MCAT mock exams and the real thing.

[mcgst9]

Hey guys, I apologize, I am new here. However, I have been studying for the MCAT which I am to take on the 30th, and I have been reading through both Exam Cracker books and the Princeton Review book. Everything seems to point to all of the questions being worth the same amount of points.

However, when taking a Princeton Review mock-exam online, I found that my score was much lower than it should have been if all questions were equal.

For instance, on my physical sciences portion, I got 6/15. However, looking through the number I had gotten right, I had gotten 29.

29/52 = .55
.55 x 15 = ~8.

The same thing happened for my other scores as well.

Reading was 20/40 = .50 which should equal ~7, but registered at a 5.

The biology section was 43/52 = .82 which should be a 12, but was scored as an 11.

Am I simply doing my calculations wrong or is there something goofy with how they grade things?



Also, do mock exams really capture what the MCAT is truly like?

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[burntorange]

PR has a different grading system then what you would expect the way you just attempted to calculate it. They weight questions differently based off difficulty level so your grades will be much lower than AAMC's grading scale. Dont put too much weight into your overall score cause thats meaningless just use it as a tool to hone in on your content and get a feel for types of topics you are missing.

 

[mcgst9]

PR has a different grading system then what you would expect the way you just attempted to calculate it. They weight questions differently based off difficulty level so your grades will be much lower than AAMC's grading scale. Dont put too much weight into your overall score cause thats meaningless just use it as a tool to hone in on your content and get a feel for types of topics you are missing.

Yeah, I figured. I avoid stressing about things because I usually always come out on top in the end.

When I look at my report I tend to do fairly well, but I make silly little mistakes. Also, I am finding that me second guessing myself is a huge mistake on the practice exams.

For instance, on the biological science alone, I would have gotten 50/52 if I hadn't second guessed myself. I am not angry now because, well, who cares? It's to make sure I do better.

But I need to make sure I don't do it on the actual test, and I am not exactly sure what I can do. Should I just study the material more or go with my gut instincts or both?

 

[burntorange]

Yeah, I figured. I avoid stressing about things because I usually always come out on top in the end.

When I look at my report I tend to do fairly well, but I make silly little mistakes. Also, I am finding that me second guessing myself is a huge mistake on the practice exams.

For instance, on the biological science alone, I would have gotten 50/52 if I hadn't second guessed myself. I am not angry now because, well, who cares? It's to make sure I do better.

But I need to make sure I don't do it on the actual test, and I am not exactly sure what I can do. Should I just study the material more or go with my gut instincts or both?

Stick to your gut it's usually right more often than not. But once you keep on practicing and do more and more practice tests you'll figure out the recurrent mistakes you make and can intuitively figure out ways to correct it. Maybe you doubt yourself because the content isn't solidified yet or maybe you doubt yourself because you make an easy question harder than it should be. Don't worry too much early on just learn from your mistakes and try to not do it again (I say try because mistakes are inevitable).

Once you start doing AAMC FL's you can get a better assessment as to how your test taking really is. TPR is only good for content so don't look into the test-taking mistakes you make on the practice tests too much. Try an AAMC FL and you'll see the difference in question + passage style.

 

[Lambda Phage]

If TPR's subject diagnostics are any indication of the difficulty of their practice exams, AAMC's FL will be significantly easier for you than TPR's. The same goes with TBR's FL exams; both TPR and TBR make AAMC seem very straightforward, so don't fret if you're not scoring as well as you'd like. Instead of using your TPR FL's as diagnostics, treat them like learning tools to improve your knowledge base for when it actually matters.

 

[aspiring20]

If TPR's subject diagnostics are any indication of the difficulty of their practice exams, AAMC's FL will be significantly easier for you than TPR's. The same goes with TBR's FL exams; both TPR and TBR make AAMC seem very straightforward, so don't fret if you're not scoring as well as you'd like. Instead of using your TPR FL's as diagnostics, treat them like learning tools to improve your knowledge base for when it actually matters.

but judging from the may 11th thread, the actual test is much harder than all the AAMCs. which means the real MCAT is on par with all the TPR/TBR monstrosities.

hell, maybe TPR/TBR are cake compared to the actual test! oh the horrors...

 

[Lambda Phage]

but judging from the may 11th thread, the actual test is much harder than all the AAMCs. which means the real MCAT is on par with all the TPR/TBR monstrosities.

hell, maybe TPR/TBR are cake compared to the actual test! oh the horrors...

Postpartum perceptions are usually inaccurate. Most people score within 1 point of their practice test average.

Once you factor in (a) that some questions on the exam are experimental, and thus are (i) difficult to study for but (ii) still do not influence your score and (b) that many people's nerves get the best of them on test day, it's easy to see why people say the actual MCAT is "more difficult" than the practice tests. But once scores come out, as I said, most people score around their mean.

And even if the actual exam is more difficult than the practice exams, AAMC corrects for because they need a proper distribution of scores; in other words, MCAT percentiles remain fairly consistent despite the perceived difficulty of the exam.

 

[Jjkwest1]

but judging from the may 11th thread, the actual test is much harder than all the AAMCs. which means the real MCAT is on par with all the TPR/TBR monstrosities.

hell, maybe TPR/TBR are cake compared to the actual test! oh the horrors...

Trust me, the idea that the real MCAT is wayyy harder than the practice exams is wayyy over hyped on this forum. Yes, the real exam might be a little harder but in my experience the exam was also much easier than the TPR and TBR exams. Also, your AAMC practice exam average will be your BEST indicator on how you'll do. My real score was .5 points greater than my AAMC average. Bottom line: don't listen to the hype. people are just saying it's 100X harder b/c of anxiety and plus the curve might also be very generous if the exam was indeed much harder than the practice MCAT.

 

[mcgst9]

So I am back to my original question about mock exams again.

I did one of the AAMC practice exams and I ended with a 101/144. If every question is worth the same exact amount, should that not mean that my grade would have been:

101/144 = .70 x 45 = 31.5 rather than 27?

I feel like the grading for this is more confusing than it needs to be. >.>



EDIT: Actually, I found that I was looking at the column labeled "estimated scaled score." That is probably why I am confused, but what exactly is that? Exam was #3.

 

[Heisenberg1]

So I am back to my original question about mock exams again.

I did one of the AAMC practice exams and I ended with a 101/144. If every question is worth the same exact amount, should that not mean that my grade would have been:

101/144 = .70 x 45 = 31.5 rather than 27?

I feel like the grading for this is more confusing than it needs to be. >.>



EDIT: Actually, I found that I was looking at the column labeled "estimated scaled score." That is probably why I am confused, but what exactly is that? Exam was #3.

When they say that all questions are worth the same amount, they're referring to 1 raw point. That statement has no bearing on the scaled scores. The scaled scores are NOT a direct percentage conversion, they're determined from a statistical analysis of how people have performed on that test. That's why each test's scaled scores will always correspond very closely to a certain percentile. For example, a 30 will almost always be very close to the 75th percentile. If the test is easy, that could mean that you have to answer 85% of the questions correctly to get a 30. If the test is very difficult (as determined by performance of a large sample size) you may have to answer only 65% of the questions right to get that 30. Those are just hypotheticals, but raw scores are not able to be converted to scaled scores as a simple % correct conversion.