MCAT confused / frustraded / ?

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LIDO

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So here is the deal. I took a practice biology section from an old amca mcat before even starting my review / prep work and I got a 10.

I have been review for two months now. I take the MCAT May 11.

About three weeks ago I took a Kaplan practice test and scored a 25 with a breakdown of 6 P 8 B 11 V = 25.

I took another Kaplan practice test tonight and got a 24 this time with a brerakdown of 8 P 8 B 8 V = 24.

So my question(s). Can I count on going up to a competitive score in the next month? Are Kaplan practice test more difficult than the actual MCAT....if so by how much and does anybody have some stories / experiences verifying such?

So what does everybody think? Thanks for the input.

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Kaplan isn't that much harder than the real MCAT. Which pratice AMCAS MCAt did you take? AMCAS 3 is alot easier than a real MCAT so it's misleading.
 
Kaplan isn't that much harder than the real MCAT. Which pratice AMCAS MCAt did you take? AMCAS 3 is alot easier than a real MCAT so it's misleading.

I thought so. I took it on a whim, without study and without taking Orgo.
 
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Your problem is that you are not taking enough practice tests. If you can take at least 2 tests a week your score will improve just by spending the time learning why you got questions wrong. You score won't improve no matter which test type you take if you only take a test once every 2 or 3 weeks. I went from getting 29-30 consistently and then I stopped reading the Kaplan books, took lots of MCATs (literally about 17-20 tests before the actual one) and went over the wrong answers and I started getting 34 and 35 consistently. Even just taking one of the sections alone each day and spending lots of time learning why you made mistakes is a big help. A bonus of taking the test a ton of times is you see so many questions that by the time test day rolls around you will be able to finish 5 minutes early no matter the material and factoring in the nerves that will cause you to take more time on each question. I took so many tests that I had dreams about passages.
 
take more practice tests and passages. the MCAT is not a hard test. it's a "do enough until you get used to what it looks for" test.

also it's spelled frustrated not frustraded.
 
Actually, I thought the Kaplan practice tests were harder than the AAMC tests, especially the PS sections, which often required way more calculation than the actual MCAT does. The WS is pretty equal to AAMC and BS only slightly more difficult. When it got closer to the day of the MCAT, I decided to practice only with the AAMC tests, and my scores were much better than they had been on the Kaplan tests and were a better reflection of my actual score.

In the end, I used the Kaplan tests as a resource, doing questions (especially in BS) without timing myself just to get some practice with challenging passages. A BS passage very similar to one in a Kaplan test actually showed up on my actual MCAT!
 
where do you get all these massive amounts of practice tests from?

If you take a Kaplan course, they provide all of the AAMC full-lengths, along with all of the Kaplan full-lengths, plus LOTS of passages and discrete questions that are focused on individual topics (ie an MCAT style passage on the musculoskeletal system and another on circuits). I'm sure the other test prep companies also provide lots of material, but none I think provide as much as Kaplan.
 
you can find all the full-length MCAT exams on ebay for a cheap price, like how i did. :-D
 
Although I thought the actual content on the Kaplan tests was harder, the score scale generously accounts for this, so I don't think Kaplan tests will give you a lower score than AAMC. The first practice test I took about a month before the real thing was a Kaplan. I missed soooo many questions and still got a 34. Then I started taking AAMC tests so I could practice on the computer and I couldn't break 33 even though I was missing less than 10 questions on each section (much less than I missed on the Kaplan tests). On the real thing I got 35, so in my case both exams were "harder" than the real thing.
 
It depends on the person. some people usually do better in the real test than on the practice ones, while people like me always does worse. I got 29 on my diagnostic test in Kaplan, scored solid 34, 35 on the Kaplan practice tests/AAMC tests(I just took the more current ones) and I took a test every saturday for like 3 months and did practice problems during the week. But during the test day, I guess I just get nervous and i scored a 31. The same thing happened to me and the SATs.
 
i thought the kaplan tests were much harder than the real thing - score went up 3 points on the actual test.

i might have opposite advice to everyone else - you might be overworking yourself and making it hard to do well. maybe take a day or two off from studying, use some flashcards or something just to do a little work, then come back to it fresh and kick butt on your next practice test.
 
The only practice tests that have any real accuracy are AAMC tests 7-10.
 
The Kaplan tests tend to be harder than the AAMC practice tests, but they are scaled accordingly and are thus still a decent indicator of how you'll do. That being the case, they vary by administration. Mine was a particularly difficult test and much more difficult than anything I saw on the Kaplan and AAMC full lengths (albeit I only took a few).
 
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