← MCAT Prep MCAT CARS Practice 76 full-length passages (456 questions) across humanities and social sciences — the timed passage reps the CARS section is built on. Practice one at a time with explanations, or run the whole set.
Practice all 76 passages Timed section — 53 Q · 90 min
CARS answer keys are inherently interpretive — every item is marked draft pending expert review.
philosophy The Architecture of Forgetting We are inclined to treat memory as a virtue and forgetting as its failure, a leak in the vessel that ought to …
6 questions
ethics / political philosophy The Limits of Consent Among the moral inheritances of the liberal age, none is more cherished than the principle that consent legiti…
6 questions
art / aesthetics The Unfinished as a Form It has become a commonplace of the gallery to admire the unfinished work—the sculpture whose figures strain ha…
6 questions
literary criticism Against the Tyranny of the Likeable Narrator A peculiar demand has come to dominate the way ordinary readers, and increasingly professional critics, evalua…
6 questions
history / historiography The Seduction of the Turning Point Historians, like the rest of us, crave a story with shape, and few shapes are more satisfying than the turning…
6 questions
music / cultural criticism On the Death of the Difficult There was a time, not so distant, when a piece of music might reasonably ask something of its listener—repeate…
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translation theory The Translator's Fidelity Every translator lives under an accusation that predates any particular offense: traduttore, traditore — trans…
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architecture criticism Against the Honest Ruin When a historic building is restored, an orthodoxy now governs the work: every new stone must announce itself.…
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cultural anthropology The Ethnographer’s Mirror There is a comforting story anthropology likes to tell about itself: that the discipline began in arrogance an…
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sociology The Tyranny of the Measurable Modern institutions are governed by a quiet faith that what can be counted is what matters. The faith is rarel…
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economics The Price of Everything It is an article of faith among economists that markets, left to themselves, allocate resources to those who v…
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political science Representation and Its Discontents We speak of representative government as though its meaning were settled, but the word “represent” hides a qua…
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psychology The Author of the Self There is a story each of us tells about who we are, and we are oddly confident that we are its author. The sto…
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linguistics The Grammar of the Possible Does the language we speak shape the thoughts we are able to think? The question has a long and embarrassing h…
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sociology of expertise The Credential and the Craft A curious inversion has overtaken the way modern societies certify competence. The credential — degree, licens…
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economic history The Tyranny of the Standard Gauge Standardization is the great invisible achievement of industrial civilization. That any bolt fits any matching…
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philosophy of mind The Horizon and the Coastline Imagine a neuroscience so complete that nothing about the brain remains hidden: every synapse mapped, every ca…
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epistemology The Price of Doubt The sceptic makes his case with a courtesy that disarms. He does not deny that you have hands, or that the sun…
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philosophy of science The Anomaly That Pays The textbook account of scientific method is short and stirring: a theory issues a prediction, the world decli…
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metaphysics and personal identity The Ship We Are Take a wooden ship and replace one plank a year. After a century no original timber remains, and the vessel in…
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existentialism and phenomenology The Self You Have Not Got Ask anyone what it means to live authentically and you will be told, in one formulation or another, that it me…
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moral philosophy (meta-ethics) What Disagreement Proves The most popular argument against moral objectivity is also the least examined. It runs like this: people disa…
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bioethics The Signature and the Conversation Ask a hospital administrator what informed consent is, and you will be handed a form. This is not a trivial co…
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moral philosophy: care and justice The Ethics of the Near The dispute is usually staged as a contest between two theories. On one side stands justice: impartial, princi…
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philosophy of punishment The Ceiling and the Floor Everyone knows the shape of this argument. Retribution is the primitive theory, the theory of the mob and the …
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professional ethics and role morality The Advocate’s Excuse Every profession keeps a sentence in reserve for the moments when its members are asked to explain themselves.…
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animal ethics The Painless Slaughterhouse The modern case for animals has been won, to the extent it has been won at all, by an appeal to suffering. The…
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ethics of technology What I Give Away Is Not Mine The law of privacy rests on a picture, and the picture is of a person deciding what to reveal. On this account…
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literary criticism and interpretation theory The Author’s Ghost For half a century students of literature have been taught a doctrine so successful that it now passes for com…
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poetics and form The Line That Breaks The quarrel between formal verse and free verse has outlived its usefulness, chiefly because both sides accept…
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narrative theory What the Narrator Cannot See The unreliable narrator has become the most overworked instrument in the critical toolkit, applied to any firs…
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the novel and realism The Sayable Ordinary The standard defense of the realist novel is that it makes us better. Reading, we are told, extends the imagin…
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genre and popular fiction as literature In Praise of the Expected Defenders of popular fiction have chosen, over and over, the losing argument. They point to the detective nove…
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authorship and the canon The Syllabus and the Honor Roll Arguments about the canon are conducted as though the question were which books deserve praise, and both parti…
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aesthetics / philosophy of art The Forger’s Smirk The forger deserves a better advocate than his enemies usually allow him, so let me open by arguing his side a…
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music criticism The Ghost in the Margins The quartet had been rehearsing for three hours when it reached the slow movement, and the argument that follo…
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art history / curation The Argument on the Wall The old museum told a story so consistently that visitors stopped noticing it was a story. Rooms ran by centur…
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film criticism Spending Against an Empty Account Two films opened in the same week last autumn, and the month of argument that followed sorted my colleagues wi…
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architecture / the built environment The Unwilling Audience There is a tower, clad in brick to match the terraces around it and praised in every review for its tact. It t…
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photography / documentary representation The Permanent Hour A man stands in a gallery before a photograph of a ruined wall, and what holds him, plainly, is the light. The…
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historiography The Question Behind the Question Every generation rewrites the history it inherited, and the standard explanation for this is the discovery of …
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historical memory and commemoration The Argument in Bronze Public statues are habitually discussed as though they were documents, and the confusion has poisoned an argum…
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archival theory The Silence of the Ledger An archive presents itself as an accumulation, and the metaphor flatters everyone who uses it. Accumulation su…
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periodization and historical narrative The Tyranny of the Chapter Break The past does not arrive divided into ages. It is continuous, and the names we give its stretches—an era of fa…
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contingency and counterfactual reasoning The Road Not Taken Seriously Professional historians are trained to sneer at the question “what if,” and they go on asking it several times…
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history of medicine What the Endpoint Decides Medicine narrates its own past in a single genre. The opening chapters describe error—humors, bad air, elabora…
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theories of modernity What Modernity Took Nearly every account of modernity I have read is a story of subtraction. Something was once there — the sacred…
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institutions and organizational life The Uses of Procedure Reformers arriving at any large organization discover the same landscape: a thicket of procedure that no one w…
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social capital and community The Wrong Metaphor The phrase "social capital" earned its place in the language by making an obvious truth sound rigorous. People…
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urban sociology and public space The Freedom of the Crowd Every generation of planners rediscovers the plaza. The complaint is always the same: the modern city has prod…
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sociology of work and time The Fragment and the Block The universal complaint of the present moment is that we are busier than we have ever been. The researchers wh…
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surveillance and social control Occasions for Restraint We still describe monitoring in the vocabulary of the watchtower. The inspector who may or may not be looking,…
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democratic theory The Argument That Is Never Over The most familiar defense of democracy is also its weakest. It holds that many heads are better than few — tha…
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theories of justice and distribution The Ledger No One Has Seen Suppose a woman rises before dawn, works with unusual diligence for forty years, and accumulates a fortune. Su…
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constitutional interpretation and law The Currency of Argument Every written constitution poses the same embarrassment: a document drafted by people long dead is asked to go…
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citizenship and belonging Those Who Must Obey Ask what makes someone a member of a political community and two answers arrive first. The older holds that me…
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political rhetoric and public discourse The Charge of Demagoguery The charge of demagoguery is nearly always laid in the same way. A speaker moves a crowd; the crowd responds w…
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civil disobedience and legitimacy The Disobedient Citizen There is a formula, repeated so often that it has acquired the standing of a proof, by which civil disobedienc…
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economic methodology The Load-Bearing Walls A model is not a miniature of the world. It is an instrument for isolating a mechanism, and isolation requires…
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ethics of markets The Grammar of a Gift Consider a friend who visits you in the hospital, and then consider paying her to visit. The second visit is n…
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labor and the meaning of work Cash for Voice Meaning in work is relational. It does not live inside the tasks. There is no essence of carpentry that dignif…
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development economics What the Trial Cannot Ask A graduate student entering development economics today learns, before anything else, the shape of an answerab…
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behavioral economics The Preference That Was Never There The behavioral revolution is usually narrated as a demolition. For a century, the story goes, economics rested…
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measurement and aggregation The Rate of Exchange Put nine conscientious people in a room and ask them for a single number that says how a country is doing. Giv…
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media studies and attention An Audience of One In the winter of 1841, readers in New York crowded the waterfront to shout at an arriving packet ship, asking …
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technology and society The Price of the Difficult Path Two familiar positions divide the argument about technology, and both are wrong in instructive ways. The first…
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material culture and objects The Testimony of Wear A conservator once showed me a chair returned to the condition it had on the day it left the workshop. The joi…
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food and everyday life The Evidence of Breakfast Forty years after she left the country of her birth, in a supermarket aisle in the city where she had raised h…
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tourism and authenticity Who Writes the Dance The harvest dance of a certain mountain district — I have compounded three real villages into one, to protect …
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nostalgia and cultural memory The Past Tense of Complaint Last month, at a dinner where I wanted to be liked, I heard myself say that bookshops used to be better. The s…
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linguistics The Rules of the Club The linguist’s case against prescriptive grammar is by now so thoroughly established that it circulates as a s…
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philosophy of language The Instrument You Borrowed A familiar sentence follows every accusation of having said something wounding: "That is not what I meant." It…
6 questions
rhetoric Persuasion in the Open Rhetoric has been on trial since Plato, and the charge has not changed: it aims at winning rather than at trut…
6 questions
education theory The Common Stock Every generation restages the same quarrel about what schools are for. On one side stands preparation: schooli…
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literacy studies Reading Twice The lament has become a genre of its own. Attention has been shattered; nobody finishes a book; a generation r…
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language policy The Wrong Defense When a language is dying, its defenders reach for the same argument, and they reach for it as a reflex. Langua…
6 questions