<p>Hello all!
I’m trying to figure out how best to satisfy the requirements of the WS as someone who is admittedly not impressively knowledgeable about politics/current events/etc. Unfortunately, many of prompts seem very politically based.</p>
<p>For example:
Politicians should vote according to their beliefs, without worrying about whether their constituents agree with those beliefs.</p>
<p>Now, for the SAT, I remember being told that using specific, real examples (names, places, etc. included) was a near must, but the prompts for the SAT seemed more open. Is this still important for MCAT? </p>
<p>Is it suitable if we generate hypothetical examples? Even that seems sort of difficult for this prompt… </p>
<p>Any advice on how to tackle it and still get a decent score?</p>
<p>I’ve never taken the MCAT before, so I’m not sure how this would fly on the exam.</p>
<p>But if asked to write about this prompt, I wouldn’t approach it just thinking about congressmen, although congresspeople were the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the phrase “constituents agree with those beliefs”, because the congresspeople are technically supposed to be there in order to represent the beliefs of their constituents. However, I would approach it talking about much more mainstream politicians than your local representative. I would talk about George Bush and how he apparently thinks it’s the right thing to stay in Iraq, while polls show the war is becoming even more and more unpopular amongst his constituency (in this case the American population). I might also go into historical revolutions, when the representatives in government did whatever they wanted to without regard to their constituencies…(American Revolution, French Revolution etc).</p>
<p>Again, I’ve never taken the MCAT before, and have no idea what they expect on the MCAT essays, but you might use some of those examples or use that approach to come up with some examples to support your position.</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>Stay away from controversial topics. Hypotheticals are fine, but specificity does help. Section as a whole isn’t that important so long as you don’t embarrass yourself.</p>
<p>I was taught in my MCAT class not to use hypotheticals/personal experiences. Obviously, you have to use those types of examples if you can’t think of anything on the test but it’s generally better to use examples that everyone’s going to know.</p>
<p>I don’t think the specific examples are that important so much as your ability to reconcile them. As you probably know already, you will have to provide an example that supports the prompt, a counterexample, and in your third paragraph you will have reconcile the two by stating in what situations the prompt is true and in what situations it isn’t. By then, many have already twisted themselves into a logic pretzel that they can’t get out of. So the writing section is both a test of your writing and your thinking skills.</p>
<p>Anyway, unless you are totally ignorant about history or current events (it’s never too late to start watching the news), I don’t think you will have trouble coming up with examples. The graders aren’t looking for a demonstration of historical expertise. In fact, it is better to use examples we can all recognize. Either way, the writing section score is practically worthless for American med schools.</p>
<p>Details are fine, but keep in mind that many real world situations have multiple shades of gray, which can really allow you to dig your own grave and you should want to keep your examples as simple and straightforward as possible. Likewise, controversial topics aren’t necessarily bad choices - the graders should be impartial - but you never want to risk that you’ll run into someone who is diametrically opposed to your opinions. As such, controversy should be avoided… </p>
<p>So your use of current events should be limited to certain topics. </p>
<p>Also, while the graders aren’t looking for historical expertise, you again don’t want to run the risk of completely flubbing something. If you can’t place a well-known event to a relatively precise time period, it’s best to avoid that example or at least avoid putting a timestamp on it (for example, you shouldn’t guess 1924 as the year of the Berlin Olympics if you can’t remember what year Jesse Owens upstaged Hitler’s claims of Aryan supremacy during those games - it was 1936 by the way).</p>
<p>you don’t need to know real life examples. you can make up examples and as long as they’re logical they’re fine with it. they just want to see if you can make arguments and support those arguments. that’s it.</p>
<p>i didn’t study one bit for the writing section. i took my mcat april 5th, didn’t even FINISH either essay, and did fine. the first essay i didn’t finish the intro and on the 2nd one i didn’t finish the conclusion due to time and still got an R. an R is 90 percentile haha. i thought i bombed it. don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>besides, no one even cares about the WS anyway.</p>