took my first practice aamc

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echoyjeff222

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Hey all,

Whew, just finished a long day of answering lovely AAMC questions >.>

So I did the free practice AAMC 3 per SN2 schedule ... Got the score and I'm pretty happy about it, got a 32 with a 11/10/11 breakdown, pretty evenly split between all the sections ... I was hoping someone who's been in a similar situation can give me some specific things to do in the next month before my test to improve a few points (my goal was a 35). So far, I'm planning to list out the specific sections I didn't do so great on and review those ...

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What I do:

Day1: take a practice MCAT, review every problem a few hours later.
Day2: review all my notes for biology and then follow up with a bunch of passages. Take a break, then do same thing for Orgo.
Day 3: repeat of day 2 but for physical sciences.
Also, do some verbal practice each day as you need to!

This has been working for me quite well. It's tough to squeeze everything into one day like that but you should get used to it and the notes should begin looking familiar your second or third time reviewing them. Hopefully that helps!
 
I use TPR workbook for biological sciences. It is absolutely fantastic, but you have to really pick passages that even make you slightly uncomfortable if you want to get anything useful out of it. That is probably the best advice I can give you. For physical sciences, I use TBR entirely for passages and I often skim through the discrete questions in the TPR workbook to see if there are any calculation areas I am lacking in. Also, do not get discouraged if you get stuff wrong while doing these passages. I get only 75% correct (more or less) on most physical sciences passages from TBR, but on the actual practice exams they are a lot easier to think your way through. Believe it or not, there are some topics in TBR that are quite similar to discrete questions or passages I have seen. TBR is great for getting used to the "unfamiliar passage" shock, although some of the questions really make you think. Critical thinking at its finest.
 
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I use TPR workbook for biological sciences. It is absolutely fantastic, but you have to really pick passages that even make you slightly uncomfortable if you want to get anything useful out of it. That is probably the best advice I can give you. For physical sciences, I use TBR entirely for passages and I often skim through the discrete questions in the TPR workbook to see if there are any calculation areas I am lacking in. Also, do not get discouraged if you get stuff wrong while doing these passages. I get only 75% correct (more or less) on most physical sciences passages from TBR, but on the actual practice exams they are a lot easier to think your way through. Believe it or not, there are some topics in TBR that are quite similar to discrete questions or passages I have seen. TBR is great for getting used to the "unfamiliar passage" shock, although some of the questions really make you think. Critical thinking at its finest.
when r u taking your exam, just curious? And how long have you been doing that strategy for? How's it been working out (improvements?) ...
 
Well I kinda bombed my MCAT back in June (10/5/10), so I began studying again with TBR (Physics+Orgo+GenChem) and TPR (Biology) instead of Kaplan, which I used a few months ago. I created my own set of notes for each subject over the course of 5 weeks, and I took my first full length last week (AAMC3: 12/9/14). I studied for two days, took AAMC4 today (13/6/14). Verbal is a big problem for me, but I definitely feel more comfortable every passing day by sticking to this schedule. I'm saving the self-assessments for the week prior to the exam for any last minute practice. I am taking the exam first week of September.
 
Well I kinda bombed my MCAT back in June (10/5/10), so I began studying again with TBR (Physics+Orgo+GenChem) and TPR (Biology) instead of Kaplan, which I used a few months ago. I created my own set of notes for each subject over the course of 5 weeks, and I took my first full length last week (AAMC3: 12/9/14). I studied for two days, took AAMC4 today (13/6/14). Verbal is a big problem for me, but I definitely feel more comfortable every passing day by sticking to this schedule. I'm saving the self-assessments for the week prior to the exam for any last minute practice. I am taking the exam first week of September.

Alright, cool! It looks like we're doing really similar things for the review ... I'm currently doing 2 sections per day of review (quick review of content then loads of passages as well). Hopefully things go up! Were there any specific things you did that you felt helped the most in terms of getting from a 11-13/14 range?
 
To be honest I felt like I knew a lot of what I currently know in regards to content, but the big difference now is that I know how to narrow down unreasonably sounding questions a lot better. After doing a hundreds of practice questions, you eventually develop the skill of eliminating unrelated answer choices, narrowing it down to 2, and then using your gut or hopefully your knowledge to pick which is the best answer. Whenever I narrow it down to two answers, I re-read the question again and then look at the two answers and see which is a better answer for the question being asked. Nine times out of 10 one of them will be jumping out of the page at you.
 
To put things in perspective, the latest AAMC I took had a moderately difficult PS section compared to what I've seen on others. During the exam I thought that I was going to get a 10 because I wasn't sure on a lot of them. Turns out that knowing how to pick the better answer when it comes down to 2 only left me with 3 wrong, with a PS score of 14. Pretty awesome how good you can get at the 50/50 questions after a while. By the way, the worst thing you can do is stare at a question for longer than 1:00 unless you are absolutely sure you can calculate or solve it. Always come back to those at the very end. For one AAMC bio passage, I was really unable to concentrate on it for some reason. I read the passage and was blanking out after the first question, so I came back to it at the very end. Instead of wasting time, I ended up getting that entire passage correct. Don't waste precious brain energy on a problem you're blanking out on! Get the easy stuff out of the way first
 
To put things in perspective, the latest AAMC I took had a moderately difficult PS section compared to what I've seen on others. During the exam I thought that I was going to get a 10 because I wasn't sure on a lot of them. Turns out that knowing how to pick the better answer when it comes down to 2 only left me with 3 wrong, with a PS score of 14. Pretty awesome how good you can get at the 50/50 questions after a while. By the way, the worst thing you can do is stare at a question for longer than 1:00 unless you are absolutely sure you can calculate or solve it. Always come back to those at the very end. For one AAMC bio passage, I was really unable to concentrate on it for some reason. I read the passage and was blanking out after the first question, so I came back to it at the very end. Instead of wasting time, I ended up getting that entire passage correct. Don't waste precious brain energy on a problem you're blanking out on! Get the easy stuff out of the way first

Totally agree. I get disgusted by passages containing Petri dishes, names of restriction enzymes, or fetal growth in pregnancy. So I always finish all discretes and O chem, then biochem, then physiology, and then the above for which you end up having over 10 mins in the end. I have had a similar score breakdown on the TPR practice tests but have yet to touch the AAMCs. Do you think it's possible to bring a 7-8 verbal to a 10 in the next month with some practice?
 
Hey all,

Whew, just finished a long day of answering lovely AAMC questions >.>

So I did the free practice AAMC 3 per SN2 schedule ... Got the score and I'm pretty happy about it, got a 32 with a 11/10/11 breakdown, pretty evenly split between all the sections ... I was hoping someone who's been in a similar situation can give me some specific things to do in the next month before my test to improve a few points (my goal was a 35). So far, I'm planning to list out the specific sections I didn't do so great on and review those ...

Hey folks! I scored somewhere around the 90th percentile on my diagnostic exam, so could the rest of you 90 % of individuals who have ever studied for or taken the exam outline the path to breaking 40? Thanks!
 
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