520+ scorers: did any of you come out of the test feeling like you aced it?

[lacrossegirl420]

a lot of people seem surprised they scored well, wondering conversely if any 520+ people knew coming out they did well (and not in the "trust your FL" sense, like you genuinely thought you aced it)

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[deleted987519]

I knew I crushed B/B (132) and P/S (131), knew I got wrecked by CARS (126), and thought I got wrecked by C/P (132).

 

[gramnegative]

I knew I did well on CARS/P/S (132), was pretty uncertain about C/P (131) and knew I bombed on B/B (128).

 

[spottedcory]

I had a gut feeling that I did well only after I checked questions that was 50/50 on and realized I guessed correctly. But tbh I still couldn't believe my score when I looked at it I was mentally preparing for score release day by convincing myself that I'd be happy with 510+ so in that sense I felt good lol

 

[Gregor Samsa]

I felt really bad about P/S because I hadn't seen so much of the terminology before. I mainly ascribe that to having studied by exclusively using the Kaplan prep book, which apparently has/had lots of missing material. I think I just got lucky or the curve was generous to me somehow. I ended up getting a 131.

 

[JimKimSlim]

C/P felt hard But got 131. CARS = I thought I aced it But got 128. B/B = felt extremely hard but got 130, and P/S = submitted with 20 minutes left after reviewing my answer choices = 131.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

Didn't feel anything- I thought it was difficult, but not any more difficult than the AAMC FL exams. Honestly, I came out feeling just like I felt after the AAMC tests.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[whiteclaww]

Didn't feel anything- I thought it was difficult, but not any more difficult than the AAMC FL exams. Honestly, I came out feeling just like I felt after the AAMC tests.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

Hi Kev,

So should I void if I feel like I messed up...? Serious question.

 

[extracats]

I got a 520 (129/132/128/131) and left the testing center feeling wrecked on every section. Even though CARS is normally a section I do well on, I still felt like I did poorly. Personally, I've found post-test vibes to be very unreliable - I was a re-taker because my previous score expired, and I felt horrible leaving my previous test too (but I got ~85th percentile).

 

[KnightDoc]

Hi Kev,

So should I void if I feel like I messed up...? Serious question.

Be very careful with this. It's a high stress exam, and most people leave it feeling like crap. Go on the reddit threads and see lots of posts from people who are glad they didn't void because they ended up doing way better than they thought. Of course, some people are surprised on the downside.

The best general advice anyone can give you is to not take the test if you are not adequately prepared, as evidenced by your FLs, hoping for some divine intervention on test day. That never happens. Otherwise, trust in your FLs, regardless of how you feel at the end. All voiding accomplishes, if you are prepared, is burning one of your lifetime attempts and wasting months of effort in the course of giving in to paranoia.

 

[2020NonTrad]

I thought I did OK at C/P (130), thought I bombed CARS (131), felt very unsure about B/B (132), and knew I did well at P/S (132). I guessed I got a 516 and was shocked when I got my score report. To be honest, I should have just trusted my FL scores - it would have made the month of waiting easier.

 

[zorcandpals]

I think that after taking three AAMC FLs I had a reasonable idea of how many answers I had to feel "unsure" of to get a 520. I kept a vague running tally of how many answers that was the case during the real thing and I left the test feeling like I got like 520 +/- 4 ish and ended up doing better than expected.

 

[comet2sixty]

I did not get a 520, but I got a 518. I came out feeling like I did okay in c/p and CARS, felt like I aced bio and psych. score was 129 c/p, 129 CARS, 128 bio, 132 psych. So I felt like I aced 2 sections; one I got a perfect score in one and the other was my worst. Lesson is do your practice, do what you gotta do to get through the test, and feel confidant you did your best.

 

[Derz]

Felt like I absolutely bombed CARS (129) and P/S (132). C/P and B/B felt meh but ended up doing better than all my FL's

 

[PlsLetMeIn21]

I had to repeat the exam because I completely face-planted my CARS on attempt 1. My feelings coming out of my two exams were different and in the end, mostly misguided. Coming out of C/P my first time I felt good because it was material I knew well (got a 132), but on my second exam I had some tough material and was convinced I dropped at least three points if not more: got a 132 again. CARS felt slightly better the second time. First exam I felt I got around 125 and hoping for 126 (got a 122); second exam I felt I got 125 but had an uneasiness and many reservations having sucked the first time (got a 127), I felt average on B/B the first time thinking maybe 129 or 130 (got a 132). I felt I dominated B/B on my second sitting figuring it would be my best section (went down to 130). After P/S I didn't feel anything either time. I felt okay having recognized all of the terminology in the questions, but I honestly would not have been surprised by any score I got (130 both times).

The moral to the story: How you feel and what you get may or may not correlate. Just try to relax for thirty days and not start plans for your alternative career to medicine.

 

[kepler16b]

I knew CARS didn't go well when I walked out of the exam. CARS was easily my best section on all of my FLs, but I get very little sleep the night before the big one and it definitely negatively impacted my performance. I was rushed the last few passages whereas on all of my FLs I finished with a ton of time left over. The questions just were not clicking like they normally do. Ended up dropping by 3 points from my practice average. Pretty frustrating that I couldn't perform on my best section but I ended up crushing everything else so my score ended up solid.

 

[BroncoHawkGuy]

Honestly felt like I scored way below my averages and was pretty upset for a week. When I took the FL's I thought I had a pretty good idea of how I did before I submitted for grading, but not for the real one. I thought, surely there is no way what I just did is worthy of a 520+ but I guess you gotta remember that there was a reason you did so well on the practice exams.

 

[jhmmd]

It was similar to most exams in college, whereas s/p exam was like, "ZOMG I FLUNKED my career is OVER!!!11"
Not the best feeling
Then I would go over questions that I felt like I guessed on, when I was double checking my answers
Then I would try to calculate/estimate my score based on the guesses
As I would calculate my score would go down progressively
After 5-10 minutes I would resolve to put it behind me cuz I already turned the exam in--can't do anything about it now but hope and pray.

But yeah, short answer to your question is NO. Came out worried that I did terribly (i.e. not failing but not good enough for med school).

 

[deleted555445]

i walked out feeling really good about one section and pretty good about the other 3. however, while waiting for my score my confidence slowly dropped, and by the time scores came out i was just hoping i didnt drop more than 5 points from my FL average! ended up scoring above my average and doing well in every section.

i took a look at some historical data while i was stressing and people rarely do worse on any given section than their lowest FL score for that section (i.e. if you go 128, 132, 129, 129 on C/P, you'll likely get no lower than 128). this helped relieved some of my stress. people say it all the time, but if your FL's are taken under testing conditions and you do at least 3 of them, then trust the average, you probably wont be far off.

 

[FrameshiftAndrew]

This was a few years ago, but...I'd say I felt OK, but not great. I knew I missed a couple questions, felt reasonably solid about things in general, but figured that it was always possible that I was confidently wrong about some (or many) questions...and at that time, right after they had switched to the post-2015 MCAT, not a lot was really known about the details of scoring.

I would definitely say that the period between taking the test and score release was more stressful in some ways than the run-up to the test because I couldn't really channel my stress into productive activity like studying, and I didn't really have good plans for retaking (I took the test in September, and my wife and I were due to have a baby in late December/early January...so retaking in January would have been a nightmare, and early spring wouldn't have been much better).

Anyway, I've worked with a lot of people on MCAT-related stuff since then, and I've pretty much noticed that (a) people's emotional response to the exam isn't all that predictive of their scores, and (b) that it can feel pretty weird in the limbo between taking the test and score release.

 

[deleted1053887]

Got a 521. I came out feeling absolutely terrible. Even the weather was gloomy that day, and the pandemic was just beginning to rear its head over us. Saw one student cry during lunch break. One dude forgot his lunch and was so nervous he refused the extra sandwich or granola bar I offered (I thought I made a mean avocado sandwich :/). Thought I bombed P/S but ended up getting 132, somehow. I agree with previous post. How you respond emotionally to the exam afterwards isn't really predictive.

 

[frosty42]

Got a 520 with a 130 on all sections. C/P I almost ran out of time and was a little nervous about that, but I had been scoring between 517-523 on the AAMC FLs in the weeks leading up to the MCAT and the real thing felt pretty similar so I kind of expected to be around that score range. I honestly felt the most confident about P/S and wound up finishing with about 30 minutes left to review, but that was ironically my lowest percentile score.

Granted, I only got 3 hours of sleep the night before and felt like an absolute zombie before, during, and after the exam.
I think you have to trust in your preparation and try to just focus in the moment.

 

[Grapesurgery]

I echo a lot of what people above say. I also want to add that I for sure got at least two questions wrong on my psych section (I looked up the answers after), was unsure on at least 6 more and didn't feel great about it, and still pulled a 132 on the section. Theres no use in worrying about specific questions and whatnot; we don't even know how it's going to be graded, haha.

trust the FLs!

 

[DrRiker]

Yeah I felt like I aced it (back in 2016). There were a few questions that I had flagged that I had enough time to reason my way through. Was the least confident about CARS and it went well enough. This mirrored my FL performance IIRC.

 

[notretired]

Felt like both c/p and b/b were super hard, but also tested subjects I was very strong in. I looked up five or six of the 50/50 q's I could remember after the test and ended up getting them right. For cars I was just relived to finish on time. Psych I thought was easy but it ended up being my worst section, go figure. I wasn't supremely confident but I atleast felt like I would hit my avg (ended up about 3pts above)

 

[natalux]

Tbh I felt great about all sections except P/S, where I felt like I was mostly guessing randomly, ended up with a 132 in it.

 

[alexb195]

Yeah I felt really good about it, then that slowly devolved into fear and googling

 

[Premed35671]

.

 

[FrameshiftClara]

I felt like I totally bombed it (526), especially B/B, where I thought I'd tanked an entire passage. Ended up getting a 132 in B/B. Weird stuff.

The funny thing is that I had already been tutoring for the MCAT full-time for years and had taken it (albeit the old one) twice before (42 on both; I felt like crap both of those times too). So I spent almost every day buried in MCAT passages and was usually 100% confident that I'd aced them. But in the official test setting, it was different. I'd say that 90%+ of my tutoring students who got 520+ walked out of the test feeling like garbage too.

I felt really bad about P/S because I hadn't seen so much of the terminology before. I mainly ascribe that to having studied by exclusively using the Kaplan prep book, which apparently has/had lots of missing material. I think I just got lucky or the curve was generous to me somehow. I ended up getting a 131.

This happened to me too! I've always attributed it in part to the presence of field test questions. In fact, I think the feeling of "there was a bunch of weird stuff I haven't seen before" in any section is probably partially because the official test has field test Qs and the AAMC practice tests don't. This is also why the tendency of high scorers to mentally calculate their scores after every question ("I think I've only missed one so far, so I'm good...oh no, I probably missed another one...") is especially unproductive, because even if you're right about which questions you missed, they could've been exclusively field test questions and you could still get a perfect score on the section. (This applies less for the shortened 2020 test than it does otherwise, since the AAMC cut out most if not all of the field test Qs for those administrations.)

 

[mvsrocks]

I felt like I totally bombed it (526)

You should apply to med school

 

[LaughingGas10]

I felt like I totally bombed it (526), especially B/B, where I thought I'd tanked an entire passage. Ended up getting a 132 in B/B. Weird stuff.

The funny thing is that I had already been tutoring for the MCAT full-time for years and had taken it (albeit the old one) twice before (42 on both; I felt like crap both of those times too). So I spent almost every day buried in MCAT passages and was usually 100% confident that I'd aced them. But in the official test setting, it was different. I'd say that 90%+ of my tutoring students who got 520+ walked out of the test feeling like garbage too.



This happened to me too! I've always attributed it in part to the presence of field test questions. In fact, I think the feeling of "there was a bunch of weird stuff I haven't seen before" in any section is probably partially because the official test has field test Qs and the AAMC practice tests don't. This is also why the tendency of high scorers to mentally calculate their scores after every question ("I think I've only missed one so far, so I'm good...oh no, I probably missed another one...") is especially unproductive, because even if you're right about which questions you missed, they could've been exclusively field test questions and you could still get a perfect score on the section. (This applies less for the shortened 2020 test than it does otherwise, since the AAMC cut out most if not all of the field test Qs for those administrations.)

are you a full time tutor and take the MCAT for experience ? why dont you want to go to medical school ?

 

[Mr.Blackdoc.5]

I got a 522 (132/127/132/131).

From the jump my plans were to shoot for 132 on all but CARS because I knew that would be doable if I put enough time into prepping.

When I walked out of the test I was certain I got 132 on b/b and c/p. There was nothing I had not seen before on my prep at that point. I got a 131 on p/s but chalk it up to the ambiguity of that section and how it felt like a cars v2 when I began studying.

 

[FrameshiftClara]

are you a full time tutor and take the MCAT for experience ? why dont you want to go to medical school ?

I was considering it for a long time! That's why I wanted to get a "new MCAT" score—at the time, my most recent score was about to be too old to apply to certain schools.

The big reason why I never went to med school was that I was really worried at the idea of essentially having to move to wherever I got in, and then for residency, having to move to go wherever I matched. (Also, my GPA wasn't as good as my MCAT score might imply, lol—somewhere around 3.6. My ECs weren't anything groundbreaking either, and my lab experience was...weird. So I wasn't at all confident that I'd get in to multiple schools or anything.) The whole "not wanting to move" thing might sound dumb (I honestly think it IS kind of dumb), but I lived in LA at the time and loved it there. So it's a weird personal hangup more than anything.

I always really enjoyed test prep more than I enjoyed my clinical experience, too. I figured I could either be fantastic at test prep or be a mediocre doctor. Plus, needles freak me out. And once I passed out when I was watching a surgery at the vet.

So I figured I'd throw myself into trying to do MCAT prep better and more ethically, and leave the spot I would've taken to one of y'all, lol.