The Ultimate Tactical Guide to CARS

‍First question: “Why should I trust you?”

Great question!

We (Chris and Dr. D 👋) spent over 10 years in leadership roles at the largest MCAT companies (you can probably guess them). We scored in the 99th percentile on CARS multiple times, know AAMC logic inside and out, and have helped 1000s of students like you crush CARS.

A challenging thing about CARS is all the conflicting advice out there. There are a ton of CARS guides on Reddit, but they often explain a process that worked specifically for that student, i.e., n=1.

Imagine you had an MCAT expert sift through all the 100s of CARS guides and experiences, and distilled the best parts into one place. That’s our goal with this guide.

Ready? Let’s get started.

The Basics of CARS

First, the gist of CARS if you’re new:

• 9 passages (5–7 questions each)
• 53 questions total
• 90 minutes total
• ~10 minutes/passage should be your goal pace
• 2 types of passages - Social Sciences or Humanities. Think Ancient Greece, philosophy, economics, theater, art, music, etc. (Truthfully, it doesn’t matter if it’s a social science or humanities passage. The same strategies apply.)

• Scored from 118–132. Average score = 125. Competitive scores are 127+.

How to Improve Your CARS Score

• Practice AND Review. The only way to improve at CARS is by practicing CARS material AND reviewing your mistakes. We’ll break down exactly how to do this (with our handy CARS Tracker), but if you’re not reviewing every mistake to fix your thinking, you’re wasting valuable practice.
• Start with untimed practice, then switch to timed practice. When you’re just starting, only focus on getting the right answer. Once you get better at answering the questions, you can work on your pacing. Master the process, then worry about the clock.
• Realize CARS is a unique and artificial reading test. The more you practice it, the more you’ll notice repeating patterns in arguments, evidence, trap answer choices, and more. Which will make you faster at answering the passages.
• Reading non-CARS material is a waste of time. CARS passages are unique in the way they’re constructed. If you like reading the NY Times and The Economist, go for it. But they rarely write arguments the way CARS does. And most importantly, they don’t have any questions to test if you really understood the article or not.
• Focus on WHY you’re getting questions wrong, not WHAT type. It doesn’t matter if a question is Foundations of Comprehension or Reasoning Beyond the Text. They’re all worth the same, and students often can’t identify which category a question belongs in. It’s more important to focus on why you got that question wrong, what was the error you made, and how can you correct it going forward? Did you misunderstand the passage, or question, or fall for a wrong answer trap? Track these in your CARS Tracker Tool, we'll explain how to do this in the How to Review CARS Questions section below.
• Do the passages in order. Don’t skip around, and don’t try to identify a passage as an easy or hard one. If you want a good CARS score, you need to answer all the passages anyway. It’s impossible to determine in 15 seconds if a passage and its questions are going to be hard or easy.

How to Read CARS Passages

• Take 3 deep, slow breaths before every passage. Often, we see a student thinking about a previous passage while reading the new passage, causing them to be distracted. Take a moment to reset and clear your mind before starting a new passage.
• Take 5 seconds to skim the passage. Quickly scan the passage, look at keywords, the first sentence of each paragraph, and the source to get an idea of what the passage is about. This helps frame what you’re about to read. It should be as simple as saying “This passage is about music and ethics”.
• Pretend you LOVE the topic. This seriously works. After you skim the passage, you need to think “I LOVE music and ethics!! Let’s get into it!” Even though you’re reading silently, read with an enthusiastic voice in your head. Don’t let the voice in your head be monotone, hear and feel the author’s inflection as you read.
• Spend ~3–4 minutes reading the passage. When you’re first starting, take as much time as you need, but work towards a goal of 3-4 minutes to read the passage.
• Your 2 goals are to understand the general argument and create a mental map. You don’t need to know every small detail. The goal is to find out the main idea the author is presenting, and have a mental map of how the passage flows so you know where to reference for questions. At the end of the passage you want to say to yourself the main idea of the passage and the general flow, for example:
  • ‍“This passage is about how music can help build a more ethical and inclusive world. The author talks about several examples of that like sonata-allegro and Kronos Quartet, but warns that it can also hurt certain groups of people. Overall they seem in support of it.”

When reading a passage:

DO:

• Vary your reading speed. Slow down when you get to a key argument or shift in the passage, speed up when you hit supporting examples.
• Quickly summarize each paragraph in your head after you read it. It only needs to be a few words, what was the point of this paragraph? How does it connect to the previous paragraph?
• Pay attention to signpost words. When an author says “However,” “In contrast,” “But,” “Yet,”– that is a flag the passage is about to take a turn. Slow down and pay close attention to what the author is conveying.
• Pay attention to who says what. CARS passages will often bounce back and forth between arguments. A common AAMC answer trap is to mix up who said what argument. Highlighting names helps keep this clear in your mental model and for easy referencing during questions.

DON’T:

• Don’t try to understand the passage perfectly. There is usually a confusing paragraph or sentence in a passage. Try not to re-read anything too much. You may waste time trying to understand something that isn’t even asked about. Make a note of what it generally talks about, and if you get a question on it, you can spend time then to re-read it.
• Don’t over-highlight. You want to highlight names, dates, conclusions, main ideas. As you practice more, you’ll get the hang of things you want to highlight.
• Don’t skim the passage. Ever get to the bottom of a passage and realize you don't remember anything you just read? If you’re summarizing what you’ve read after every paragraph, this won’t happen!
• Don't focus on all the details. The details will be there for reference when you're answering the questions. Your goal is to find the main idea, and if you see evidence in support of it, make a note and move on.

How to Answer CARS Questions

OK, you’ve read the passage! Now it’s time to answer the questions in 3 steps.

1. Categorize. If you don’t know what the question is asking you to do, you’re not going to get the right answer. Rephrase the question in your own words. Identify whether the answer is likely to be stated in the passage, or simply implied and based on the main idea.

2. Predict. If the question is referencing something in the passage (either by telling you the paragraph number, or a key phrase), go back for research and develop a prediction to the answer. Read the sentence directly before AND after the key phrase. Use a complete sentence for your prediction, not keywords or fragments.

• If the question isn’t referencing a specific part in the passage (ex. “What is the main idea?”), skip to step 3.

3. Eliminate the 3 wrong answers. Don’t look for the right answer. Compare each answer choice to your prediction and eliminate it if it doesn’t match. If any part of an answer is wrong, eliminate it.

Tips on Answering CARS Questions

• Every correct answer is in the passage. CARS is unique because it doesn’t depend on prior knowledge, but on your ability to locate and reason through the information in the text. Every correct answer is in the text, even dreaded Reasoning Beyond the Text questions.
• Stay within the scope of the passage. Don’t bring any outside knowledge. If it wasn’t said in the passage, then it doesn’t exist. The AAMC loves distractor answer choices that sound right, but have no text evidence.
• Be wary of absolutes like “always” and “never” in answer choices. Often this makes an answer incorrect, but not always! If the author has a very strong opinion in one direction, it could be the correct answer.
• If you’re stuck between 2 answers, go with the most direct one. If you’re making crazy logical leaps to justify an answer as ‘technically correct’, it’s probably not correct.
• Don’t eliminate answers you don’t understand. You should only eliminate an answer choice if you know why you’re eliminating it, not because it’s confusing.
• Don’t get stuck on a question. If you’re spending too much time on a question, look at the clock and give yourself 30 seconds. Eliminate any answer choices you can. When 30 seconds is up, guess, mark, and move on.
• Highlight the words LEAST, EXCEPT, NOT in questions. These questions want you to pick something opposite of the passage. Often we see students look at an answer and say “Yeah this answer matches the passage!” and get it wrong. Highlight the EXCEPTION words to remind yourself to pick the opposite of the passage.

How to Review CARS Questions

Congratulations, you answered the passage and got your results! Now comes the critical part that will improve your score: how to properly review your questions and learn from your mistakes.

• If you got the question correct, skim the explanation to make sure your thinking was correct (and you didn’t just get lucky).
• If you got the question incorrect, don’t look at the explanation just yet. Look back at the passage and try to see what you missed. Did you misunderstand the passage, the question, or the answer choice? Take your time to identify the error and why the correct answer is correct. Once you have a hypothesis on what you got wrong, review the provided explanation and compare it to your reasoning. This process ensures you actively learn from your mistakes.
• Try not to get frustrated at wrong answers. I know, you spent 3 minutes staring at a question, and picked the wrong answer. It’s tempting to say “It’s a bad question!!” but each question you get wrong during your prep is an opportunity to learn and not make the same mistake on test day.
• Download this CARS Tracker for your wrong answers. The act of writing down what your mistake was and how to fix it next time will greatly improve your CARS ability. Over time you’ll be able to see a pattern of why you’re getting questions incorrect and will know what to focus on for the next passage. Are you getting questions incorrect because you misunderstood the passage, the question, or the answer choices?

If you’re misunderstanding:

• The passage: Slow down when reading, and make sure you’re reading the sentence before and after if you’re referencing a piece of the passage.
• The question: Did you miss a keyword like “except,” “most likely,” or “implies”? These little details can completely change what the question is asking. Slow down and make sure you fully understand the question before jumping to an answer. Practice rephrasing the question in your own words to make it clearer.
• The answer choice: CARS uses the same common traps on all its distractors. We looked at all of the AAMC material and categorized them into 13 traps. As you practice on MCAT Bootcamp you’ll be able to see which traps you fall for most often and how to adjust your thinking to avoid them.

Common Wrong Answer Traps the AAMC Loves

We analyzed all the AAMC CARS questions and reverse-engineered the 13 distinct wrong answer types they love to use. Understanding these traps will help you understand how test writers craft incorrect choices, making them easier to spot and avoid.

Most importantly, these patterns reveal that wrong answers aren't random—they're carefully designed to exploit common reasoning mistakes. You’ll know you’re getting good at CARS when you can point to the trap they used on an incorrect answer.

CARS Strategies to Avoid

• “Only answer 8 passages and skip the 9th passage.” This has to be the worst advice out there. You’re essentially guaranteeing you won’t score well (127+). You have to answer all the passages to get a good CARS score.
• “Skip the hard passages and do the easy ones.” The problem with this strategy is you don’t know which passage is hard or easy until you’re halfway through it. Or the passage may be hard to read, but the questions are easy. Or vice versa. You have to answer all the passages, just don’t waste too much time on a single passage.
• “Read the questions before the passage.” I’ve never met a student who could recite a question with this strategy after reading halfway through the first paragraph. It often leads to a scavenger hunt where the student doesn’t find the main idea of the passage because they’re looking for key phrases. It helps to look at the first question, especially if it references a paragraph number, but that’s it.
• “Write a passage map or take notes.” This is a tempting strategy, however, it simply spends too much time on the wrong thing. CARS passages aren’t long, and with your mental map you’ll be able to locate the correct info. It’s better to dedicate more time to answering the questions. While writing notes is helpful in the beginning, akin to training wheels, it’s the wrong focus. Instead, you want to identify the main idea of the passage and develop a mental map of how the passage flows in your head to save time. Also, writing notes on a wet erase board sucks.

How to Apply this Advice - The Journey Begins!

Now for the fun part—applying all these tips!

What to do Today

• Start at MCAT Bootcamp and read the first passage. Forget about the timer and read thoroughly. Follow the steps outlined in the How To Read CARS Passages section above.
• Answer the first question using the strategies above. I recommend you answer one question at a time (select Submit instead of Next). This will allow you to check your understanding of the passage before attempting subsequent questions.
• Watch Dr. D's video explanation of the question and the passage, and see if your understanding of the passage and question is similar. Our goal is for you to see inside the mind of a CARS expert, so you can mimic the same strategies on your own.
• Read the explanations for all of the answers, and compare them to your reasoning. Learn how to identify the wrong answer traps in the explanations. On test day, you want to be able to call out wrong answers by name. If you’re stuck, ask Bootcamp AI or us, we’re happy to help. Use your CARS Tracker Tool, then move on to the next question.

Longer-term Advice as you Prepare for CARS

• Focus on understanding the passage before worrying about multiple questions. If you’re not understanding the passage, then you’re not going to do well on the questions. So before you start answering more than one question at a time, make sure your reading is solid by comparing it to Dr. D's video passage explanation. Once your understanding is more or less aligned with Dr. D, you can start answering all of the questions in a set (by selecting Next instead of Submit) before reviewing the answers.
• Do at least one passage a day, and work your way up to two. As your question approach improves and you consistently find yourself aligned with Dr. D, move on to two passages at a time. Continue practicing like this until you confidently get almost all of the questions correct for both passages.
• Then add in time pressure. Try to answer a passage in under 10 minutes. Remember to try to read the passage in 3–4 minutes and spend 6–7 on questions. This will stress your strategies and reveal new weaknesses. Remember, you don’t need to understand everything perfectly on the first readthrough, and don’t get stuck on a single question.
• Switch to timed practice tests. The holy grail we’re working on is to do 9 passages in 90 minutes. Once you build your foundation, you can begin to practice your pacing and time management.

Review of all CARS Practice Materials

While it's tempting to use every available CARS resource, additional practice with poorly written questions can be detrimental. Non-representative passages teach you to look for the wrong patterns, wasting your time and hindering your progress. Your core study should be centered on high-quality materials that accurately reflect the current exam, like MCAT Bootcamp and official AAMC material.

Best AAMC CARS Resources

Not all AAMC content was created equally. The gold standard for MCAT simulation is the AAMC Practice Exam. The AAMC has released 6 full-length exams, and you should complete all of them as full length exams. So build these into your study schedule, but don’t break them up for CARS practice.

The main source of AAMC CARS practice material is Question Packs. Between the two volumes, there are 43 passages and 240 questions. These are great supplements for your regular CARS practice blocks.

The AAMC also offers a CARS Diagnostic tool. This tool provides 28 passages with questions and video explanations. This resource is best used early in your prep, if at all.

However, the 2 main issues with AAMC CARS content are:

1. The lack of it.

2. The explanations are often poor, leaving students confused on what they did wrong and how to improve. That’s part of the reason we created MCAT Bootcamp, to help students get started on the right foot.

What Makes MCAT Bootcamp CARS Special?

Creating AAMC-like CARS material is really, really hard.

The AAMC has a unique style, voice, and crafts incorrect answers with the notorious "AAMC logic." It takes a lot of time and money to create comparable content, and bigger MCAT companies just don’t invest the resources to make it happen. Their focus is on selling the highest-priced course possible with the minimal content quality required.

Dr. D and I spent hundreds of hours analyzing every single CARS resource released by the AAMC, down to the sentence structure, arguments, reading level difficulty, categorizing all the question stems, and most importantly reverse engineering the answer traps. Every passage is sourced and designed from a similar passage by the AAMC, and every question and incorrect answer choice is modeled after a real AAMC question.

The most important part is we designed this resource to improve your CARS score. Every feature, piece of text, and video has been meticulously designed to teach you everything we’ve learned over 10 years in one place. Our goal is for you to see inside the mind of a CARS expert, so you can learn and mimic the same tactics and strategies on your test.

Create an account and try the first passage today. If you apply the strategies in this post for a week, you’ll start noticing improvements. If you stick with it all the way, you will increase your CARS score. And if you ever need help, we’re here for you.

To your CARS success!

-Chris, Dr. D, & the MCAT Bootcamp team

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