Best Gold Standard Test?

Hi,

This can be answered by Gold Standard rep or a student.

I was originally trying to buy all Gold Standard tests (10 CBT), but I recently read this.

Originally Posted by Will Hunting

There is no paper based AAMC 10.

Kaplan 1-11 paper
Kaplan 1-11 CBT
AAMC 3r-9r
AAMC CBT 3-10
TBR 1-8 paper (Hard to find)
TBR 1-7 CBT
GS 1-10 (only 1-6) 7-10 are extremely difficult and of NO DIAGNOSTIC VALUE
The kaplan book and mcat workout contain the first 2 from the aforementioned kaplan tests
TPR 4
TPR 1-9 from class

So it seems like I won't be doing all the 10 tests as I initially thought mainly because 1) I don't want to spend too much time on way difficult tests and 2) I still have a lot of individual passages to go through.

I'm now thinking of buying GS individually, maybe two or three tests. What ones do you recommend the most? I have other FLs that I need to go through as well so I'm not cutting myself short by doing this. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Silverfalcon

Hi,

This can be answered by Gold Standard rep or a student.

I was originally trying to buy all Gold Standard tests (10 CBT), but I recently read this.



So it seems like I won't be doing all the 10 tests as I initially thought mainly because 1) I don't want to spend too much time on way difficult tests and 2) I still have a lot of individual passages to go through.

I'm now thinking of buying GS individually, maybe two or three tests. What ones do you recommend the most? I have other FLs that I need to go through as well so I'm not cutting myself short by doing this. Thanks!

Instead of buying them individually, why don't you just buy a bundle of 10 at ebay? I bought the bundle for $51 and I must say that it was a money well-spent. (minus verbal)

Originally Posted by kehlsh

Instead of buying them individually, why don't you just buy a bundle of 10 at ebay? I bought the bundle for $51 and I must say that it was a money well-spent. (minus verbal)

They've all been selling around 60-70 dollars or even higher. I recall good old days when they would be auctioned for less than 40 dollars, but not anymore. Blah.

GS 1-10 (only 1-6) 7-10 are extremely difficult and of NO DIAGNOSTIC VALUE

I completely understand that students find GS-7 more difficult than all the other exams. However, my opinion is that GS-8 to GS-10 are challenging but reasonable.

If I were to randomly choose a few exams, I would randomly choose any of the tests except GS-7.

Now the issue of "diagnostic value": (1) we have a thread at www.mcat-prep.com/forum in General Questions where students discuss real and practice MCAT scores vs. GS scores. On average students perform 1-2 points better on the real MCAT than GS tests. So keep that in mind when you are doing GS practice tests to help you predict your progress; (2) why do we keep GS-7? Because it is a learning tool. After the test, there are Explanations, a Forum to discuss each individual question and video links to background information. In other words, it is true that your score on GS-7 would not represent your real MCAT score if you did it on the same day, BUT the learning that you will derive from doing these tests - because of the post-exam teaching - will help improve your score on the real exam.

The gold standard for diagnosing pulmonary embolism (PE) is the pulmonary angiogram, in which dye is injected into the bloodtsream and xrays are taken of the arteries in the lungs. Because this is an invasive test, other methods of diagnosing the disease are desirable. Computed tomography (CT) scanning is an increasingly common method used to diagnose PE.

Originally Posted by lolarogers

The gold standard for diagnosing pulmonary embolism (PE) is the pulmonary angiogram, in which dye is injected into the bloodtsream and xrays are taken of the arteries in the lungs. Because this is an invasive test, other methods of diagnosing the disease are desirable. Computed tomography (CT) scanning is an increasingly common method used to diagnose PE.

Epic thread purpose failure.

If it was done on purpose then it would be pretty funny!

Unfortunately . . .

Originally Posted by biophilia

I am a little confused about the way that GS sells its package of 10 CBTs. The company offers a package of 10 CBTs for $150, which can be purchased by by visiting the company's website, but the company ALSO sells a package of 10 CBTs on Ebay for significantly less than $150. So, why would anyone NOT buy the package of 10 on Ebay? Is there any benefit to purchasing the CBTs through the official website? Either way, the company getting the money -- GS -- is the same, right?

The only difference that i noticed was the time frame, that you would be able to access the CBT's. If you purchase them on their website, your able to access them for one year. >>> "One payment with access for up to 1 year"

If you buy them from ebay, you only get them for 3 months. Which should be enough, so ebay would be the better deal..

Just wanted to ask how good are GS exams of indicators?

GS PS and BS sections are pretty difficult. PS is definitely calculations heavy and has a lot of principles and BS tests a wide range of topics. Verbal in my opinion is ok; some answers come straight word for word from the passage, and some passage content is ridiculously difficult to comprehend.

I've taken GS 1-4 and I believe they will help you achieve a higher score on the real thing. If you can get 10s on these exams, you will have a good shot of getting a 33-36 on the real thing.

That being said, I have found that a lot of the questions either have multiple answers, or the answer is flat out wrong. I've found 2 questions that were wrong in PS so far and a few more with iffy explanations, and in the GS-3 BS Section alone there were 3 problems with multiple answers. Two of the problems had 1 answer choice that was explicitly stated in the passage, while the other choice, though not explicitly stated, was very clearly indicated in the passage content. Then I had another question with 3 answer choices that the forum administrators (each question is linked to a discussion page in their forums) said were all correct. But that one was more correct than the others because they felt it was best.

I understand how verbal sections can be subjective due to the author's point of view on a topic, but in a science section there can't be subjectivity in answer choices. Even on AAMC when there are two similar choices, the justification for one over the other is clearly stated. I have found that on GS sometimes that it is not. For myself answering those 3 questions correctly based on the passage and science review, yet not by their standards lowered my grade from a 14-12.

Yet still I would advocate the exams as great practice. You might find 3-4 questions out of 146/exam that make you scratch your head, but still its great practice for the MCAT. Some of their exams even have 8 passages and 1 discrete instead of 7 and 2 AND they are much more difficult,which make time management doubly tough, but if you can do well on these exams I believe you can ace the real thing.

The PS and BS are great practice in a nice CBT format for cheap. I'm not sure why their reputation is so poor...sure beats taking a 2,000 dollar class.

The PS is much more calculation heavy than the AAMC ones, but good practice. I do wish it had more passage incorporation type of stuff, but my PS scores on GS are usually about 1 point lower than AAMC.

agree with the above posts about the calculation intensiveness of the PS section. Sometimes I would just look at those paragraph-long questions filled with numbers and know that it would require some time and skip it. However I'm worried about my score. I'm trying to get at least a 31 on the real thing and I got a 26 on GS test 8 and a 30 on GS test 7. Yikes.

I recently took my MCATs and didn't do so great. I did all the MCAT AAMC tests online and I was wondering which test should I buy? Is gold standard better than Berkeley Review?