Reasoning Beyond the Text: Applying or Extrapolating Ideas Questions

00:01 Now we get to that CARS question type we've been building up to, which is where questions get to introduce outside context, that just adds another ripple to the CARS section.

00:15 First, we'll take ideas and concepts from a passage and apply them for the prompting of the question stem to a theoretical scenario.

00:23 To do so, we'll need to engage in some lateral thinking between two related but nonetheless, different processes.

00:32 We'll need to take what the question states as kind of a set of givens that we have in the passage.

00:41 And we'll need to draw those to different conclusions based on how we are prompted to do so by the questions then.

00:47 Lastly, I think it's worth just pausing and examining the definition for what constitutes a correct answer for the CARS section as defined by the test writers.

00:58 Reasoning beyond the text CARS questions require you to be mentally flexible.

01:04 You will be combining or comparing new ideas, and asked to change your grasp of the central thrust of a passage that you've been working so hard to understand.

01:14 Pay especially close attention to the question stem for reasoning beyond the text questions.

01:19 In the context of the immediate questions, reasoning beyond the text question stems can be thought of as an extension of the passage itself, though not for other questions within the same set.

01:33 Think of perhaps the protagonist from your favorite book.

01:38 Imagine if that protagonist were dropped into the fantasy world of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

01:45 Your understanding of the character would be necessary to predict his or her reaction to this new scenario.

01:52 With these question types, this is like placing the passage you've just read your favorite protagonist into this new world that the question stem introduces.

02:05 Combining passage information with a fresh context creates a reality distinct from either the source or the destination.

02:16 Think of the passage as a set of givens, axioms to use the language of geometry.

02:23 The question stem asks you to combine these givens to come to a conclusion.

02:30 To take that protagonist in your favorite book example, let's say that he or she likes to eat a lot of food as a distinctive laugh, and struggles to remember important details.

02:42 These would be the givens.

02:44 The question stem might then place the following things in front of your friend, Firstly, a hamburger.

02:51 Secondly, a joke book.

02:53 And thirdly, a schedule of when buses arrive and depart.

02:59 In roughly increasing order of difficulty, you should be able to infer how the combination of your character would adapt to the circumstances.

03:08 So it goes when adapting passage givens to the prompt introduced in the question stem.

03:16 But what makes a CARS answer selection correct anyway for reasoning beyond the text questions or for any question? I think it's worth quoting here from the official content guide that "The correct answer is the one option that presents the most likely and most reasonable outcome based only on the information provided in the passage, and the question will go on to state also the information especially for reasoning beyond the text questions providing the answer choices." This succinctly summarizes that often an MCAT answer will be the best of the options presented, and not the perfect solution to the problem posed by the question stem.