28 on MCAT as a Freshman?

[LifetimeDoc]

---

Members do not see this ad.

So what am I supposed to do in order to not get attacked while asking a question like this, put my life story out there first to prove that I'm not an anti-social geek? I came here looking for some advice and an idea of how much I would improve by the time I took the MCAT. That doesn't mean I'm going to study for it up until the time I take it, as this was a one-time diagnostic to satisfy my curiosity. Most of what I've received is along the lines of "Get a life." Thanks go toward Autumnchild for taking me seriously.

If you are for real and not a troll, then you obviously have the innate ability to take standardized tests. However, you seem to not understand that flaunting your results here in the way that you presented it shows a lack of tact and/or empathy towards others, who may have studied hard for years yet could only muster a 28 on the exam. Of course you will improve when you actually take the courses related to the exam and spend time studying. Duh! I guess people here don't really understand your question or feel that it is simply an attempt at getting attention.

 

[DTUD]

that is all

 

[ronaldo23]

If you are for real and not a troll, then you obviously have the innate ability to take standardized tests. However, you seem to not understand that flaunting your results here in the way that you presented it shows a lack of tact and/or empathy towards others, who may have studied hard for years yet could only muster a 28 on the exam. Of course you will improve when you actually take the courses related to the exam and spend time studying. Duh! I guess people here don't really understand your question or feel that it is simply an attempt at getting attention.

Aside from the implications of lameness from taking a practice MCAT as a freshman, I would argue the 28 means nothing. Remember, he hasn't taken any of the courses except maybe 2 months of general chem 101 and possibly bio, and so all it reflects was lucky arbitrary guesses. Couple that with the fact that Kaplan diagnostics are notoriously bad and unreflective. There isn't any way good intuition can substitute all the facts/formulas you need to know for the test from 6+ untaken courses, and so the 28 as a freshman really doesn't imply you will dominate the test in a few years.

 

[LifetimeDoc]

Aside from the implications of lameness from taking a practice MCAT as a freshman, I would argue the 28 means nothing. Remember, he hasn't taken any of the courses except maybe 2 months of general chem 101 and possibly bio, and so all it reflects was lucky arbitrary guesses. Couple that with the fact that Kaplan diagnostics are notoriously bad and unreflective. There isn't any way good intuition can substitute all the facts/formulas you need to know for the test from 6+ untaken courses, and so the 28 as a freshman really doesn't imply you will dominate the test in a few years...

Well it is true that a diagnostic is not the test, but you can do well on the MCAT simply by the fact that you are good at taking standardized tests. Much of the exam tests basic science, ability to understand written passages, and basic biology...much of which is learned in the first couple of years. True, he may have guessed well too, but that is also important in standardized tests. All I can say is that with a score like that with just some of the basics learned means that you will do well on any standardized test.

 

[Karbon]

I'll stop asking then. What I had wanted to know is if anyone else had taken a "real" practice MCAT in their freshman year, and how much they improved by the time they took the real thing. I didn't realize that it was so out of the ordinary to even try as a freshman.

 

[LifetimeDoc]

I'll stop asking then. What I had wanted to know is if anyone else had taken a "real" practice MCAT in their freshman year, and how much they improved by the time they took the real thing. I didn't realize that it was so out of the ordinary to even try as a freshman.

I'd recommend waiting until the spring/summer of your sophomore year at the earliest or into your junior year, after you have taken many of the prerequisite classes for the MCAT and medical school. Get one of those Kaplan/Princeton MCAT review books that include full-length exams (the real deal, full-length, all-day exam). Take one and see how you do. Until you have taken chemistry, biology, physics, and organic chemistry, you will not know if the practice score is useful. Use the results to target your study plan for the exam over the next several months afterwards.

Also, the screening exam Kaplan uses is just for screening. You might have guessed well, or are just good at exams. Don't rest on your laurels though as life tends to find ways of kicking you in the butt when you least expect it. Good luck!

 

[Karbon]

I'd recommend waiting until the spring/summer of your sophomore year at the earliest or into your junior year, after you have taken many of the prerequisite classes for the MCAT and medical school. Get one of those Kaplan/Princeton MCAT review books that include full-length exams (the real deal, full-length, all-day exam). Take one and see how you do. Until you have taken chemistry, biology, physics, and organic chemistry, you will not know if the practice score is useful. Use the results to target your study plan for the exam over the next several months afterwards.

Also, the screening exam Kaplan uses is just for screening. You might have guessed well, or are just good at exams. Don't rest on your laurels though as life tends to find ways of kicking you in the butt when you least expect it. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice! I think I'll do just that. In the meantime I'll forget about the MCAT and just enjoy life as everyone has been so impatient to tell me. 🙂

 

[mmmcdowe]

Well, these stress cases are normally more successful in the med school application process. You know, they get accepted into more than 1 school and don't have to apply to 28 schools to do it.

Totally, utterly false. Further, stress cases are the ones that apply to 28 schools when they don't have to.

 

[mmmcdowe]

I think, because so few people have experience with this, SDN is overestimating the difficulty of a freshman doing relatively well on an MCAT practice exam. I have seen a number of students score similarly and their improvement is variable. OP has recently taken AP chemistry and Bio. He has also probably taken physics relatively recently. The MCAT material is stuff that is predominantly covered in basic courses like that, so other than O-chem it isn't all that surprising that a relatively intelligent individual could do pretty good at that point on the MCAT. I did not personally take a practice exam first semester freshman year, but I did take one about 2 months after having finished O-chem, Physics, and Advanced Inorganic Chemistry. I scored a 34. 6 months later when I took the preliminary exam for the Kaplan class I scored a 28. The only thing that didn't go down was my Verbal, because quite honestly I had forgotten a lot of the nitty gritty details by that point.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Well, these stress cases are normally more successful in the med school application process. You know, they get accepted into more than 1 school and don't have to apply to 28 schools to do it.

As mentioned, that's not particularly true. Lots of those kids burn out in college before even applying. The stress of constantly micromanaging everything that might even somewhat affect their candidacy for med school gets to them, and they crack. They also tend to sacrifice a lot in the way of social time and suffer accordingly. That is not a lifestyle I recommend for anyone, regardless of whether it makes for a stellar med school app or not.

By the way, I got into one of my top choices on my first application cycle, so I'm not sure what your point is. I do appreciate you trying to make this issue personal, though. Always a good choice. 👍

 

[cfx]

I think, because so few people have experience with this, SDN is overestimating the difficulty of a freshman doing relatively well on an MCAT practice exam. I have seen a number of students score similarly and their improvement is variable. OP has recently taken AP chemistry and Bio. He has also probably taken physics relatively recently. The MCAT material is stuff that is predominantly covered in basic courses like that, so other than O-chem it isn't all that surprising that a relatively intelligent individual could do pretty good at that point on the MCAT. I did not personally take a practice exam first semester freshman year, but I did take one about 2 months after having finished O-chem, Physics, and Advanced Inorganic Chemistry. I scored a 34. 6 months later when I took the preliminary exam for the Kaplan class I scored a 28. The only thing that didn't go down was my Verbal, because quite honestly I had forgotten a lot of the nitty gritty details by that point.

👍 This is what I was thinking. Aside from a bit of ochem and a few stray physio questions, the MCAT doesn't really cover anything that would not have been covered in honors/AP/IB HS science courses, so it's really not that outlandish that a freshman who took these courses in the past couple of years could do pretty well.

However, OP, I'm not sure what you hoped to glean from this thread. There's absolutely no way any of us can predict how your score will change over the next couple of years, and when you take the real thing. We don't know you, your study habits, what your educational background is, etc. Also, like someone else has said, the general consensus on Kaplan diagnostics is that they are atrocious indicators of how students perform on the real thing. I'd just wait a year or two, take some AAMC full lengths while you're studying, and go from there.

 

[Techmed07]

you didn't score 28 on the MCAT, you scored 28 on a lame Kaplan diagnostic.

these two things are worlds apart.

My friend got a 28 on his Kaplan diagnostic... He was a jr. Studied for the mcat for a couple weeks.. took the real thing and got a 28.

Decided to try again.. studied for a couple a months and got a 28 again.


...Yeah, lame Kaplan diagnostic. You cannot do well on the MCAT by guessing, whereas on the Kaplan diag. you might just get lucky.

 

[gettheleadout]

You're pathetic. You know it is a good score as freshman and you just want to play innocent and rake in the accolades.

Anyone who takes practice MCATs as a freshman knows EXACTLY what is going on and is, by definition, a gunner.

God, I would hate to know you.

You are, by definition, totally and completely wrong.

A gunner is not someone who is ambitious, it's someone who well hurt other people to get ahead. I took the Kaplan practice as a freshman too, am I a gunner? Understand what you're saying before you insult people.

 

[Chevy Chase Fan]

You're pathetic. You know it is a good score as freshman and you just want to play innocent and rake in the accolades.

Anyone who takes practice MCATs as a freshman knows EXACTLY what is going on and is, by definition, a gunner.

God, I would hate to know you.

+ 1000

Reading this kinda crap makes me so glad I spent freshman year being a kid and having fun.

 

[Frazier]

You are, by definition, totally and completely wrong.

A gunner is not someone who is ambitious, it's someone who well hurt other people to get ahead. I took the Kaplan practice as a freshman too, am I a gunner? Understand what you're saying before you insult people.

Actually a gunner, by definition, is "A member of the armed forces who operates a gun."

The definition you put forth is an informal designation assigned by med/law students... With that said, that other guy wasn't any "more wrong" than the guy a decade ago who decided to use "gunner" in the fashion you use it today.

Neither a frosh who takes a diagnostic mcat or a student that purposely spills coffee on other people's notes much resemble "a member of the armed forces who operates a gun."

Cheers. 🙂

 

[gettheleadout]

Actually a gunner, by definition, is "A member of the armed forces who operates a gun."

The definition you put forth is an informal designation assigned by med/law students... With that said, that other guy wasn't any "more wrong" than the guy a decade ago who decided to use "gunner" in the fashion you use it today.

Cheers. 🙂

Thank you Frasier for the completely literal response lol...in any case you agree that my explanation of the colloquial definition is correct and that slowbutsteady is using it incorrectly, so yeah...

I mean seriously people why is everyone jumping to call this insane? So a freshman wants to spend a couple hours of his life just to see what the MCAT might be like? People are jumping to conclusions about what kind of person this makes them, and maybe the OP had a good reason for de-pledging the fraternity that was completely unrelated to wanting to go to medical school. Unheard of, isn't it? 😱 But yeah, everybody just chill.

 

[mmmcdowe]

Thank you Frasier for the completely literal response lol...in any case you agree that my explanation of the colloquial definition is correct and that slowbutsteady is using it incorrectly, so yeah...

I mean seriously people why is everyone jumping to call this insane? So a freshman wants to spend a couple hours of his life just to see what the MCAT might be like? People are jumping to conclusions about what kind of person this makes them, and maybe the OP had a good reason for de-pledging the fraternity that was completely unrelated to wanting to go to medical school. Unheard of, isn't it? 😱 But yeah, everybody just chill.

Trying to be the French of the word gunner is as futile as trying to get people to stop saying MCATs. People use gunner as a term for an excessively ambitious/microtasking person and, thus, that is an appropriate usage.

 

[gettheleadout]

Trying to be the French of the word gunner is as futile as trying to get people to stop saying MCATs. People use gunner as a term for an excessively ambitious/microtasking person and, thus, that is an appropriate usage.

Okay true, that's a good point, but its not like anyone here is studying for the MCAT freshman year (that we know of) so what's the big deal with taking a practice one just for kicks? (OP's coming here and allegedly seeking compliments aside)

 

[Mithril]

I don't think there's anything wrong with taking one just for "fun".

But then coming here and trying to measure his penis against other freshmen or people who have taken the test?

 

[Karbon]

Are you all really that dense? How many times do I have to say it: I want to get an estimate on how much I would improve by comparing with someone else who took an MCAT practice test as a freshman then proceeded to take the real thing 2-3 years later. It has nothing to do with bragging rights. Why would I want to boast to a bunch of anonymous people I will never meet?

And thanks gettheleadout. I definitely didn't de-pledge so I could take the practice test/get into medical school. I dped because I had a bad experience with hazing and it only got worse since I had done so. So I'm glad I got out.

 

[CecilJacobson]

The OP is on the right track. It's very smart to take a practice MCAT before you complete the relevant coursework. You'll know what to study, what is worth your attention, and what to expect when the time comes to prepare for the exam.

I do the same thing in school whenever possible: Look at old exams/shelf exams at the start of a course to identify important subject-matter.

Some of the responses have been pretty funny though. Kudos to the guy who made 8'' on the real thing.

I took a Kaplan pre-test... sophomore year I think. I scored a 24. Ended up with a balanced 30 on the MCAT. Don't start studying for the beast now though. If you do you'll be sleeping alone until you get your medical degree.

-C.J.

 

[mmmcdowe]

Lock pls?

 

[Karbon]

Lock pls?

Tell me how and I will.

 

[mmmcdowe]

Tell me how and I will.

Fast way is to summon the mods and ask for them to close it. Slow way is simply to say in the thread "I want my thread closed" and edit the first post of the thread so that it is blanked.

 

[Mithril]

The OP is on the right track. It's very smart to take a practice MCAT before you complete the relevant coursework. You'll know what to study, what is worth your attention, and what to expect when the time comes to prepare for the exam.

You already know what areas need work if you have the faintest idea of what topics are examinable on the MCAT. It's not smart; it's a waste of time.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Tell me how and I will.

Good enough for me.