The Official August 9, 2013 MCAT Thread

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Just started studying today. Anyone else with me?
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Plutonium said:
I agree with most of the people that PS was more difficult to manage than on the AAMC Fls, mostly because of timing and the conceptual questions and PS is my strongest section. The BS wasn't much like the practice AAMC's. I was getting constant 9s and 10s on BS with their practices but I'll feel lucky if I even get an 8. Less on outside knowledge and more passage based and it threw me off a bit. I didn't get much straightforward discretes. I feel like the way I studied for the BS was a little off even though it was based on their practice exams, in my opinion anyway.
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Yeah, not to mention there were 2 discretes that were 100% rote memorization of stuff both TBR and EK said we didn't have to know... damn test...
 
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Heday said:
I'm not sure if this question is answerable. This "favorable" curve you speak of would not be out of 52 questions because there are experimental items on the exam. It would be some number less than 52, however, I'm not quite sure how many experimental items are on each exams, so I couldn't give you a definite number.
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AAMC says there are experimental items in each section. Just for arguments sake lets say there are 5 experimental questions in a section. This would mean this section is scored out of 47 instead of 52. Lets assume a scale on par with practice test 11 (i.e. 36/52 or about 70% raw will get you a 10). 70% of 47 is roughly 33/47 correct for a 10 then. So in theory you could get as low as 33/52 and still get a 10 for a section that's scaled similarly to practice test 11. Obviously there is luck involved because you don't know which questions are experimental. Regardless, it is one explanation as to why people often do better than they think.
 
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shoehornlettuce said:
AAMC says there are experimental items in each section. Just for arguments sake lets say there are 5 experimental questions in a section. This would mean this section is scored out of 47 instead of 52. Lets assume a scale on par with practice test 11 (i.e. 36/52 or about 70% raw will get you a 10). 70% of 47 is roughly 33/47 correct for a 10 then. So in theory you could get as low as 33/52 and still get a 10 for a section that's scaled similarly to practice test 11. Obviously there is luck involved because you don't know which questions are experimental. Regardless, it is one explanation as to why people often do better than they think.
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experimental VR though? how?
 
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65dos said:
experimental VR though? how?
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One of the 7 passages must be experimental. I'm guessing it's probably one of the shorter VR passages (i.e. only 5 questions). They might have a bank of maybe 10 experimental questions for the experimental passage and then randomly assign 5 to each test taker. This would allow them to test longer passages (6 or 7 questions) without a huge chunk of your verbal section being experimental.
 
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Aw yeah, finally off of my 1-week ban from a trigger-happy finger post-test, heh. :p will repost post-test feelings again below without the incriminatory stuff.
 
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Quoted from original post on 8/9, circa 1400 EST:

Took the 8 am.

Overall, I thought the test was very much like AAMC 10 and 11 like people said.

PS: easiest section imo, but my strength has always been PS. One long passage took some thinking, spent the longest there, but figured it out eventually...hopefully That was as calculation-heavy as it got. Another passage was SO COOL because I'm a geek like that.

VR: I liked it 10/10. Plenty of small laughs here and there from quips WOOT. But VR is still VR, so idk. Passages are maybe like 3 sentences longer, but the quality far makes up for it.
Note: my laughing is definitely related to a compensatory mechanism to get rid of my nerves lol.

BS: toughest, but always my weakest. Could have been worse, though. Discretes not as specific as people have said before; I had some clue for all of them and I am definitely not a detail-oriented guy and memorization machine. The orgo passage was long, but using the questions to filter out the BS unnecessary stuff made it accessible. Those who had more orgo maybe had a different assortment of passages, but I don't remember much orgo at all. Looked up 3 questions afterwards, definitely got them right.

It probably wasn't a tough test, so perhaps the scale will be more rough. No horror stories like the previous MCAT dates whew.

Trial was psych/sociology. Lol. Probably 1/2 were critical thinking I reasoned through. The other ones about theories were lol. I'd better get my $30 because I marked stuff and checked my answers over as well, ended with 5 minutes. Hopefully the system picked up all of my actions to see that I really tried lol.
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Hey all,

Idk if you recall, I was the guy who had the questionable practice MCAT scores. I decided not to take the August 9th MCAT, as I knew it would be a disaster. I signed up for the September 11th exam. Any tips on how to bring up my verbal score? I feel once I find a strategy that works for me, the other sections will be soooo much easier to improve in. I've tried Kaplan's (didn't work), EK's (didn't work) and visualizing what the passage is telling me. Thanks!

Right now my verbal is all over the place, ranging from 4-7.
 
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attainmydream21 said:
Hey all,

Idk if you recall, I was the guy who had the questionable practice MCAT scores. I decided not to take the August 9th MCAT, as I knew it would be a disaster. I signed up for the September 11th exam. Any tips on how to bring up my verbal score? I feel once I find a strategy that works for me, the other sections will be soooo much easier to improve in. I've tried Kaplan's (didn't work), EK's (didn't work) and visualizing what the passage is telling me. Thanks!

Right now my verbal is all over the place, ranging from 4-7.
Click to expand...

Keep working hard, you never know what will happen on test day. Stay focused when reading and try to understand the passages b4 answering the questions :)
 
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Synapsis said:
Well for people trying to get a sense of what the PS was like, I can say it was a much heavier time pressure, first off. On my last half AAMCs, I was scoring 14s and 15s (a couple 13s) on PS with ~15 minutes to spare but on test day I had 2 minutes I believe. No doubt some of the loss in time was stress, but if you're trying to gauge if you're ready for PS, the most important thing is that you should have a gut reaction to the vast majority of the questions. By that I mean, if a questions asks you to calculate some value, equations should be coming to your mind like clockwork, and you should very quickly be formulating a way to arrive at the question while at the same time remaining aware of units. You simply don't have time to sit and think about how you're going to solve every problem - at least, not on this PS section.
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Agree with this 100%. You don't have time to sit there and dilly dally about what equation you're going to use or what approach to take. I didn't feel much time pressure on my 8 am PS, and finished with around 10 minutes or so, but had I not been as fluent in my PS skills, finishing on time would've been a challenge.
 
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attainmydream21 said:
Hey all,

Idk if you recall, I was the guy who had the questionable practice MCAT scores. I decided not to take the August 9th MCAT, as I knew it would be a disaster. I signed up for the September 11th exam. Any tips on how to bring up my verbal score? I feel once I find a strategy that works for me, the other sections will be soooo much easier to improve in. I've tried Kaplan's (didn't work), EK's (didn't work) and visualizing what the passage is telling me. Thanks!

Right now my verbal is all over the place, ranging from 4-7.
Click to expand...

Is English your first language? Scores in that range for VR are hard to bring up quickly. I don't think there's much you can do now in ~3 weeks that can bring you up quickly, since the only thing I've seen on these boards that can really help is daily and constant reading to get used to reading just for reading's sake, and you obviously don't have time for that now.
 
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attainmydream21 said:
Hey all,

Idk if you recall, I was the guy who had the questionable practice MCAT scores. I decided not to take the August 9th MCAT, as I knew it would be a disaster. I signed up for the September 11th exam. Any tips on how to bring up my verbal score? I feel once I find a strategy that works for me, the other sections will be soooo much easier to improve in. I've tried Kaplan's (didn't work), EK's (didn't work) and visualizing what the passage is telling me. Thanks!

Right now my verbal is all over the place, ranging from 4-7.
Click to expand...

I was able to go from a 4 on my first EK test to averaging around 12 on my AAMC practice tests. I'm a science person and have hardly taken any humanities classes, so reading passages in philosophy and art was something entirely new to me. I realized I had to abandon my current style of reading (word for word memorization) and adopt a new technique. My best piece of advice would be to summarize each paragraph in your head as you're reading, which forces you to do some thinking while your reading, rather than flying through the passage and trying to synthesize the main point from a bunch of paragraphs that you read but did not actively read. It seemed a lot easier to me to determine the main point of the passage once I had already determined the purpose of each paragraph. And for the question aspect, really look out for answer choices that are beyond the scope of the passage. I find that the AAMC loves to include these, because they are really tempting and don't tend to contradict the argument presented; however, they bring in new information that was never explicitly or implicitly mentioned in the passage. Hope I could be of some help.
 
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shoehornlettuce said:
AAMC says there are experimental items in each section. Just for arguments sake lets say there are 5 experimental questions in a section. This would mean this section is scored out of 47 instead of 52. Lets assume a scale on par with practice test 11 (i.e. 36/52 or about 70% raw will get you a 10). 70% of 47 is roughly 33/47 correct for a 10 then. So in theory you could get as low as 33/52 and still get a 10 for a section that's scaled similarly to practice test 11. Obviously there is luck involved because you don't know which questions are experimental. Regardless, it is one explanation as to why people often do better than they think.
Click to expand...

This is pointless. No one knows how they do it. We can sit here and guess about experimental questions, raw percentages to scaled scores, and everything else in between, but what we'll get at the end of the process are 3 numbers and a sum.

For those who are still stuck and can't seem to stop thinking about it, go do something else. Seriously. Log in on 9/10 and you'll know your score, and that's all you'll ever know. It's a pity, but that's the game we're playing, so we might as well keep our cool and play it well.
 
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inycepoo said:
Is English your first language? Scores in that range for VR are hard to bring up quickly. I don't think there's much you can do now in ~3 weeks that can bring you up quickly, since the only thing I've seen on these boards that can really help is daily and constant reading to get used to reading just for reading's sake, and you obviously don't have time for that now.
Click to expand...

Yes, English is my first language. The problem is I'm not much of reader. I occasionally read nbc news, msn news, cnn, and sports articles, but I hardly feel these will sufficiently equip me for verbal.

I figured 3 weeks is a short amount of time to enhance my skill set. :-/ Thanks for the reply!
 
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attainmydream21 said:
Yes, English is my first language. The problem is I'm not much of reader. I occasionally read nbc news, msn news, cnn, and sports articles, but I hardly feel these will sufficiently equip me for verbal.

I figured 3 weeks is a short amount of time to enhance my skill set. :-/ Thanks for the reply!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I haven't seen much consensus on SDN on improving VR drastically besides getting used to reading stuff like what's presented on the test over a long period of time. Sorry, man, but post-gaming your VR sections properly can help you more now than you'd think!
 
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medsci08 said:
I was able to go from a 4 on my first EK test to averaging around 12 on my AAMC practice tests. I'm a science person and have hardly taken any humanities classes, so reading passages in philosophy and art was something entirely new to me. I realized I had to abandon my current style of reading (word for word memorization) and adopt a new technique. My best piece of advice would be to summarize each paragraph in your head as you're reading, which forces you to do some thinking while your reading, rather than flying through the passage and trying to synthesize the main point from a bunch of paragraphs that you read but did not actively read. It seemed a lot easier to me to determine the main point of the passage once I had already determined the purpose of each paragraph. And for the question aspect, really look out for answer choices that are beyond the scope of the passage. I find that the AAMC loves to include these, because they are really tempting and don't tend to contradict the argument presented; however, they bring in new information that was never explicitly or implicitly mentioned in the passage. Hope I could be of some help.
Click to expand...

I too am very science oriented and love reading for detail/facts instead of the main idea. I've tried a strategy similar to yours where I would analyze each paragraph's purpose and main idea, but still find myself going back to the passage wasting time. You were of help, thanks! Maybe I need to give it more time? I mean I've been doing something similar for the past two months.
 
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inycepoo said:
Yeah, I haven't seen much consensus on SDN on improving VR drastically besides getting used to reading stuff like what's presented on the test over a long period of time. Sorry, man, but post-gaming your VR sections properly can help you more now than you'd think![/QUOTE]

+2

I have seen over and over again so many threads implying to ways to improve VR in a short period of time. :eek::eek::bang::bang:

For example: My test is 2 weeks from now. I am sitting at VR of 6. Is it a quick way to get me to double digit? :confused:
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MedOldAge said:
+2

I have seen over and over again so many threads implying to ways to improve VR in a short period of time. :eek::eek::bang::bang:

For example: My test is 2 weeks from now. I am sitting at VR of 6. Is it a quick way to get me to double digit? :confused:
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2 weeks out will not be enough time to improve something like reading comprehension

i'd say alter your strategy and see how it works. use the highlighting, if you're not referring back to the passage, start, play with your timing. eliminate answers more effectively.

for my rewrite whenever the **** that is going to be, i've started reading for pleasure, it takes a lot of time though. even in school i start performing my best in february/march, why? because after 4 months of drinking and working in the trades my brain is ****, it takes me the first 3-4 months of school to get my reading to be more immersive and less mechanical. i've also been playing with the idea of finishing off a minor in classical studies, and i've noticed that in those courses i only begin to appreciate what i'm reading after a month or two, especially with dense and roundabout greek/roman lit.
 
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For the people who voided, what do you think happened/how long did you study/and what did you use. Your feedback will be very valuable.
 
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Found my syllabi posted. I have a biochem quiz on AAs the Thursday after scores are released. Good thing that's a two-day gap, because I am not getting any studying down the night of, regardless of the outcome lol
 
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So nervous about scores.. *searches SDN for any stories where people felt terrible coming out of the testing center only to see that they scored well one month later*
 
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I like my countdown timer on my Mac Dashboard a lot better:

Screen%20Shot%202013-08-19%20at%2017.17.16%20.png
 
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Guys guys guys guys this is my 999th post I'm gonna be a "1K Member" wheeeeeeeee

:troll:
 
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kimicurtis said:
Lol! Congrats! You voided right? I am lowkey going to start studying for September 11th...
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Nah, I didn't; it was just a joke. I wrote in white at the bottom of that post that I was kidding. Looks like it worked! :lol: hehe

1000th post cemented. Not a bad way to immortalize my trolling tendencies on these boards. :p
 
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inycepoo said:
Nah, I didn't; it was just a joke. I wrote in white at the bottom of that post that I was kidding. Looks like it worked! :lol: hehe

1000th post cemented. Not a bad way to immortalize my trolling tendencies on these boards. :p
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LMAO! Well, looks like you got me. That's what I get for surfing SDN on my iPod, cant see details like those. :p
I hate this damn wait... :(
 
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inycepoo said:
Nah, I didn't; it was just a joke. I wrote in white at the bottom of that post that I was kidding. Looks like it worked! :lol: hehe

1000th post cemented. Not a bad way to immortalize my trolling tendencies on these boards. :p
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I can't believe you feel like :lol::lol::lol: now as it looks like you had a whole week to practise so your face muscle looks relax.........:rolleyes:
 
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MedOldAge said:
I can't believe you feel like :lol::lol::lol: now as it looks like you had a whole week to practice so your face muscle looks relax.........:rolleyes:
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Que será, será. I don't let things like waiting for score releases affect my mood for even one second.
 
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What was with the suspended accounts a while ago? Saw a few users with that under their names.
 
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ar00n said:
What was with the suspended accounts a while ago? Saw a few users with that under their names.
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I blabbed too much about the exam and accidentally revealed a "topic"/"keyword" even though I thought I was already being vague enough. One-week ban as per TOS.
 
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can't wait to get my trial score mark back and irrationally tie it to my mcat score, my prediction has dropped from 30 to 27, it'll be at triple 8's after that trial % comes back. man i need to get laid.
 
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