Careless errors on AAMC FL

[beastlybaja]

Hello all, so my mcat is in two weeks and I have been working my butt off studyin since the 20th of May. From then to now I have only taken about 4 full days off and maybe like 3 half days. I was studying around 6-8 hours a day during the first part and then towards the middle of July I bumped it up to 10-12 GOOD hours of studying. I go to campus in the moring and when I can focus no more I leave which ends up being this time. I have put in the time and I have done a lot of content review and practice (I have read each TBR Chem and Physcis books 3-4 times and done all the passages in physics and 3/4 of the ones in the chem) I have also read the EK BIO book around 4 times. For organic I am kind of winging it (because I just got done with both semesters of it and got an A in both..probably going to review before the exam August 27th.) So as you can see I have done a lot of practice. I started taking full lengths at the end of July and did 8 Kaplan ones and was scoring around 31 on them. I was making careless mistakes, and I would always be super nervous even to just take a practice test. Then I switched to AAMC and did FL number 3. I got a 28 (8/11/9) I was shocked!....not happy at all but I told myself to learn from it so i reviewed and when over my wrong answers. For bio I knew everything I was just burned out at the end and didnt focus (finished 27 minutes early) so I guess I need to build my stamina up. For the PS I made A LOT of careless errors. I went over this section and realized I knew every question I had gotten wrong. I knew the reasoning behind the question, knew the right answer and yet I got it wrong. My problem is I freak out during PS (because I hate it) so I fly through questions marking all the ones that scare me and trying to do all the ones I know for sure (bad strategy?) I end up getting flustered guessing on questions that I know because I convince myself I am an idiot and am going to do bad. So I decided to go through the questions and mark down the ones that I knew and answered correctly (a second time when reviewing the test before looking at solutions).....I got 9 right on the PS...9 extra questions that would have brought my score from a 9 to a 12 or 13....WTF. Idk what to do because I know I can do this I just am making such careless errors. Any advice on how to zone in focus and not have an anxiety attack during PS or the whole test for that matter??? Thanks

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[TBRBiosadist]

bump

 

[waazaaa]

Hey Beastlybaja - here's my two-cents:

First of all, you should feel confident about yourself! It seems like you are pretty damn knowledgeable, since you DO know all your stuff. What I would suggest you do is that you take your time in doing each question, since you already got the speed down.

In PS, what I did to prevent careless errors was to write down every single steps of my work on my questions (even those concept questions!). It will definitely slow you down, but that will help you catch your mistakes in thought processes should you make any while solving the questions. Do this in all practice questions to make it a habit, so it becomes natural on FLs too. Remember, the sections are 70 minutes long, so you want to make sure you use all 70 of them effectively! Practice your pace in working through the questions so you can achieve a balance between speed and effort.
I used to be one of those who like to "solve everything in my head" but I always end up with some careless mistakes for obvious reasons. Once I write my work out, my score shot pretty high in PS.

As for anxiety issues - all I can say is practice, practice, practice! If you start doing better, you'll start to feel more confident. All you have to do is believe in yourself (lol).

 

[beastlybaja]

Hey Beastlybaja - here's my two-cents:

First of all, you should feel confident about yourself! It seems like you are pretty damn knowledgeable, since you DO know all your stuff. What I would suggest you do is that you take your time in doing each question, since you already got the speed down.

In PS, what I did to prevent careless errors was to write down every single steps of my work on my questions (even those concept questions!). It will definitely slow you down, but that will help you catch your mistakes in thought processes should you make any while solving the questions. Do this in all practice questions to make it a habit, so it becomes natural on FLs too. Remember, the sections are 70 minutes long, so you want to make sure you use all 70 of them effectively! Practice your pace in working through the questions so you can achieve a balance between speed and effort.
I used to be one of those who like to "solve everything in my head" but I always end up with some careless mistakes for obvious reasons. Once I write my work out, my score shot pretty high in PS.

As for anxiety issues - all I can say is practice, practice, practice! If you start doing better, you'll start to feel more confident. All you have to do is believe in yourself (lol).

Hey thanks for the advice! I didn't mean to sound arrogant about saying I know all my stuff haha. I just feel as though I start doing the PS, don't think straight and then tell myself "oh I don't know how to do this, I am so screwed for this MCAT in two weeks" and then my practice full length takes on that vibe, so PS goes bad whole test goes back. I took AAMC 5 today and got a 8/11/12 ....PS IS KILLING ME. It sucks because I have 2 weeks left. Some may say this is not enough time to raise my PS, but Its not like I have content deficiency (I dont think) its just for me right now with that section something is not clicking and it is bringing my FL way way down and not to mention my confidence...do you think I am taking to many prac tests? I have done kaplan 1-8 and AAMC3,4,5....In about 3 weeks whoops

 

[waazaaa]

Hey thanks for the advice! I didn't mean to sound arrogant about saying I know all my stuff haha. I just feel as though I start doing the PS, don't think straight and then tell myself "oh I don't know how to do this, I am so screwed for this MCAT in two weeks" and then my practice full length takes on that vibe, so PS goes bad whole test goes back. I took AAMC 5 today and got a 8/11/12 ....PS IS KILLING ME. It sucks because I have 2 weeks left. Some may say this is not enough time to raise my PS, but Its not like I have content deficiency (I dont think) its just for me right now with that section something is not clicking and it is bringing my FL way way down and not to mention my confidence...do you think I am taking to many prac tests? I have done kaplan 1-8 and AAMC 1,2,3,4,5....In about 3 weeks whoops

Two weeks... Let's call it 14+ days! It'll sound like you have more time haha. Are you seeing a pattern in your misses? (i.e. is there a specific topic that you find yourself to keep missing?) Try to keep a record, and if you find yourself to miss some topics more than the other, perhaps review that specific topic more?

But other than that, I'd say just keep doing questions! Don't worry about time limits, and just sit down and do (or re-do) PS questions. Do them until you become... less scared, so to speak. If your mindset is negative, you will not be able to perform at your best. If you can even score one question better after each test, you will still have significantly improved by test day! Therefore I think 2 weeks is more than enough as long as you put in appropriate times into studying (and resting).

P.S. Earlier AAMC FLs are not as close to the real thing as #9, 10, 11. I'm not sure if Kaplan FLs are similar to AAMC's, but at least they are still practices!

Keep practicing, and I'm sure you'll see improvements by test day

 

[kalat]

First of all, keep it in perspective: a 31 is not bad. Secondly, you score well on verbal and biological which means you understand the test fundamentally. What I notice about the physical science section is the passages are a lot like the biological sections in that if you understand the basic science going on the answers are almost always in the passage and/or the question. For example, a question might ask about the rate of a reaction and give you a lot of calculated values, but from passage it says the reaction occurs "rapidly" and is "much faster" than another reaction that you already know. It will then give you, say, two values that are slower than the other reaction (that you can immediately eliminate) and then a small value and a large value (the large value being the correct answer in this case). In this way you can either use a formal way of solving the question, but you can also find the answer using your understanding of the nature of the question.

Look over the sections thoroughly and you will see this. There are A LOT of subtle hints in the passage questions that don't require you to really know a lot. You're clearly intelligent enough to pick up on this so I recommend just continuing with AAMCs and reviewing each test thoroughly to gain an understanding of the format so you're more comfortable.

 

[kxc262]

Review the mistakes so you know which types of questions you are missing. Keep a log or journal and try to review this journal every few days.
Aggressively use process of elimination. This helped me reduce the number of mistakes.

 

[beastlybaja]

Just an update took AAMC 8 today and got a 35 12/12/11 mistakes in bio were ones where I changed my answer so maybed I will be able to get that up to a 12 as well but we will see

 

[beastlybaja]

Another update. Took AAMC 9 yesterday. Overall got a 33. 12PS 9VR and 12BS
Verbal I knew was going to bring my score down on this exam. I found it very difficult. Hopefully I wont get verbal that is that difficult but who knows. 8 days out.