I remember doing all of the AAMC practice tests for the old MCAT (8-ish?) and I feel like I would have done more if there were more to do. My schedule has 9 of them, but between doing the section banks and question packs (+review) I'm probably only going to do the EK 1-4 with AAMC stuff and then whatever else.
I 'm working through 8: TPR 1, NS 1-4, EK 4, and both the AAMC tests.
The Unscored honestly seemed a little easier. The Practice one got me on Psych because I had only done TPR psych up until then and I was taken aback as to how much I really needed to go over. (121). But I took this last week and I just got a 124 on Kaplan(dont know if this is accurate :/) so its just content review over and over.
It all depends.
When you do any of the AAMC materials there's an option for "show solutions". Then when you are doing the questions there is a "solutions" button. I like it because it is more helpful to go over the correct answer when I can remember my exact thinking for choosing whatever answer I chose. Obviously, not great for simulating testing conditions.
Their solutions are ridiculous. Like every answer requires Scientific Reasoning and Problem Solving, so just stating that really doesn't help at all.
I haven't taken any Kaplan FL's, but the free one (NS FL1) is definitely worthwhile. The passages were long and I ran out of time, but that was helpful for working on pacing. The explanations are better than aamc and EK IMO. The difficulty seemed easier than EK and around the same as AAMC sample.
I like NS a lot. The explanations are really good and the scoring seems a lot closer to AAMC than TPR and Kaplan.
What I really hate is that they don't always have explanations for why the other answer choices are wrong. And yea, I don't care what category the question is from.
Literally almost the same exact as you! I took it today too 127/123/125/128
Awesome! Great score, Did you take any NS exams? and if you did, how did you do?
Do the section banks!! The bio one is killer but I've heard rumors about how it really helps! And people from May 20th exam said to do Chem/Phys section as well from section bank. Literally if you get it, its 300 questions for C/P, BB, and Psych
i think you can take it like an exam and time it, in which case you'd take like 90 min for 60 questions. So you could probably get them done in a few days if you want to use them that way. I'm probably going to work on them over a week or so. I have also heard that the section bank is the single best thing you can use outside of the AAMC FL, and most said that the real thing is similar to the section bank (which sucks because everyone says the section bank is killer lol).
Honestly you'll find yourself so confused like "wtf did i just read?" Because so many passages (i've only done bio) have so many components that are unnecessary. "This gene GFC helps with apoptosis. Heres an inhibitor GFC(r). It uses G coupled protein receptor on inner mitochrondrial membrane, labeled GFCR. Variants were isolated M1 and M2..." BUT write it down to draw like a map (this is what I did) and I was able to get it. Also don't be discouraged by the score because that one is hard for sure.
Thanks! I did not take any NS exams because I did not have time for them. I heard they were very hard though.
Its just constant exposure to those ridiculous passages. I dont know if youve seen my earlier posts but people have been saying the actual exam is pretty similar to how the section bank (at least for bio) is in terms of how hard it is to read it. Evidently in the passage, they'll give you a whole bunch of BS info. My suggestion would be to start backwards (look at experiment first. See what they wanted to test for. Then go backwards from the variants.)
I think there is. TPR scores are pretty deflated. I got 498 on mine, and am expecting to get around 508-510 on the test. Make sure that you analyze everything you missed, fill in any content gaps, make sure you are reading carefully and not making logic mistakes. Also do some practice that isn't TPR for variety, AAMC should be the closest to your actual scores(save for the last 2-3ish weeks), and NS is pretty fair too.
