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Anyone know if the questions in this assessment are all new and NOT in the aaamc practice exams or the official guide to the mcat?
Anyone know if the questions in this assessment are all new and NOT in the aaamc practice exams or the official guide to the mcat?
Thx for the reply!!
Do u know if it's timed or not?
They are not on any of the AAMC practice exams.
They are from old ones or from retired exams.
It's a good collection of problems and worth the cost if you can afford it.
(Can only take the test once though)
so if you just get the first package ( with ONLY the assessments)
Physical Sciences Self-Assessment: 213 questions
Biological Sciences Self-Assessment: 208 questions
Verbal Reasoning Self-Assessment: 120 questions
you can only take each assessment once? and its not timed?
the reason why they only let you take it once is because it calculates your data and uses it to show where you stand in relation to others. If you take it twice youl probably get everything right. Its not timed, just do them all and read every single answer once your done (even for the ones you get right)
There's only so many ways you can ask the same question. So this practice is good.
Considering this thing only came out less than a week ago I'd imagine the people using it as a final review are mainly doing so because there's really no other option for them.ahh i see. Makes sense! So i watched some of those vids....some take it at the end of the prep as a final review sort of deal...what do you guys think of that?
use it as a pretest or use it as a final review sort of deal?
why would you not do it? Its aamc material...Can't decide if it's worth attempting before the June 21st MCAT.... Might be useful for some last minute adjustments, but probably not. Any other June 21ers considering giving it a go?
Can't decide if it's worth attempting before the June 21st MCAT.... Might be useful for some last minute adjustments, but probably not. Any other June 21ers considering giving it a go?
Can someone who has purchased this please comment?
I am taking the July 6th MCAT and I am weak in some content. Worth the $105? What kind of analytics does it provide at the end?
So I just did the biology assessment and here's my impressions so far:
- The test is basically a giant subject-specific MCAT. The biology test has 22 passages and a bunch of discretes, although the passages usually don't have as many questions as a normal passage would which is likely due to the fact that AAMC cut out a few questions from each passage. Still, you get 128 questions in the biology test which is a nice amount of practice (IIRC the other tests are roughly the same length, although orgo is shorter than the rest).
- Most of the questions are pretty easy, by the test's own admission (it ranks questions as easy, moderate, and hard and tells which ones were which at the end). A fair number are moderate. Very, very few are hard.
- While you do get results at the end which are much more detailed than the practice tests' end of test results, they still suffer from the same issues of category vagueness that the questions on the practice tests do. For example, a question may ask you something about vertebrates and yet be labeled a microbiology question. So it's dubious how accurate the content categories are, and on top of that some categories don't have very many questions which makes it impossible to tell if your low (or high) percentage correct in that area is due to your knowledge or due to getting one or two fluke questions right/wrong (although thankfully the test does point these areas out explicitly so you know to take their results with caution). On the flip side, the fact that AAMC couldn't even get enough questions for an accurate assessment in those areas probably says something about how likely they are to show up on the actual test.
- The assessment does report your percentage correct compared to the percentage correct that the average test taker would have. While this does give you some indication of where you stand, you have to remember that it's comparing you to the average test taker; ie the guy who gets a 25 CS score. So if you're a typical SDNer and shooting for a 35+ this doesn't really help you out too much. For example, I got 91% correct on my biology assessment and have no idea if I should be pleased with that or not. Obviously it's much better than the average 66% correct, but I don't know if that 91% puts me in the 10-11 range or the 12-13 range or what.
So right now I can't say how useful these assessments will be for people. I'll see what happens when I take the other tests. I think I am weaker in physics and gen chem and have some weak spots there, so hopefully these tests will tell me where to focus my studying although after doing the bio test I'm not getting my hopes up.
Do you get explanations for every answer at the end like AAMC tests or just a percentage and topic breakdown?
Let me know how the Physics and GChem ones go! Those are the ones I am most interested in. 91% sounds pretty damn good to me! When are you taking them?
Can someone tell me, is it possible to review the package after I complete it, without it SHOWING the answers? I like to try and solve questions I got wrong, before giving up and usuing the solution
Several people have commented on the science sections for the self assessment package, I was wondering what opinions there are about verbal?
Also, are these sections timed at all or can you choose not to time it?
I have the PDF, you can print it out and then just randomly guess on the rest and submit for answers.
Just bought all of these this past weekend and am using them as final prep for the July 6th test since I've taken all of the full lengths already.
Bio- 94%
Gen chem- 92%
Physics- 88%
Starting verbal tonight and probly will finish tomorrow. Overall, I think these have been helpful for honing in on which content areas are weakest. Also, like someone else mentioned, it is useful to see that there are far fewer questions available from certain content areas which means that studying other areas will help you get more out of your time.