As Promised... Full Review!

Ok, So there is the table of my scores... I put the highest in each section in red...

I want to start by thanking TheGreenWave for sending me his notes... it was a nice little summary to review the day or so before the test... And thanks everyone on this board for being so helpful.

I wanted to give a full review of Kaplan:
Pros:
It simplified everything down... yeah they didn't give you every detail you needed, but I needed a refresher... I was trying to study on my own since winter and it wasn't happening. I am a wife and mother and Kaplan forced me to do homework and study... and I had to have someone watch my son for 2 days a week, which gave me 2 full free days... and overall I think it was money well spent, just because it FORCES you to study.

Cons:
Ok, I will say my teacher was a sweet sweet girl. Seriously, very nice.... but she was young and she got into D-school through a 7 year program and just had to get a minimum score as part of her acceptance... so while obviously she did above and beyond, she didn't have that same pressure we all had, she was already accepted in school, and didn't know anything about the application process or about common scores. Someone asked what scores meant (after we got our diagnostic) and she said "oh i dont know I think most people get in the 20s"... maybe she meant who got into dental school... not just the overall average.. but that still a little misleading and a little high... She also said she never took a practice test so she couldn't tell me how the Kaplan practice test stacked up against the real test. Our teacher also wasn't able to answer some questions... not that I expected her to be able to answer everything everyone asks... but my friend had an MCAT kaplan teacher that was an encyclopedia... you could ask him the craziest conceptual science question and he would know... our teacher knew the kaplan material very well, she was alway prepared and professional but she didnt seem like a "genius" which is kind of what I expected. But its no knock to her... I just expected an egg-head, and she seemed too normal.

Also, and this is the BIGGEST problem with Kaplan... They have this program and they don't change it to fit the individual class. 1st off they split each subject into 2.. and do Bio 1, Chem 1, Orgo 1.... ect.. then come around and do part 2 of each section... well for Bio 1 our homework was 4 chapters... 4 easy chapters (mitosis, and stuff) and then when we had bio 2 it was like 11 HARD chapters (each body system and taxonomy).... to top it off we had class on Monday and Wed. and every time we had a huge amount of reading/homework... it was assigned on Monday for a wed... I wish they would switch like PAT (which had barely any homework) with Bio so we would have from Wed to Monday to deal with doing all those chapters... and it seemed like everything was that way.... same with Orgo, the 1st part was all nomenclature, and then the 2nd part was all the mechanism... I just thought it was split up very poorly and it someone thought for 2 seconds they could have moved some things around so we had our large assignments due on Mondays and not Wed... but they just follow the program blindly and it irritates me.


The practice tests were SO FRUSTRATING... because in the science once you left a section you could not go back....at the end of bio it would give you the review screen and if you left.. that was it, you couldn't go back. So its not realistic at all. Its adds a different time management issue... Do I review bio now and possibly run out of time later, or just never be able to review bio? Also my low chem scores are due to the fact that the tests mostly have math chem questions, and it was a real time crunch, i felt that it was more balanced for topscore and achiever. ALSO... they were supposed to gave this fancy scoring thing where they tell you which questions you mostly get wrong, which ones you spend the most time on and stuff like that... but they didn't. Sure you could analyze it yourself... super.

Also, on the 1st day a woman came in and told us that they have practice tests on their computers and we were allowed to come take them if we sign up... and she definitely said they were different then the ones we were given as part of the class... but they weren't... they had nothing... apparently they had computers, and you were allowed to take YOUR practice tests, from your online resources on their computer... i guess in case you didn't have a computer... apparently the woman was confused... since they have those resources for the MCATs and LSATs.

Destroyer - You heard it all a million times. Its a great book... It can't be the only think you do, you need to be able to understand it, not just memorize road maps. But it helped a lot. It concentrated mostly on math questions for chem, and mechanism questions for orgo... both of which i had less than half of.... but it helped. I found the bio pretty dry and kind of boring, cause like half the questions where "all of the above"... but it was still worth doing.

Now on to my Test...

1st off, I will say I had people (yes, plural) private messaging me asking for specific questions and such. I am sorry, but I don't think this is fair, and I don't know if this goes on a lot, or if people actually answer these responses with details... But I am going to say that what I have to say, and what I feel comfortable sharing will be here... I don't like the idea of people getting secret info.

Bio - I just did Kaplan and Destroyer for this. My practice test scores were so variable, i didn't know what to expect. After the section I really thought I did horrible... I didn't even have a single cell bio question... and I had a lot of absurd questions. A PICTURE i had to identify (yuck). I had a math related bio one... and not even genetics math. Also I felt like my 1st question was a Chem question.... it was about a biological reaction, but it wasn't asking something like "where in the body/plant does this happen?" it was asking chem type questions about it. I used feel like I had to make a lot of educated guesses. Also some had multiple true answers but it was asking what was the most important aspect of _____. And you had to kind of make a judgment call. I don't like these.

Chem - most were straight forward... not much to say

Orgo - also very straight forward. I don't know what i got wrong, I thought I knew every one. Probably just mistakes (most acidic instead of least acidic or something)

PAT - slightly harder than Kaplan or Topscore... MUCH easier than Achiever. I didn't do Crack or anything. I guess the angles were somewhat challenging... but I have a system, just look at it for a sec and go with my gut. I would rarely ever get any wrong on Kaplan or Topscore. So I can't say how I did on it, but I just went with my first instinct. I got one weird hole punch that took me a sec. but nothing too bad. The keyholes are always my weakness... but i SWEAR one had 2 answers, it was the exact same answer but flipped, I guess was thinking that well since these are the same it must be one of the others, but i was certain it wasn't. and Im not just thinking those 2 shapes looked the same... It was a relatively simple shape, think rectangle with a hole in it... flipping it 180 degrees doesn't make it wrong... and I am positive the hole was in the same spot.

RC - Now I may cry. I knew I got the Frap question in Bio... so I knew the ethics passage was coming. I was thinking people were exaggerating... or trying to justify their low scores... or maybe these science freaks couldn't handle reading something not about science. NOPE... not the case. It was impossible... The questions were so subjective and not at all answered in the passage... it was like doing a philosophy project (i assume, i never took a philosophy). I think i did fine on my other passages... but this was just rough. I can't hate myself though, there was nothing I could do to prepare for this passage... I think even if I was given more time it wouldn't have helped.

QR - If you told me I would have scored higher on this then RC, I would have laughed at you... I think I got lucky. I got 3 dry erase boards, and as soon as I went into the room (during the tutorial) I wrote all the conversions and special triangles down. Didn't need to. They were all given to me.... even silly ones, like 3ft in a yard. I didnt have any hard trig identities. I was happy, I actually had time to go do a few of the longer ones I guessed at and marked... it was actually funny because all 3 I went over... that I didn't even read just randomly selected something anf moved on... all 3 of them I guessed right anyway.

The Center - I was a little stressed like they were going to only give me one marker and it was going to run out or something... and someone told me they had gotten yelled at for sitting on their foot (which i always do)... and I heard the ladies were nasty to them... Well this was not the case for me... I had 2 18-20 year old guys. I told them i was nervous about the markers and he gave me like 4, they were nice, and I don't think they were concerned with if I sat on my foot or not.

A funny story.. I knew they had headphones to block out noise.. well they were there, plugged into the computer (which i thought was odd, but didnt really really think much of it) and I put them on... after the science I realized they weren't blocking out noise at all... and they kind of hurt... so i took them off... At the end of my test there was someone behind me who had the headphone on... and I could hear them listening to something... um duh! whatever test they were taking had audio... they weren't noise canceling headphones! That explains why they were plugged in to the computer.

Also be prepared... they score didn't come up right away after.... I hit submit and like closed my eyes, bracing myself... and I opened them to find a survey about the testing center... super.

Anyway I am sure this was long and boring... but its kind of been therapeutic for me, so thanks for listening.