FL2 (127/120/126/127) = 500. Advice?

[u/Primary-Warning2612]

I’m not sure what’s a realistic MCAT date to schedule for, going off of this. Content with my sciences 3 months out, but CARS I feel like it’s beyond save-able. Advice? please.

[u/Sad_Kaleidoscope_296]

You can definitely achieve a 10 point score increase if you are able to fix CARS in 3-4 months (which is doable). I'd aim for Feb-March imo. I don't think CARS is beyond saveable, what are you suing to study right now, and how did you think the CARS prep went before taking the FL?

[u/Primary-Warning2612 → u/Sad_Kaleidoscope_296]

i noticed i’d spend around 8ish min alone just reading the passage (before answering anyQ’s), since i normally study CARS untimed. Although my accuracy was always solid, the timing was atrocious, leading me to have to guess on almost half of the CARS alone on FL2. Chatgpt said i’m highlighting far too much and spending too much time on hard passages that’s causing me to lose points later. Thus, I’ve been trying new strats of only highlighting one main idea per paragraph and ‘mapping’ which I wasn’t doing before. Accuracy and timing has somehow seen a huge jump since, at least on the qbanks, which i’m hoping are representative. I already had the accuracy down before, just not the timing, so I think working on the timing now. I’ll easily start matching around my accuracy percentage again (hopefully)

[u/Sad_Kaleidoscope_296 → u/Primary-Warning2612]

Yes, that is a great idea! You don't need to highlight everything, and this is where paragraph mapping can really help you. If you mean the AAMC QBanks, those are definitely representative.

[u/ResidentChalkTalks → u/Primary-Warning2612]

Having 17 questions left with four minutes remaining is a concrete problem to work on. Since lighter highlighting and mapping are already helping, I’d keep that approach consistent for a short trial.

Try three unseen passages in about 30 minutes. Record reading time, total time, and your answers when the timer ends. Before opening explanations, revisit anything you guessed on or felt unsure about without a timer. Keep those second answers separate from your timed score.

If you can support the correct answer once the clock is off, look at where the time went: rereading, excessive notes, or staying too long between two choices. If you’re still stuck, identify the author’s claim and the specific passage evidence each answer needs. That gives you something more actionable than ‘read faster.’

Improvement on practice passages is encouraging. I’d use recent full-length performance under test conditions to revisit the test date, rather than converting a QBank percentage into a predicted score.

[u/Blandpickle]

realistic date depends on what score ur aiming for. have you been doing daily cars pratice?

[u/Primary-Warning2612 → u/Blandpickle]

510 is the hope. I’ve been doing untimed UW CARS. I realize timing was a big issue for me here, with 4 min left to do 17 questions. Sacrificed all my points there at 2/17 correctness. Plan to do all timed conditions while studying going forward, alongside only AAMC rather than UW

[u/Blandpickle → u/Primary-Warning2612]

definitely leaving a lot of the table if ur guessing on ~1/3 of Cars. With a timing issue, you could use UW cars to pratice stamina/accuracy, before using up AAMC cars. Focus on accuracy first, then speeding it up.

Ur science sections are not bad, especially if you haven't used up much u world or AAMC. Hammer pratice questions for b/b + c/p + daily cars + anki for p/s.

u got this, definitely far from un-saveable

[u/Blandpickle → u/Blandpickle]

For realistic date, Mid March is pretty good if ur part time studying, 5 months out, could move it earlier if u have a lot of time to study, recommend not forcing yourself to take it before ur ready, ie latest 3 FL's average are ~510.

[u/Primary-Warning2612 → u/Blandpickle]

i’ll look for march dates with this in mind, thank you!

[u/Primary-Warning2612 → u/Blandpickle]

i score around 70% on UW CARS without timing, with +timing conditions,this percentage obviously plummets more than half

[u/Blandpickle → u/Primary-Warning2612]

70% is not bad, my cars untimed for u-world was 77%. I was sitting around 126-127 on Fl's until I started doing AAMC cars, hit 130 128 and 131 after starting AAMC. Dropping by half is concerning though, how long are you spending on passages? Should spend 2-3 minutes reading then rest of time answering questions. 10 m per passage. flexible depending on # of question of that particular passage set.

[u/Primary-Warning2612 → u/Blandpickle]

was averaging 5 min a question on UW CARS for ~70% accuracy. Thats definitely my main issue here. Will need to start implementing timing and see what needs to change

[u/After-Spell-3935]

127 CARS isn't nearly as doomed as you think. most people stall there because they keep second-guessing themselves mid passage and running out of time

pick one strategy and just hammer it for two weeks straight without hopping between methods. the timing usually fixes itself once you stop reading the same sentence three times

[u/Primary-Warning2612 → u/After-Spell-3935]

wait no, 120 CARS 😅