MCAT Confusing Passages

Many students have trouble with the more abstract passages on the VR section, particularly with subjects such as philosophy, literary criticism, politics, and historical scholarship. Those of you who still have several months before you take the test should practice reading abstract passages as much as possible between now and MCAT day. You are almost guaranteed to get one or two of them on your test, so you should expect it, and be ready for them.

The first thing to do if you read a passage and you don’t understand it is to follow the immortal words inscribed on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic. The good news is that you don’t have to understand everything in the passage in order to understand the main argument of the author and answer the questions. The details that the author gives to support his/her argument are not as important, and you probably won’t even get asked about most of them. If the argument itself is what confuses you, this is a more serious problem. You should try to at least determine whether the author is positive, negative, or neutral toward his/her subject. That will help you answer questions that ask you things like if the author would agree or disagree with such-and-such a position. My final suggestion would be to work on the confusing passage last. Finish every other passage in the VR section, and THEN come back and do the one that is hard to comprehend at the end. This way, if you spend too much time agonizing over one hard passage, it won’t affect your work on the other (easier) passages, which you will have already completed.