MCAT Prep App

Crack the CARS Code

Decipher confusing sentences, dissect the author’s argument, and unlock the hidden meaning underlying every CARS passage.

NavigatingMazeIcon-1-q37x6uonf7f4s0n4zco35bbrb7qdwreokdoorc48da

Outmaneuver the AAMC

Discover how CARS questions are actually written, so that you can avoid those sneaky trap answer choices and learn to predict the correct one.

ScoreIncreaseIcon-1-q37x7anwne109dzxe1kqtpalerjmjm64akrxx1gjfi

Smash Score Plateaus

Employ metacognition to conquer timing issues, analyze your practice performance, and optimize your study habits for maximum CARS results.

HourGlassIcon-1-q37x7dhf5p72o5ccxfoouqfk5qvctex351s15g58v2

Perform Under Pressure

Learn how a strategy developed for the US military can help you stay calm, collected, and effective under exam pressures.

Guided-learning questions designed to reinforce key CARS skills and ensure your understanding.

Expert-developed, score-maximizing videos that deliver crucial strategies for success.

Easy-to-digest lessons, putting CARS mastery within your reach.

Overview of Lessons

Lesson 1 will introduce you to the basic elements of CARS passages, including the main idea, the author’s tone, and the various perspectives and viewpoints embedded in the text. We’ll then show you how to identify those elements by paying attention to word choice and context clues. This lesson will also teach you to decipher difficult vocab words and parse long-winded, confusing sentences (both of which feature heavily in CARS passages, unfortunately).

You’ll learn to drill deeper into CARS passages to expose the fundamental structure that undergirds them. It turns out that beneath their more obvious characteristics, every CARS passage consists of fundamental units called claims. These in turn combine to form more complicated rhetorical structures, such as viewpoints and arguments. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to analyze CARS passages in terms of their constitutive claims. This, as you’ll see, will allow you to better interpret the passage’s meaning. It will also set you up to succeed with certain CARS questions, specifically those which deal with support, evidence, and plausibility.

Lesson 2 provides an in-depth examination of the three CARS question types: Foundations of Comprehension questions, Reasoning Within the Text questions, and Reasoning Beyond the Text questions. These three question types each test different reading and reasoning skills, and by becoming familiar with these skills, you’ll gain a better understanding of what you need to work on to improve your score. To help you in this endeavor, this lesson will also give you some concrete tips on how to succeed with the different question types.

In Lesson 3, we’ll introduce the concept of the OODA loop, a decision-making framework originally developed by US Air Force Colonel John Boyd for use in military combat. Since then, the OODA loop has been applied to other high-stakes activities, like business and nursing, and we’ll show you how it can also be applied to answering CARS questions. The advantage of the OODA loop, as we’ll point out, is that it gives you a solid framework for acting under stress without being overly rigid or constraining.

In Lesson 4, we’ll discuss the recurring characteristics of both correct and incorrect CARS answer choices. The goal here is to develop a mental “drop-down” list of reasons why an answer choice might be right or wrong. With this done, your process of elimination will become much more efficient and effective, as you’ll be able to pinpoint the exact reason why a certain answer choice does or doesn’t fit. This lesson will also discuss what makes certain incorrect answers attractive or tempting. With this knowledge in your back pocket, you’ll be less likely to fall for a trap answer choices.

Lesson 5 recaps the major themes of the course, including the fact that the CARS section displays repeated, predictable patterns, as well as the idea of CARS as a learnable skill. These insights will empower you to take control of your studying and become an elite CARS performer. This lesson will also share tactics for Test Day itself, including how to cultivate the right mindset for success, as well as more nitty-gritty tips like what snacks you should pack and how to best utilize the breaks between sections.

The Story Behind Our CARS Course

Some time ago, our team of 99th-percentile MCAT experts set themselves a goal: to devise the simplest, most effective CARS how-to guide on the market. After months of thinking, planning, and pouring over official AAMC exams, here are the results: an all-in-one, asynchronous course that delivers CARS expertise without any fluff, so that you can maximize your score as quickly as possible.

Underlying our work is a single guiding principle: that more practice and more studying does NOT always translate into more results. It turns out that the secret of CARS success is not hard work and long hours, but rather knowledge – knowledge of how the CARS section is written, what skills it’s testing, and how to study smarter rather than harder. So you can skip the endless practice passages, the tedious question banks, and the stubborn low scores. Our course gives you the know-how to achieve superior results in half the time – it’s your shortcut to CARS success.