My CARS score keeps jumping around

[salemstein]

With each test prep company I use, my scores deviate up to 5 or so. I tend to do pretty good on TPRH and EK. Once I started doing NS and Altius tho, things started going everywhere (some high, some low). I just want a firm approximation as test day draws near. Which company is the best indicator of the real thing (besides AAMC, which I plan to take last).

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[Altius Premier Tutor]

What did you score on the Altius CARS sections? Which Altius full-lengths did you take so far? I can probably lend some perspective as I know the Altius exams well and all of the AAMC materials.

 

[TestingSolutions]

With each test prep company I use, my scores deviate up to 5 or so. I tend to do pretty good on TPRH and EK. Once I started doing NS and Altius tho, things started going everywhere (some high, some low). I just want a firm approximation as test day draws near. Which company is the best indicator of the real thing (besides AAMC, which I plan to take last).

It's hard to gauge where you're really at with anything besides the AAMC CARS passages. Every prep company is offering their interpretation of the CARS section, but it is just an approximation. MCATJelly has been compiling a table of actual MCAT scores and the scores students got on their various practice materials. (Here's the link) This might help you to gain some sense of where you're at. With that said, if you're really concerned about where your actual performance is, I'd encourage you to take 6 to 9 AAMC CARS practice passages under timed conditions. Then you'll know what real CARS passages are like and can compare the materials your using to practice with them.

With the two question packs (22 passages each), the two practice tests, and the study guide (5 passages), you have access to 67 AAMC CARS passages. So using 10% of them to find out where you're at isn't going to use up too many of them if you're wanting to save them until the end. (I wouldn't wait until the very end though!)

 

[salemstein]

It's hard to gauge where you're really at with anything besides the AAMC CARS passages. Every prep company is offering their interpretation of the CARS section, but it is just an approximation. MCATJelly has been compiling a table of actual MCAT scores and the scores students got on their various practice materials. This might help you to gain some sense of where you're at. With that said, if you're really concerned about where your actual performance is, I'd encourage you to take 6 to 9 AAMC CARS practice passages under timed conditions. Then you'll know what real CARS passages are like and can compare the materials your using to practice with them.

With the two question packs (22 passages each), the two practice tests, and the study guide (5 passages), you have access to 67 AAMC CARS passages. So using 10% of them to find out where you're at isn't going to use up too many of them if you're wanting to save them until the end. (I wouldn't wait until the very end though!)

I actually have paper copies of the old released aamcs (3-7, 10-11) Would the qpacks contain the same thing?

 

[Skydive Fox]

Not sure about which company would be the best indicator, but are there specific types of CARS passages you're really good or really bad at? I was seeing huge fluctuations as well, and I delved a bit deeper and saw that the more philosophy-heavy CARS sections are what brought my scores down (/w multiple companies' practice passages), while the CARS sections with less of the dense philosophy shot up my score many points. I've been working on my weakness with dense philosophy passages since diagnosing it and seem to have stabilized my CARS scores somewhat. Just my own experience with fluctuating scores in the CARS section...