Now let’s use a strategy you can apply both across the whole section and within each passage: quickly decide where your time will pay off the most.
CARS gives you 90 minutes for 9 passages, which averages to about 10 minutes per passage.
Not all passages will feel equally easy or difficult. Three factors usually determine how challenging a passage is for you:
Topic: How familiar are you with the subject? Do you find it interesting?
Vocabulary: Is it mostly everyday academic language, or does it rely on specialized terminology and unusual, long words?
Structure: How complex are the sentences?
Some passages use straightforward sentences (one main idea per sentence, or a simple contrast between two ideas).
Others pack multiple ideas into each sentence. Lots of commas and semicolons can be a clue that you’ll need extra time to break the sentence into parts.
Let’s make that idea concrete with a 1-5 difficulty scale:
1 - This feels unusually friendly. You’re familiar with the topic and the writing style, and it reads simply for you.
3 - Medium difficulty. You’re somewhat familiar with the topic or find it interesting. Some vocabulary may be unfamiliar, but you can get the gist from context, and the sentence structure isn’t overly complex.
5 - This is a bad match for you. The topic is unfamiliar, the writing style feels unfamiliar, and it uses lots of terminology or dense descriptions with complex, multi-idea sentences.
Try the strategy with these three passage excerpts. Use 20 seconds per passage.
This passage is taken from “The relationship between energy consumption, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Pakistan” by Khan, M.K., Khan, M.I., and Rehan, M., found at SpringerOpen.
This passage is taken from “DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS” by Jane Adams, found at Project Gutenberg.
This passage is taken from “THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR” by Thucydides, found at Project Gutenberg.
Which passage would be a 2 or 3 for you? Which might be a 4 or 5?
What aspects of the topic, vocabulary, and sentence structure made each easier or more difficult?
Here’s how to use this on test day: spend 1-2 minutes previewing each passage for topic, vocabulary, and sentence complexity, then give it a quick rating.
That preview does two things:
It improves comprehension because you’re already watching for the passage’s “difficulty drivers.”
It reduces rereading because you’re less likely to get surprised by dense vocabulary or complex sentence structure.
It also gives you a practical option: if one passage looks like a clear 4-5 for you, you can choose to skip it and use a standard guess pattern (for example, all A or all C). The time you save can go to passages where you’re more likely to earn points.
Ready to work on practice passages?
Passage excerpt 1 (Energy, Economic Growth, CO2 in Pakistan)
Likely difficulty: 3 (medium)
Topic: Familiar if you’ve seen environmental science/economics; otherwise, could be less engaging
Vocabulary: Some technical terms (e.g., “statistically significant,” “coefficient,” “per capita”), but mostly accessible
Structure: Long sentences with multiple statistics; some repetition, but logical flow
Passage excerpt 2 (Democracy and Social Ethics)
Likely difficulty: 2-3 (easy to medium)
Topic: Social change, democracy, charity - common humanities themes
Now let’s use a strategy you can apply both across the whole section and within each passage: quickly decide where your time will pay off the most.
CARS gives you 90 minutes for 9 passages, which averages to about 10 minutes per passage.
Not all passages will feel equally easy or difficult. Three factors usually determine how challenging a passage is for you:
Topic: How familiar are you with the subject? Do you find it interesting?
Vocabulary: Is it mostly everyday academic language, or does it rely on specialized terminology and unusual, long words?
Structure: How complex are the sentences?
Some passages use straightforward sentences (one main idea per sentence, or a simple contrast between two ideas).
Others pack multiple ideas into each sentence. Lots of commas and semicolons can be a clue that you’ll need extra time to break the sentence into parts.
Let’s make that idea concrete with a 1-5 difficulty scale:
1 - This feels unusually friendly. You’re familiar with the topic and the writing style, and it reads simply for you.
3 - Medium difficulty. You’re somewhat familiar with the topic or find it interesting. Some vocabulary may be unfamiliar, but you can get the gist from context, and the sentence structure isn’t overly complex.
5 - This is a bad match for you. The topic is unfamiliar, the writing style feels unfamiliar, and it uses lots of terminology or dense descriptions with complex, multi-idea sentences.
Try the strategy with these three passage excerpts. Use 20 seconds per passage.
This passage is taken from “The relationship between energy consumption, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Pakistan” by Khan, M.K., Khan, M.I., and Rehan, M., found at SpringerOpen.
This passage is taken from “DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS” by Jane Adams, found at Project Gutenberg.
This passage is taken from “THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR” by Thucydides, found at Project Gutenberg.
Which passage would be a 2 or 3 for you? Which might be a 4 or 5?
What aspects of the topic, vocabulary, and sentence structure made each easier or more difficult?
Here’s how to use this on test day: spend 1-2 minutes previewing each passage for topic, vocabulary, and sentence complexity, then give it a quick rating.
That preview does two things:
It improves comprehension because you’re already watching for the passage’s “difficulty drivers.”
It reduces rereading because you’re less likely to get surprised by dense vocabulary or complex sentence structure.
It also gives you a practical option: if one passage looks like a clear 4-5 for you, you can choose to skip it and use a standard guess pattern (for example, all A or all C). The time you save can go to passages where you’re more likely to earn points.