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sofpink

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Just wondering if anyone else will be taking the MCAT on May 20 2016. I would like some support, input, and help on your MCAT strategies I am only studying 2 hours a day for the MCAT, as I am taking a full load semester. Anyone else in this track?
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cantstopwontstopvu17 said:
Took NS 3 today too. CARS was also my worst hahaha - though I didn't feel too bad about it. Got a 513 (128/126/130/129). Happy with the B/B and P/S but both of my C/P and CARS scores were the lowest of the last two NS exams which was a shame. Probably going to go over the exam tomorrow morning. How did you end up doing @Wolfpack93 ?
Click to expand...

I ended up bombing CARS just like I knew I would. I dropped two points from my last FL CARS section. Ended up with a 510 (127/125/129/129). I'm surprised about the P/C score I felt like I was doing way better.
 
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Has anyone taken Kaplan FL#5? I am reviewing it now and I am simply not understanding one question. It is pretty straightforward and I guessed it correctly but I can't get the math right no matter what I do I am just not getting to the right number. Can I post a screenshot of the problem on here?
 
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took the NS half length today and scored a 505 (125/127/125/128)...ill try one of their FLs tomorrow to get a more representative score
 
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For all of ya'll taking the Kaplan Tests, how have you been doing???What are your guys' target scores and progression through your Kaplan FL's? I'll post my scores below...

Diagnostic: 498 (128/123/124/123)
FL 1: 498 (126/122/127/123)
FL2: 502 (125/125/128/124)
FL3: 504 (127/124/128/125)

So CARS i am just shooting for a 126 on the real deal, been doing and will continue to do at least 6 passages a day until Test Day. BUT WHAT THE HECK DO I DO FOR PSYCH/SOC??? I feel like i know all the terms and concepts and ideas, and then i get to this section, and none of the answer choices make sense to me! Can anyone please tell me how they approach this section? Do i just study more terms and concepts? Any advice would really help.

I'm shooting for a 510 on the real deal, so I THINK around a 505 will get me around there??? I've seen the spreadsheet and the charts saying ~14 points higher than your average of all Kaplan scores... but that seems a little excessive.
 
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D.O. OMM boob said:
For all of ya'll taking the Kaplan Tests, how have you been doing???What are your guys' target scores and progression through your Kaplan FL's? I'll post my scores below...

Diagnostic: 498 (128/123/124/123)
FL 1: 498 (126/122/127/123)
FL2: 502 (125/125/128/124)
FL3: 504 (127/124/128/125)

So CARS i am just shooting for a 126 on the real deal, been doing and will continue to do at least 6 passages a day until Test Day. BUT WHAT THE HECK DO I DO FOR PSYCH/SOC??? I feel like i know all the terms and concepts and ideas, and then i get to this section, and none of the answer choices make sense to me! Can anyone please tell me how they approach this section? Do i just study more terms and concepts? Any advice would really help.

I'm shooting for a 510 on the real deal, so I THINK around a 505 will get me around there??? I've seen the spreadsheet and the charts saying ~14 points higher than your average of all Kaplan scores... but that seems a little excessive.
Click to expand...

Seems like you are on the right track though, improving every time. I was also struggling with PSYCH/SOC during my first practice tests. I then spent three entire days of only studying for that section, memorizing all of the concepts but also trying to understand the theories and how to apply them. I would also suggest to go over your completed practice tests in detail. Look at every question and figure out the reasoning behind the answer. I feel like for the psych section there is a repeating pattern in the questions unlike the other sections of the MCAT. And pay attention to details, I have noticed a lot of the times the answer is found in a word or two in the passage that can easily be missed. Doing this I went from a 123 to a 127 on FL#5
 
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D.O. OMM boob said:
For all of ya'll taking the Kaplan Tests, how have you been doing???What are your guys' target scores and progression through your Kaplan FL's? I'll post my scores below...

Diagnostic: 498 (128/123/124/123)
FL 1: 498 (126/122/127/123)
FL2: 502 (125/125/128/124)
FL3: 504 (127/124/128/125)

So CARS i am just shooting for a 126 on the real deal, been doing and will continue to do at least 6 passages a day until Test Day. BUT WHAT THE HECK DO I DO FOR PSYCH/SOC??? I feel like i know all the terms and concepts and ideas, and then i get to this section, and none of the answer choices make sense to me! Can anyone please tell me how they approach this section? Do i just study more terms and concepts? Any advice would really help.

I'm shooting for a 510 on the real deal, so I THINK around a 505 will get me around there??? I've seen the spreadsheet and the charts saying ~14 points higher than your average of all Kaplan scores... but that seems a little excessive.
Click to expand...

I highly recommend Khan academy videos for P/S. Kaplan was ok but was lacking in a lot of the terms AAMC requires you to know. The best thing about KA is you can watch the videos in 1.5 speed. What I've been doing is watching the videos and taking notes and then just reading through the notes each day. I started out getting around 125/126 on that section and I got a 129 on my last test. Hopefully that wasn't just a fluke, but I do think that KA has helped a ton.
 
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For anyone who's taken NS #3, theres a question on the B/B section, number 25 that isn't making sense to me. The figure shows that this substitution decreases the melting temperature and the Vmax, so wouldn't you assume that this is probably causing a problem more with the structure of the enzyme than the catalytic site? It seems like answer D would make more sense, and basically their explanation is that D is wrong because it is wrong so no help there haha.
 
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Wolfpack93 said:
For anyone who's taken NS #3, theres a question on the B/B section, number 25 that isn't making sense to me. The figure shows that this substitution decreases the melting temperature and the Vmax, so wouldn't you assume that this is probably causing a problem more with the structure of the enzyme than the catalytic site? It seems like answer D would make more sense, and basically their explanation is that D is wrong because it is wrong so no help there haha.
Click to expand...

the figure shows "enzyme activity" and you can see that the wild type vs. R681H difference. If it was a complete structure malfunction then the enzyme wouldn't work, but looking at the graph there is still some level of "enzyme activity" even though it's decreased. Idk thats how I thought about it, but yeah. So looking at the difference between the wild type and the R681H mutant you can deduce that the ARG681 had something to do with catalytic activity
 
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Ok one more question on NS #3, the last question on B/B. If someone can give me an example of an immune cell that moves to a site of an injury by a flagella I'll be astonished. I mean I get conceptually why this would be a reasonable way for mobilizing an immune cell, but aren't the only things in humans with flagella sperm cells?
 
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Wolfpack93 said:
Ok one more question on NS #3, the last question on B/B. If someone can give me an example of an immune cell that moves to a site of an injury by a flagella I'll be astonished. I mean I get conceptually why this would be a reasonable way for mobilizing an immune cell, but aren't the only things in humans with flagella sperm cells?
Click to expand...

Honestly, I was pretty stumped on that as well, and I think it's just an awful question. I know of immune cells binding to bacteria with "flagella", but not the other way around. You can probably just count that as a screw up on NS because I think you're right. I've only heard of immune cells migration mirroring that of an amoeba with the podocytes and like the actin extension/depolymerization. I chose flagella too lol
 
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itsallgood92 said:
Honestly, I was pretty stumped on that as well, and I think it's just an awful question. I know of immune cells binding to bacteria with "flagella", but not the other way around. You can probably just count that as a screw up on NS because I think you're right. I've only heard of immune cells migration mirroring that of an amoeba with the podocytes and like the actin extension/depolymerization. I chose flagella too lol
Click to expand...
Ok good I'm glad I'm not going completely crazy haha. I usually like their answer explanations but this test was lacking a little bit
 
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What do you guys think about this question from the 2nd TPR test?

Contemporary theories of racial prejudice apply in the same way to gender prejudice. Men make up the majority of most societal institutions, including government, economic institutions, and religious institutions. Recently, women have started to acquire roles that were historically predominantly occupied by males. When men strongly value the patriarchal society, and acknowledge that they depend on women for a relationship, children, etc., they are most likely exhibiting which of the following theories of gender prejudice?

A) Feminism
B) Hostile sexism
C) Ambivalent sexism
D) Old-fashioned sexism
C. Ambivalent sexism stems from men strongly valuing the patriarchal society and their important role, while at the same time, acknowledging the interdependent relationship men have with women (choice C is correct). Feminism is a social movement that advocates for women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men (choice A is wrong). Hostile sexism, like hostile racism, refers to blatant prejudices towards women (choice B is wrong). Old-fashioned sexism stems from patriarchy and does not acknowledge any rights or roles of women other than the domestic role (choice D is wrong).

The question itself only identifies the role of women as for a relationship and bearing children, i.e. domestic, traditional roles. I'm not really seeing how C is better than D. :unsure:
 
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D.O. OMM boob said:
For all of ya'll taking the Kaplan Tests, how have you been doing???What are your guys' target scores and progression through your Kaplan FL's? I'll post my scores below...

Diagnostic: 498 (128/123/124/123)
FL 1: 498 (126/122/127/123)
FL2: 502 (125/125/128/124)
FL3: 504 (127/124/128/125)

So CARS i am just shooting for a 126 on the real deal, been doing and will continue to do at least 6 passages a day until Test Day. BUT WHAT THE HECK DO I DO FOR PSYCH/SOC??? I feel like i know all the terms and concepts and ideas, and then i get to this section, and none of the answer choices make sense to me! Can anyone please tell me how they approach this section? Do i just study more terms and concepts? Any advice would really help.

I'm shooting for a 510 on the real deal, so I THINK around a 505 will get me around there??? I've seen the spreadsheet and the charts saying ~14 points higher than your average of all Kaplan scores... but that seems a little excessive.
Click to expand...

My kaplan progression --->

diagnostic: 498
FL 1: 500
FL 2: 505
FL 3: 507
FL 4: 505 (woops, a little too much going on the night before i suppose)
FL 5: 508

P/S I would second what everyone has said about KA and also say just continue to practice passages to get a feel for them. Since they are essentially always some sort of experiment get used to identify demographics, IV, DV etc... Anything they might ask about. Also focus on really understanding the figures, IMO if you understand the figures and exp. design it is pretty easy to crush these passages given requisite content knowledge.

As for score projection, I am not sure how or why but it does seem that you get a 10 pt boost +/- 5 pts... A buddy of mine finished kaplan with a 511 on FL 5 and ended up hitting 523 on the real thing.

Edit: baseline target of 510, but hoping to match or exceed performance on the scored AAMC FL, my dream would be 515-520 range
 
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Formation said:
What do you guys think about this question from the 2nd TPR test?

Contemporary theories of racial prejudice apply in the same way to gender prejudice. Men make up the majority of most societal institutions, including government, economic institutions, and religious institutions. Recently, women have started to acquire roles that were historically predominantly occupied by males. When men strongly value the patriarchal society, and acknowledge that they depend on women for a relationship, children, etc., they are most likely exhibiting which of the following theories of gender prejudice?

A) Feminism
B) Hostile sexism
C) Ambivalent sexism
D) Old-fashioned sexism
C. Ambivalent sexism stems from men strongly valuing the patriarchal society and their important role, while at the same time, acknowledging the interdependent relationship men have with women (choice C is correct). Feminism is a social movement that advocates for women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men (choice A is wrong). Hostile sexism, like hostile racism, refers to blatant prejudices towards women (choice B is wrong). Old-fashioned sexism stems from patriarchy and does not acknowledge any rights or roles of women other than the domestic role (choice D is wrong).

The question itself only identifies the role of women as for a relationship and bearing children, i.e. domestic, traditional roles. I'm not really seeing how C is better than D. :unsure:
Click to expand...
@Formation Hope this helps!

The difference between "old-fashioned" and ambivalent sexism is really about awareness. In old-fashioned sexism, men would not have even realized there was an alternative to the traditional roles/rights of women. The awareness and acknowledgement that they rely on women for a traditional purpose (stated in the question) is supposed to indicate an acknowledgement from the men in question that they benefit from the traditional patriarchal system--which means they have to acknowledge it exists.

tl;dr: old-fashioned = ignorant and blissful, ambivalent = they are aware of the inequality, but not motivated to correct it due to the benefits it confers.
 
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Hey guys, just did the bio/biochem section bank and it was very very biochem heavy or at least every single passage had some biochem in it. Felt like most of them had amino acid residues and experiments with phosphorylation/dephosphprylation levels and enzyme kinetics. Do you guys know if this is more like what the real exam looks like? Honestly it felt like it had so little of just straight bio concepts. Do you guys know from anyone that has already taken the test if they felt the real one was very much like the section bank?
 
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Is anyone else using NS exams??

I took NS 2 today and scored a 503 (126/126/126/125)--> my P/S ave is around 127 so idk why this dropped

Do you guys think I a 508+ is attainable based on this practice score 3 weeks before test date?
 
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medbunny56 said:
Is anyone else using NS exams??

I took NS 2 today and scored a 503 (126/126/126/125)--> my P/S ave is around 127 so idk why this dropped

Do you guys think I a 508+ is attainable based on this practice score 3 weeks before test date?
Click to expand...

I've been using NS. I'm taking the Unscored AAMC FL this weekend so then I'll probably know a little better how well these correlate with the real thing
 
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I'm considering pushing my test date back to June 18th. I'm just not feeling like I have enough time to cover all of the topics I need help with between now and May 20th. Just took Kaplan FL #4 and score 502. I'm hoping to score above 510. Any thoughts? I've been told that most schools send out secondaries to everyone without evaluating primary apps (or MCAT scores), so it shouldn't put me too far behind the 8 ball in that regard. I could be misinformed though. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.


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Can anyone explain the difference btwn. linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity (aka Sapir-Whorf)? Both of them deal with language determining thought right? But how are they different then?
 
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Gladiolus23 said:
Can anyone explain the difference btwn. linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity (aka Sapir-Whorf)? Both of them deal with language determining thought right? But how are they different then?
Click to expand...
Same thing? Linguistic relativity is a form of linguistic determinism. It is just that linguistic determinism is like a super strong form of the theory saying that absolutely all cognitive processes are determined by language whereas linguistic relativity is more "mild" and says that language affects our cognitive processes.

From what I have seen so far, I believe it is sufficient to know for the MCAT just what the general idea of the Worfian hypothesis is and that is that language and its structure affects our knowledge, cognition and view of the world
 
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born2run said:
I'm considering pushing my test date back to June 18th. I'm just not feeling like I have enough time to cover all of the topics I need help with between now and May 20th. Just took Kaplan FL #4 and score 502. I'm hoping to score above 510. Any thoughts? I've been told that most schools send out secondaries to everyone without evaluating primary apps (or MCAT scores), so it shouldn't put me too far behind the 8 ball in that regard. I could be misinformed though. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.


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Click to expand...
Shouldn't make a big difference in time since if you submit mid June lets say your application will not be verified by some time in early/mid July which is when you would get your scores back. But would you be able to work on your AMCAS and study for the MCAT at the same time?
 
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viks31 said:
Shouldn't make a big difference in time since if you submit mid June lets say your application will not be verified by some time in early/mid July which is when you would get your scores back. But would you be able to work on your AMCAS and study for the MCAT at the same time?
Click to expand...

I'm hoping to have my app in by beginning of June, and hopefully have everything completed by the end of this month. I've already been working on it, but your point is valid. I guess I just need to think about it and decide within the next few days. Another big down side is that I would have to travel out of state since nothing is available in my state.


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born2run said:
I'm hoping to have my app in by beginning of June, and hopefully have everything completed by the end of this month. I've already been working on it, but your point is valid. I guess I just need to think about it and decide within the next few days. Another big down side is that I would have to travel out of state since nothing is available in my state.


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Click to expand...
Yeah just see if everything works out. In terms of availability, a lot becomes available as the test date approaches since people change dates last minute so best option would be to register somewhere out of state that is most reasonable for you to travel to (best flight connections/have friends somewhere stuff like that) and then a few weeks before the test keep on checking and most likely something will become available in your state so you can change locations
 
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_Nightlight_ said:
My kaplan progression --->

diagnostic: 498
FL 1: 500
FL 2: 505
FL 3: 507
FL 4: 505 (woops, a little too much going on the night before i suppose)
FL 5: 508

P/S I would second what everyone has said about KA and also say just continue to practice passages to get a feel for them. Since they are essentially always some sort of experiment get used to identify demographics, IV, DV etc... Anything they might ask about. Also focus on really understanding the figures, IMO if you understand the figures and exp. design it is pretty easy to crush these passages given requisite content knowledge.

As for score projection, I am not sure how or why but it does seem that you get a 10 pt boost +/- 5 pts... A buddy of mine finished kaplan with a 511 on FL 5 and ended up hitting 523 on the real thing.

Edit: baseline target of 510, but hoping to match or exceed performance on the scored AAMC FL, my dream would be 515-520 range
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice! I've been going over KA videos in detail like everyone has been suggesting the past few days, but have not taken another FL since. I will definitely make note of trying to keep a mental track of IV's DV's Control groups, and what not. It never even occurred to me to do this... but you are absolutely right in that they test you on manipulating these variables and ask you about the effect a lot of the time.

Also gj on your scores! 498 diag--->508 on Kaplan FL 5 is huge! I personally think you are well in the range to hitting around/at least 515 imo. My best bud plateaued at 508 for his last 3 Kaplan tests and got a 515 on the real deal. I'm hoping similar trends are present for me when I take the test, however I am not gonna count on it, and am gonna continue to try and improve my score
 
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Hi, sorry if this is posted somewhere else. What constants should I memorize? Plank's constant, Boltzmann's constant, both R constants, gravity. What else?
 
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tokenOPM said:
Hi, sorry if this is posted somewhere else. What constants should I memorize? Plank's constant, Boltzmann's constant, both R constants, gravity. What else?
Click to expand...
you usually don't need to memorize any constants, they are usually given to you in the question.
 
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I literally got the first 21 questions of C/P right on the sample exam and ended with 63%. Woops lol
 
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medbunny56 said:
Is anyone else using NS exams??

I took NS 2 today and scored a 503 (126/126/126/125)--> my P/S ave is around 127 so idk why this dropped

Do you guys think I a 508+ is attainable based on this practice score 3 weeks before test date?
Click to expand...
My P/S dropped from 128 usually to 126 on NS2. Just took it today. Did worse than I did on NS1 and NS3 (I've been taking them out of order lol) but I'm blaming it on being on a waitlist and it being a right around waitlist movement time haha that's all I've been able to think about the past few days
 
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Just finished the unscored AAMC FL. Got a 86/89/95/92 for a total average of 90.5%. Does anyone know around what that corresponds to? For reference, NS 1-3 were 513, 514, 513 receptively and 3 kaplan FLs were all 507-508.
 
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cantstopwontstopvu17 said:
Just finished the unscored AAMC FL. Got a 86/89/95/92 for a total average of 90.5%. Does anyone know around what that corresponds to? For reference, NS 1-3 were 513, 514, 513 receptively and 3 kaplan FLs were all 507-508.
Click to expand...

Damn killing it, congrats! I think that's like a 520. I have P/S left on the unscored. Check out MCAT jelly's sticky thread in the MCAT section it has a link to an excel document that you can convert your unscored to a relative score.
 
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anyone do the section banks yet?

Spoiler (kinda):

can someone explain this notation when writing out residues: like if someone explained Y116F as a substitution...would that mean that phenylalanine was substituted for tyrosine. Additionally, does the number represent position or does it represent how many residues are there? That really threw me off for a couple questions.

Also anyone know what a good score on these section banks are? The b/b was tough only got 73%
 
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Not sure if lucky or not but my breakdown for the unscored was 86%/83%/85%/92%. If this translates to scores on the actual thing I am beyond happy with that haha
 
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itsallgood92 said:
anyone do the section banks yet?

Spoiler (kinda):

can someone explain this notation when writing out residues: like if someone explained Y116F as a substitution...would that mean that phenylalanine was substituted for tyrosine. Additionally, does the number represent position or does it represent how many residues are there? That really threw me off for a couple questions.

Also anyone know what a good score on these section banks are? The b/b was tough only got 73%
Click to expand...

So for the sample you gave that would mean that the tyrosine at position 116 was substituted with a phenylalanine. So basically you're correct just the reverse direction.
 
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Wolfpack93 said:
Did you figure out how to use it? It seems like my score would be like a 516-519 but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right haha
Click to expand...

yea i'd say if you used the same scale as the scored exam: then you probably hit 129/128/129/130=516, but with the MCAT jelly scale then: 130/129/130/131=519-520ish
 
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itsallgood92 said:
yea i'd say if you used the same scale as the scored exam: then you probably hit 129/128/129/130=516, but with the MCAT jelly scale then: 130/129/130/131=519-520ish
Click to expand...

Well ill take any of those scores on the real deal haha. But yeah MCAT jelly seems a little inflated
 
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