NEW AAMC Section Bank

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ATM92

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Has anyone tried doing any passages on the AAMC section bank that was recently released? If so, how hard do you feel the passages are?

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Hey guys I don't know what you all think, but I've felt like there are some hard Psych/Soc questions. As a whole it's not bad, but within every passage there seems to be 1-2 questions that test some really deep level details, ***SPOILER like #71 I got correct through process of elimination but through various prep books I had never seen the term "Neuroleptics"
 
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I'm doing it now...my test is on Aug 25th, which is terribly close...
And yes i do felt those section bank questions were incredibly hard. I only did C/P and they really made me feel like killing myself. It's not only they are harder, but much more confusing. There was a question asking "they use "A" to change xxxxx, the use of "A" is xxxx?" I was wrecked by that question. I thought by "A", all they mean is site A, but it's actually indicating alanine. I was like WTFFFFF after I read the solution.

Gonna do B/B and P/S soon...or maybe just BB since Jack said it's a good practice.
Oh god I'm dying.
 
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I'm doing it now...my test is on Aug 25th, which is terribly close...
And yes i do felt those section bank questions were incredibly hard. I only did C/P and they really made me feel like killing myself. It's not only they are harder, but much more confusing. There was a question asking "they use "A" to change xxxxx, the use of "A" is xxxx?" I was wrecked by that question. I thought by "A", all they mean is site A, but it's actually indicating alanine. I was like WTFFFFF after I read the solution.

Gonna do B/B and P/S soon...or maybe just BB since Jack said it's a good practice.
Oh god I'm dying.

Took the real exam today and found it to be much harder than the section banks. I'd still do all of them because it's a very good idea of the knowledge base you need to do well on them, but I found that they were super biochem based (something I'm very good at), while the real exam, and it may have just been my luck, was very much lacking in biochem.
 
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Took the real exam today and found it to be much harder than the section banks. I'd still do all of them because it's a very good idea of the knowledge base you need to do well on them, but I found that they were super biochem based (something I'm very good at), while the real exam, and it may have just been my luck, was very much lacking in biochem.
Lol are you a biology major? Bio major tends to get killed in C/P
 
Took the real exam today and found it to be much harder than the section banks. I'd still do all of them because it's a very good idea of the knowledge base you need to do well on them, but I found that they were super biochem based (something I'm very good at), while the real exam, and it may have just been my luck, was very much lacking in biochem.

Can you elaborate on why it was harder than the SB? Did you think the questions were harder (the content was more difficult/low-yield) or that the actual passages were harder to understand (the passages were more complicated/the graphs were difficult to analyze)?
 
I'm doing it now...my test is on Aug 25th, which is terribly close...
And yes i do felt those section bank questions were incredibly hard. I only did C/P and they really made me feel like killing myself. It's not only they are harder, but much more confusing. There was a question asking "they use "A" to change xxxxx, the use of "A" is xxxx?" I was wrecked by that question. I thought by "A", all they mean is site A, but it's actually indicating alanine. I was like WTFFFFF after I read the solution.

Gonna do B/B and P/S soon...or maybe just BB since Jack said it's a good practice.
Oh god I'm dying.


Omg same! I'm taking the exam this Thursday and the c/p of the section bank was ridiculous.. I really hope it isnt like that.
 
Omg same! I'm taking the exam this Thursday and the c/p of the section bank was ridiculous.. I really hope it isnt like that.

I'm getting really really really nervous now!!! What if I fail! Ahhhhhhh feeling like bipolar now....


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Have you guys tried the Official Guide questions? I tried those and my percentages were in the 60s...
 
Lol are you a biology major? Bio major tends to get killed in C/P
I am a life sciences major and I've had to take some physics/chemistry courses in my degree. C/P wasn't too bad in my practice. I got 85% on the unscored and 129 on the scored, as well as a 81% on the SB C/P.

Can you elaborate on why it was harder than the SB? Did you think the questions were harder (the content was more difficult/low-yield) or that the actual passages were harder to understand (the passages were more complicated/the graphs were difficult to analyze)?

Sure! the SB was very biochem heavy, which is something I did not experience on the actual exam (very little biochem on my particular exam). Biochem is definitely one of my strengths, so I couldn't take advantage of that on my actual exam. There was a lot more low yield stuff like being able to identify particular nit-picky structures, ones that I would not know even if I studied for this exam for 10 more years, knowing delta G of certain reactions. The experiments were much easier to understand in the SB, and it may have just been that I found them much more interesting. The B/B SB was like 70% biochem with 27% bio and 3% gen chem, my exam was like 70% bio, 15% biochem and the remainder split between gen chem and orgo. There was a lot of physics with calculations, and just obscure over all passages. Psych I'd say may have actually been easier than the psych SB, there were few if any terms that I didn't know.
lol no way the actual exam is more difficult than sb

Believe what you want. The AAMC is moving to make the MCAT just like the section bank, but a move like that takes time. Check out the MCAT reddit page, plenty of people are saying the exact same thing.

If you guys got any other questions, ask away.
 
They are clearly harder than the current MCAT(from my experience). The section bank appears to be what the MCAT long term is trending towards. However, it will take a while for this to happen; you cant suddenly ramp up the difficulty of the MCAT significantly over night. You have to figure out how you want to do it, get enough data points to generate a valid curve etc. The FL released last month is much more representative of what you'll see on test day and is frankly alot easier. Just to make a further point, that FL released last month recycled several old passages from old AAMC FL's. The MCAT itself hasnt changed nearly as much as people think; the majority of passages on old AAMC FL's are still valid for this current test. All in all, it'll be a very gradual change for the MCAT and honestly the MCAT now really isnt much different than the old MCAT. Yes, some material is different, but the skills tested and the way they are tested are identical.

What does "it will take a while for this to happen" mean? As in.... by now, the new MCAT is this difficult? I have been studying since December and I feel like when I took the section banks, many questions were way different than my practice tests prepared me for. And I am scoring well like 507-509 average.
 
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