How I Scored 131 on the MCAT CARS Section

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📚 MCAT CARS Strategy, Resources and Study Tips to Improve Your Score 📈

When I was in undergrad, I knew that I'd have to dedicate a lot of time to study for the CARS section of the MCAT (where my science-background pre-meds at?). Don't make the same mistakes I did...it'll cost you lots of time and lots of money.

In this video, I'm summarizing 8 months of dedicated preparation, experimentation and cross referencing to bring you the most relevant strategies necessary to improve your score.

Especially if you're self studying like I did. Broke students unite!

🕒 Timestamps 🕒
0:00 My story
0:49 Top CARS Resources
2:28 Best Practice Methods
5:53 90th Percentile Strategies
10:39 Traps to Avoid
11:55 Mindset for success

🔑 Key Resources 📚

✅ Let's Connect ✅
📷Instagram: ChaiTeaDarren was hacked! Please unfollow and report!
🐦Twitter: ChaiTeaDarren

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🎵Music: Permissions granted from Joseph Latitlok🎵

[DarrenChaiMD]

🕒 Timestamps 🕒
0:49 - Top CARS Resources
2:28 - Best Practice Methods
5:53 - 90th Percentile Strategies
10:39 - Traps to Avoid
11:55 - Mindset for success

🔑 Key Resources 📚

[Zarafzk]

I couldn't stop thinking about how amazing his personality was the entire time lol. Instead of making me stressed, which I already was before watching this video, he managed to make me relax, smile, and laugh throughout the entire video. Subscribed! Thank you for the helpful tips Darren!

[dsyi]

I like how you're providing mental strategies (the active reading and summarizing of each sentence). This helps so much! Other videos miss this kind of stuff

[KaiaReed]

Awesome video! Scoring that high on CARS is no small feat. Thanks for the insight! 🙏

[Nurse-Payton]

Amazing tips. I scored 122 on cars the first time around im aiming for 126-127 next time around !

[JT-txns]

There are some really good gems in here that you can't get from other places. Thanks for this!

[BilboBaggster]

Damn Darren your comprehension trick is godly

[sktergirl]

this was the most helpful and relatable cars video i've seen so far. Thanks sm!!!

[shaytanna]

I'm just about to take my last practice test before the actual MCAT (a week from today), and I'm watching this video while eating breakfast. CARS has been my weakest section by at least 3-5 pts on every practice test I've taken so far. I know they tell you not to change your strategy right before the actual exam, but I think Im gonna give this a shot and keep practicing until test day. Whatever nonsense I was doing before isn't working so hopefully this does LOL. thanks for the vid darren!

[thegentlesuite]

Great strategies. Haven’t found actual strategies until now

[yesno]

idk if you still check comments on this video but the active reading suggestion was pretty helpful. but would it be possible if you could do a cars passage together and show us what you mean by active reading and how you approached passages?

[sewpungyow]

!!! That strategy at 8:08 on strategic highlighting is something I also figured out that worked well for me. I also highlighted things that seemed like they would be relevant and would need to be referenced quickly. So I highlighted anything like "said, thought, stated" etc because it usually introduces an opinion. I also highlighted "experiment" or "study" so I'd know where to go quickly. And I also highlighted numbers for ease of reference, but that is dependent case by case for me

[inexp]

Who else was feeling nervous when the mouse stepped onto the trap with that music

[poiitlz]

Who would be churlish enough to challenge the good tips given in this video? :)

[gdulay]

I just can't do it. I do cars everyday. Broke down the passages so slowly after. Nothing works

[nunitchagucci]

Wow Why I just found this awesome video!! You deserved more views!! !<3

[serpentinee]

Hey Darren, this was awesome! I'm wondering if you have tips for gaining clinical experience as an 18 year old... it's kinda hard :(

[Shawwblagoo]

At first, I thought you misspoke when you said to summarize each sentence. However (underline this part), I went and did some practice questions right after watching this and the active reading bit made a huge difference.

I went from averaging 75%-80%, and feeling nervous about 1/2 of my answers, to 95% and feeling very confident.

My previous method was to write down the main idea of each paragraph and worked well enough. But doing a mental summary of each sentence made it soo much easier to relate the arguments from each paragraph. The passages honestly seemed more interesting when I did this method as well. The extra time it took to read was compensated by how much quicker I answered the questions.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[KDoc-iofo]

Amazing video thank you! I would super appreciate it if you can make some videos for the other sections of the MCAT too. Cheers!

[FutrDoctor]

Did you do any outlining? I do a one sentence for each paragraph so I can find what I need if I do need to go back... to be fair I test in two days so like... its gonna be what it is and I have a 125/126 in CARS right now. I really like triaging, I do it very quickly and categorize easy to hard based off how boring it will be for me to read, LOL. I also do easy ones as they come across instead of continuing to triage.