Kaplan tests were way harder than the AAMC's and I'm pretty sure most people will agree. The actual MCAT was harder than any AAMC test I took, but I guess that's to be expected what with the stress, pressure, and whatnot. I'd say the difficulty goes something like this:
Kaplan >> real MCAT > AAMC
Just be careful with assertions like that because they may instill a false sense of confidence. There are really 2 questions you're asking (whether you know it or not):
1. How does a Kaplan test score correlate with the real test score?
2. How does the content fare between the two (difficulty,etc)? (for example, a difficult calculation intensive question isn't necessarily going to help you if you encounter a critical thinking intensive question).
Since the question was asked about the Kaplan tests, I'll try to answer as honestly as I'm able to. We have to do them by section, since its different from section to section.
BS- Student perception is that compared to the AAMC tests, the Kaplan tests:
1. correlated strongly between tests taken close to when the actual administration was taken
2. were slightly shorter in passage length than those of the real exam, and were of equal difficulty from a question perspective, but based on #2, more of the analysis had to be done question-side with the kaplan questions than with the AAMC questions, which because of the length of the passages, required more passage-side analysis
VR- Student perception is that compared to the AAMC tests, the Kaplan tests:
1. score out very close on average, but with a wider standard deviation than with biology scores. This is what leads to lots of people talking about verbal scores being higher with kaplan, and just as many saying their last full length scores were lower than the real test. All in, this large Std Dev is around 1 point, so even there there's not much controversy.
2. were perceived as easier passage side than the AAMC tests, requiring fewer logical leaps in the passage. This was made up for in more processing question side, and in the more oppressive scaling in the Kaplan tests, to provide the realistic score and experience.
PS- Student perception is that compared to the AAMC tests, the Kaplan tests:
1. score well higher on the real administration than on the Kaplan tests. Scaling in this case is just as correlative, but not exactly aligned between the two tests. This shows up as a an average of 1 extra point on the real exam vs the PS score.
2. As more difficult than the exam both in passage critical thinking requirements, and in question processing.
Hope this additional info answers the original poster's question. All comments I made here were specific to the Kaplan Full Length exams. Other test types like the section tests and topical tests are perceived as statedly more difficult than the real exam. This is due to the fact that we aggregate higher level difficulty questions into these shorter practice tests in order to drill students in particular content areas. Looked at individually, none of the Kaplan passages are any more difficult than a difficult passage on the real exam, there's just more of them in the practice materials.
Good luck in your preparation and on the exam.
