer key for passage #2

1. The correct answer is D. From the word “suggests,” we know that this question falls in the “Reasoning Within the Text” category. There is not enough information to ascertain Mr. Brocklehurst’s feelings toward the author (choice A is incorrect). Furthermore, he could be the principal, but we don’t know this from the passage (choice B is incorrect). At the end of the passage, the author was relieved even though she overheard Mr. Brocklehurst (choice C is incorrect). The fact that the entire school rose for Mr. Brocklehurst suggests that he was respected (choice D is correct).

2. The correct answer is C. This question falls under the “Foundations of Comprehension” category. Paragraph 2 says, “From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.” From this, we can eliminate both “important” and distinguished” (choices B and D are incorrect). “Large” is an enticing choice since “great” is juxtaposed to “little ones” in the excerpt. However, from the previous sentence referring to the “younger pupils,” we can see that “great” refers to age and not size (choice A is incorrect; choice C is correct).

3. The correct answer is A. This question falls under the “Foundations of Comprehension” category. Paragraph 1 says, “The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot.” Thus, we can eliminate “material needs” (choice B is incorrect). There is no information indicating that the author fears for her safety or her education (choices C and D are incorrect). The author seems most concerned that Mr. Brocklehurst will expose her as a “bad child.” This fear most closely concerns her reputation (choice A is correct).

4. The correct answer is C. This question falls under the “Reasoning Beyond the Text” category since it introduces new information. First, let’s summarize the author’s viewpoint of Mr. Brocklehurst from the passage. As stated earlier, she is frightened that he will reveal her dark past and describes his appearance as “more rigid than ever”. He could be bringing supplies for the girls because he was asked to, out of sympathy for them, out of obligation, or any number of other reasons. Therefore, this doesn’t necessarily refute the author’s viewpoint (choice D is incorrect) because she is most concerned with him exposing her and sees him as rigid. It also does not strengthen or prove her viewpoint because it is largely unrelated to his rigidity or potential to damage to her reputation (choices A and B are incorrect). Therefore, the author’s viewpoint is largely unaffected by this new information (choice C is correct).

5. The correct answer is D. This question falls under the “Foundations of Comprehension” category because it asks about the function of an aspect of the passage. The author says, “presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead.  I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.” This excerpt provides a mental image of Mr. Brocklehurst (choice I is correct), reflects the author’s view of Mr. Brocklehurst by referring to him as “narrower” and “rigid” (choice II is correct), and makes a comparison to a familiar object through the black column (choice III is correct). Therefore, the correct answer is Choice D.

6. The correct answer is C. This question falls under the “Reasoning Beyond the Text” category because it provides analogies to outside relationships. It is beneficial first to see what the passage says about Miss Temple and the girls. Paragraph 3 indicates that she was the only teacher to encourage the girls and lead by example. Both bosses and generals tend to give orders instead of leading by example (choices A and B are incorrect). The passage mentions soldiers, but this is not the best characterization of the relationship of Miss Temple to the girls. Doctors give advice or treatment to their patients, which also does not constitute leading by example (choice D is incorrect). Only the tennis instructor leads by showing pupils how to play and encouraging them (choice C is correct).

(You can check out more MCAT CARS Practice Passages here.)

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Part 5: Structuring a CARS Review Sheet

Now that we’ve gone over two sample passages, let’s move on to structuring a review sheet. The most looked-over step among many students studying for CARS is reviewing their answers in detail, but this is one of the most important steps towards improving your CARS score. In doing so, you can highlight your weaknesses clearly and work to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Here is an example of how you could structure a review sheet based on Passage 1 above:

Sample CARS Review Sheet

Passage 1: 2 correct out of 6

Correct Question Type What did I do wrong? Wrong answer choice type? What should I do next time?
Question 1
No
Comprehension
Did not read question closely enough
Opposite
Slow down to avoid simple mistakes
Question 2
No
Reasoning Within
Made too big of a logical leap
Beyond the sphere
Anchor my answer to info from the passage
Question 3
No
Reasoning Beyond
Saw an answer that was in the passage but didn’t answer the question
Misused passage information
Reason through the answer choices instead of picking a familiar choice
Question 4
Yes
Reasoning Within
Question 5
No
Reasoning Beyond
Answered based on my own preconceived notions instead of what the author said
Extreme
Anchor my answer to info from the passage
Question 6
Yes
Comprehension

The important part of your review sheet is not that you structure it exactly like this but that you highlight what types of questions you answered incorrectly and why you selected incorrect answer choices so you can learn from your mistakes. The more specific you are, the better!

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Dr. Shemmassian

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and well-known expert on college admissions, medical school admissions, and graduate school admissions. For over 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into elite institutions.

https://www.shemmassianconsulting.com/about/author/shirag-shemmassian
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