Official August 27th 2014 MCAT Thread

MCAT is Hard? Not with BeMo's 515 Score Guarantee.
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HaitianMD

HaitianMD

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I might as well get one started. I'm taking it in August but prepping now! Haven't seen my Sciences in YEARS so I'm starting early. Join as you will.
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mehc012 said:
...on exams which barely touched on the subjects I am missing. How awful would it be, come test day, to encounter a bunch of the stuff I'm not prepared for and blow it? That would be exactly how people end up scoring well below their practice average!
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You'd be surprised. I got my highest PS score yet on AAMC 9 which covered all the weakest topics in my repertoire, I'm starting to get why practice passages and AAMC's are so highly suggested - the language of one AAMC to the next doesn't change even if the content does, you start to build your intuition to the point that you can encounter your weak topics and still manage to break down a question to a 50/50 even if it's based on knowledge you blatantly don't have.. then the MCAT becomes a list of questions you know the answers to and some coin tosses.
 
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cooper86 said:
Hey everyone. I'm taking the MCAT for the second time on Aug 27 (my first one was early June), and I'm really concerned about being too late in the application cycle. I submitted AMCAS on Aug 5, so I'm still waiting for that to be verified - I'm guessing it'll be around the beginning of September. The scores for our Aug 27 won't be released until Sept 30. Am I screwed in terms of waiting way too late if I want to get in for next fall? Thoughts?
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I think you are still ok for DO school because DO cycle is much longer; for MD you better rock this test. I know many California medical school (MD) do not interview until October, but u better smoke this test (thinking 34+) to get an interview this late (like say the end of Nov/Dec).
 
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mehc012 said:
I'm still not done with content review... o_O
I am so screwed
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Oh come on, don't be that person. From what I've seen, you've been scoring near 40's on your practice tests. I'm sure others would kill for that score. I'm sure you'll do fine.
 
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Czarcasm said:
Oh come on, don't be that person. From what I've seen, you've been scoring near 40's on your practice tests. I'm sure others would kill for that score. I'm sure you'll do fine.
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Fair enough, fair enough. I apologize if I came across that way...regardless of score, I feel like kind of a schmuck work-wise compared to many on these threads, and I just want to make sure that I don't blow my good chances due to procrastination or cruddy work ethic. I did too much of that in college (why do you think I got less than a 3.2 when I apparently learned most of the material pretty well?) and I'm determined not to do it anymore. I've seen how quickly things can turn around if you just don't bother to learn everything and push to the end! My goals for this MCAT are more than just scoring well; this would be the first time I've put in a major, sustained studying effort of this type and doing well in that endeavor, without complacency or corner-cutting, is equally important to me.

That being said, I'm now hypocritically going to ignore the fact that I'm skimping by skipping all passages in the final 10Ch and by skipping the final 1/3s, so...
 
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I'm just telling myself over these last 3 days of studying that the difference between me actualizing my dreams of being a doctor and not are 10 multiple choice questions. Any of those answers could be found in these last hours....

Oh boy.
 
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I will be taking my last AAMC tomorrow and the 2 days after Id spend reviewing verbal and light content review :)
 
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itsthat1guy said:
Same here, doing TPRH passages on stuff I'm weaker in atm. Which exam are you taking
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I will be doing AAMC 7 (already done the other ones) - hopefully its not one of the weird ones.. I definitely dont want it to crush my confidence at this point lol.

Maybe we should also go over the official topic list to make sure we havent missed anything
 
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TheAnonymous said:
I will be doing AAMC 7 (already done the other ones) - hopefully its not one of the weird ones.. I definitely dont want it to crush my confidence at this point lol.

Maybe we should also go over the official topic list to make sure we havent missed anything
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I definitely did that...went through and highlighted things which TBR missed/which I didn't learn particularly well.
 
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All practice tests done:

AAMC3: 34
AAMC4: 40
AAMC5: 37
AAMC7: 39
AAMC8: 36
AAMC9: 42
AAMC11: 36
AAMC10: 37

Average: 37.6

Plan is just to review all the practice tests as well as a short list of topics that im not confident with.

27th cant come soon enough.
 
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mehc012 said:
I definitely did that...went through and highlighted things which TBR missed/which I didn't learn particularly well.
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nice. may I ask how you did it? Did you just go through the list and "google" anything that you couldn't remember? Did you do this for all the topics? did you find it helpful?

I'm going to do AAMC 7 tomorrow and review the PS and BS sections of it and call it a day but have 2 more days which I can dedicate to this but I'm not sure what is the best to approach this.
 
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Just finished my last AAMC (AAMC10), I was pretty comfortable with it after taking and reviewing AAMC9 and AAMC11.
Got a 35 (13PS/10VR/12BS), literally one question from 11VR and one question from 13BS. Lol, not complaining though. But I did feel that the curve was pretty tough on this one, 4 wrong in PS would've been a 12! And 32/40 in VR was a 10.
 
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TheAnonymous said:
nice. may I ask how you did it? Did you just go through the list and "google" anything that you couldn't remember? Did you do this for all the topics? did you find it helpful?

I'm going to do AAMC 7 tomorrow and review the PS and BS sections of it and call it a day but have 2 more days which I can dedicate to this but I'm not sure what is the best to approach this.
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I just went through their .pdfs and highlighted things that stood out. I am still going through those highlights and yes, google, Wiki, and otherwise searching them, combined with TPRH review (since I already read TBR and apparently didn't get those).
 
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sexophile said:
Just finished my last AAMC (AAMC10), I was pretty comfortable with it after taking and reviewing AAMC9 and AAMC11.
Got a 35 (13PS/10VR/12BS), literally one question from 11VR and one question from 13BS. Lol, not complaining though. But I did feel that the curve was pretty tough on this one, 4 wrong in PS would've been a 12! And 32/40 in VR was a 10.
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I agree- i thought 10's curve was pretty harsh. 36/40 for a VR 11 seems steep
 
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AAMC4: 37
AAMC5: 36
AAMC7: 35
AAMC8: 36
AAMC9: 36
AAMC11: 36
AAMC10: 36

Average: 36.0000000000

Looks like I'm getting a 36 on the real deal. My scores have ranged from 12-14:10-11:12-13. I'm really hoping for a 14:11:13, which I think is easily within range. I am going to go through all of my notes before the test, because I haven't been reviewing the material much at all, except when reviewing the practice tests (which I did by reading the answer explanations and identifying any incorrect reasoning).

How is everyone else feeling about this?
 
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Any suggestions on how much studying should be done on Tuesday (day before the test)? Light content review or is it okay to do a full study day?
 
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UBCStudent15 said:
Any suggestions on how much studying should be done on Tuesday (day before the test)? Light content review or is it okay to do a full study day?
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Most people say don't study at all. I think I'm going to spend the day relaxing, there's not much more you can do at that point.
 
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UBCStudent15 said:
Any suggestions on how much studying should be done on Tuesday (day before the test)? Light content review or is it okay to do a full study day?
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Id say do whatever that makes you feel better... I personally don't want to take the whole day off so it's going to be a half-day content review for me
 
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You all VR genius make me sooooo jealous (mean anyone scores VR>11). No matter how much I study EK or Practice exam or do real exams, I cannot make it pass 9. I believe some people just very natural good at VR, recently there is a guy posted that he only studies for 2 days and still mange to score a 10 on VR; that is more than anything I can do :(
 
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feeling-dizzy said:
You all VR genius make me sooooo jealous (mean anyone scores VR>11). No matter how much I study EK or Practice exam or do real exams, I cannot make it pass 9. I believe some people just very natural good at VR, recently there is a guy posted that he only studies for 2 days and still mange to score a 10 on VR; that is more than anything I can do :(
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I found the verbal SA more useful than anything...huge source of VR passages, real AAMC style, with no time limit.

Just finished AAMC8...whew, that PS felt tricky (and must have been, as I got the same score with more questions missed compared to last time)!
VR was also a bit tough...dropped a point there.

I love loved the BS, though...hope they stay like that one!
 
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Is anyone else kind of stuck on what they are going to use to study for these last few days? I'm reading over some of my notes, but now that I am done all of the FLs, none of my studying really feels productive...
 
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dewman said:
Is anyone else kind of stuck on what they are going to use to study for these last few days? I'm reading over some of my notes, but now that I am done all of the FLs, none of my studying really feels productive...
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Ill do a few TPRH passages , anki cards and a couple EK101 passages
 
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AAMC 3: 11/10/11 (32)
AAMC 8: 12/10/11 (33)
AAMC 10: 12/10/11 (33)
AAMC 9: 12/9/10 (31) :-(
AAMC 7: 12/10/13 (35)
AAMC 11: 11/10/11 (32)
AAMC 5: 10/11/11 (32)
AAMC 4: 11/10/11 (32)

Average of 32...

A little bit upset due to the fact that 50% of my mistakes in PS is me misreading the question because of a feeling of being rushed... Hopefully I will be able to be thorough during the actual test, but more than likely the same thing will happen due to nerves. If anyone has some relaxation tips let me know! (but this is a forum of pre-meds. What is relaxation?)
 
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Alright I'm done studying, not gonna be on SDN for a while to keep my mindset right. Good luck to you all, hope your hard work pays off.
 
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Uggh, I hate optical interference/double slit/all that jazz. It is literally the only subject I haven't Anki'd (other than the 'needs review' stuff from the content outlines) and I just. cannot. make. myself. do it.
I know I learned it for physics, but I hated it even then and my distaste has only grown since. Kind of want to just skip it...
 
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mehc012 said:
Uggh, I hate optical interference/double slit/all that jazz. It is literally the only subject I haven't Anki'd (other than the 'needs review' stuff from the content outlines) and I just. cannot. make. myself. do it.
I know I learned it for physics, but I hated it even then and my distaste has only grown since. Kind of want to just skip it...
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I should review that. All i remember is n lambda=d sin(theta)
 
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mehc012 said:
Uggh, I hate optical interference/double slit/all that jazz. It is literally the only subject I haven't Anki'd (other than the 'needs review' stuff from the content outlines) and I just. cannot. make. myself. do it.
I know I learned it for physics, but I hated it even then and my distaste has only grown since. Kind of want to just skip it...
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I have a weird feeling that's going to come up on our exam. I haven't seen much of it on the AAMCs so I'm afraid it'll come up haha
 
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itsthat1guy said:
I should review that. All i remember is n lambda=d sin(theta)
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Technically it's path difference = nlambda lol but yeh I would for sure go over that. As far as hard passages go, thin film and interference is fairly high yield IMO
 
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t0ny said:
Technically it's path difference = nlambda lol but yeh I would for sure go over that. As far as hard passages go, thin film and interference is fairly high yield IMO
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How do you figure that? :eyebrow:
I mean, clearly I was always going to learn it either way, so it's not that I'm trying to weasel out, but I'm just curious as to how you're determining high yield...I know it's not "because it shows up in a ton of the FLs", so I guess I just don't see what metric you could be using?
 
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I'm going to do 10 today, 11 tomorrow, and leave 9 for the day after in case I don't get to it! Good luck!
 
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I'm still finishing my content re-review, chapters 9 today and 10 tomorrow. I've prety much given up on OChem - I feel like memorizing reactions will just be a huge waste of time especially if they're discretes which could end up deviating anyways... hoping for an orgo passage instead of discretes that require some significant background knowledge. The day before the exam I just plan on reading my formula pages once or twice over, and then doing a read through of my summarized notes for bio, no more than 1.5 hours of "studying".
 
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UBCStudent15 said:
Your planning on doing an AAMC 3 days in a row followed by the real one the day after?
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Yeah, studying de-stresses me. I don't want to take the day off beforehand. Plus, taking the AAMCs is far, far easier than the other studying I do...I take FLs when I can't focus and I only want to put in 2hrs of studying instead of more.
 
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mehc012 said:
Yeah, studying de-stresses me. I don't want to take the day off beforehand. Plus, taking the AAMCs is far, far easier than the other studying I do...I take FLs when I can't focus and I only want to put in 2hrs of studying instead of more.
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haha, whatever works for you
 
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mehc012 said:
Yeah, studying de-stresses me. I don't want to take the day off beforehand. Plus, taking the AAMCs is far, far easier than the other studying I do...I take FLs when I can't focus and I only want to put in 2hrs of studying instead of more.
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Said no one ever
 
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nugang said:
Said no one ever
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It's far more stressful to sit around thinking about it than to sit down doing something tangible, you know?
Maybe I'm weird...I like tests, I like exams, they tend to push everything else out of my mind and then when I'm done, I can erase them and have a completely blank, stress free brain for a bit.
 
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mehc012 said:
How do you figure that? :eyebrow:
I mean, clearly I was always going to learn it either way, so it's not that I'm trying to weasel out, but I'm just curious as to how you're determining high yield...I know it's not "because it shows up in a ton of the FLs", so I guess I just don't see what metric you could be using?
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I've seen it in GS exams, TPR passages as well as the first time when I took my exam last year, so as I see it, there's a chance of it being there. Was going based on what I've seen, no specific metric system
 
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t0ny said:
I've seen it in GS exams, TPR passages as well as the first time when I took my exam last year, so as I see it, there's a chance of it being there. Was going based on what I've seen, no specific metric system
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What depth did everyone study single slit, double slit? Would it be helpful to memorize the equations? Even from discussing it with my physics professor this past week he just told me the main point is knowing constructive vs destructive interference and why they occur at those intervals on the screen. Also just to note the intensity difference between the two. Sufficient you think?

Also did anyone heavily study heat engines, refrigerators, carnot cycle?? I've been putting it off for the last 3 months and now have 3 days...
 
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Took AAMC 10 a few hours ago and got 13/10/13. That verbal was hard but glad to see my score was still 36. My average is 35.6 but I got a couple bad test because I studied way too much the day before. So I'm gonna try to relax these next couple of days and not go overboard, hopefully get a 36 this Wednesday
 
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itsthat1guy said:
Took AAMC 10 a few hours ago and got 13/10/13. That verbal was hard but glad to see my score was still 36. My average is 35.6 but I got a couple bad test because I studied way too much the day before. So I'm gonna try to relax these next couple of days and not go overboard, hopefully get a 36 this Wednesday
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Nice! Just finished AAMC 11 with a 12/9/13. Happy with a 34 and hopefully it goes the same on test day. Just doing some light review from here on out.
 
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