MCAT Inference Questions

On the questions, get good at inferences. While I’m biased, I’d say that Kaplan is exceptional on this point, both in the amount of questions you have available to hone the skill and in the method. The main thing to remember for inference questions is that the right answer MUST be true based on the passage; if it may or may not be true, it’s incorrect. This, in my opinion, is the single biggest factor keeping students who score in the 9-11 range from getting to the 12+ range: if you mistake something possibly true for something definitely true, or vice versa, on only a few questions you’ve automatically taken your score down a few points.

Make sure you understand what certain types of questions look like. Again, Kaplan’s excellent on this, both in terms of volume and instruction. If you can glance at a question and know its category, you can spend less time trying to analyze what it’s asking; you’ll already have a good idea.

And finally, don’t fall into the trap of trying to justify every wrong answer choice to yourself–when I take a practice test, I routinely skip answers I don’t understand. Chances are that if they don’t make sense, they’re wrong and you’ll find one much better a little below. Students often run out of time because they insist on fully understanding every choice, when you’re only rewarded, of course, for picking the right answer.

Get in the habit of doing a couple "scans"…an easy question may only require one scan, while a hard question may first get you down to two answer choices and then allow you to compare them to each other. It’s way easier to compare two choices than four!

We perhaps sometimes don’t emphasize the inference enough. Not only is it a common problem area for students, but it’s really the foundation for all other major question types…the higher-order questions all depend, to some extent, on the ability to make inferences and then do something else.

Remember that an inference will necessarily be very close to what the passage says. I’m constantly flipping back and forth while taking a practice test; missing a particular phrase is often enough to miss the justification for an inference. When you see an answer choice on an inference question, I’d go through these "filters":

1. Does it look wrong? If so, move on
2. Does it look obviously right? If so, you’re probably done once you scan the others quickly to be sure.
3. If you’re unsure, before evaluating the choice, figure out what it’s referring to in the passage (this may be more than one place!) With a good idea of the passage’s structure, you can go back, quickly look for relevant words/ideas and compare them to the choice. This is incredibly helpful for narrowing down and clarifying your thought processes.

Too many students try to power through an inference through sheer logic without reference back to the passage, which is deadly. Identify the question as inference, figure out what the likely choices are (usually you can narrow this down to two fairly easily) and then use the passage as your final filter to get down to 1. I’d say that this will get you the right answer 70-90% of the time, with the other 10% involving a little more reasoning and synthesis.