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AAMC CARS Skills: What They Are and How to Master Them
AAMC CARS Skills: What They Are and How to Master Them

Deciphering what those skill levels actually mean and how to practice them.

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Written by Blueprint
Updated this week

The AAMC has outlined three key skills necessary for excelling in the CARS section, aptly named Skill 1, Skill 2, and Skill 3 (not to be confused with the science skills).

Your Analytics page shows you a breakdown of your performance against each skill level. Scroll all the way down to the bottom to the section "By Reasoning Skill:"
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Analytics page with "By Reasoning Skill" circled and Skill 1, Skill 2, and Skill 3 CARS skills highlighted.

Now that you've found them, let's break down these skills and how to tackle each one effectively!

Skill 1 Questions: Foundations of Comprehension (30%)

What They Test:

These questions assess your grasp of key text elements and enhance your skill in deriving meaning or intent from the surrounding context. That is, these are focused on your ability to understand the text and identify specific components of that text.

General Tips:

  • Always refer back to the passage! The answer should be directly and explicitly supported by it.

  • Make sure you’re looking in the right place. Efficient highlighting will help you to locate the specific parts of the passage referenced in Skill 1 questions.

  • Don’t rely on your memory (or outside experience). These questions often have trap answers that are something you saw in the passage but that don’t answer the question asked.

Question Types:

Detail, Main Idea, Inference, Opinion, Function

📺 Modules to Watch:

  • CARS Question Types: Skill 1

  • Tackling CARS Questions

  • Opinions in CARS

Skill 2 Questions: Reasoning Within the Text (30%)

What They Test:

These questions require you to identify connections between various parts of the text and analyze arguments. In other words, you must be able to synthesize ideas from multiple places within the passage and draw conclusions from the author’s argument.

General Tips:

  • Focus on the connections! These questions often ask you to draw conclusions based on different parts of the text; identify those parts and consider how they interact.

  • Make sure to predict! Don’t let the answer choices trip you up; consider whether to make a focused or general prediction (and make one!) before you look at the answer choices.

Question Types:

Support, Function, Opinion, Inference

📺 Modules to Watch:

  • CARS Question Types: Skill 2

  • CARS Elimination Strategies

  • Arguments in CARS Passages 1

Skill 3 Questions: Reasoning Beyond the Text (40%)

What They Test:

These questions prompt you to examine how new factors, information, conditions, or ideas affect the concepts presented in the passage. For these, you must be able to identify what to do with the new information presented in the question or answer choices and apply or incorporate it into ideas from the passage.

General Tips:

  • Be sure to understand the question. Are you applying the passage to some new information and determining its effect, or are you figuring out how it affects the passage?

Question Types:

Application, Incorporation

📺 Modules to Watch:

  • CARS Question Types: Skill 3

  • CARS Questions: Identifying Wrong Answers

  • Arguments in CARS Passages 2

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