AAMC Review: What to do?

[Dr Dazzle]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hey guys!

First of all, I'm One month away. Just finishing PS content review and haven't touched BS at all. But I'm still planning on just doing all the AAMC exams and then doing as many BR passages during review days as possible. I want to make sure i'm preparing to take the exam while finishing review. Unfortunately, my PS review took way too long.

Therefore, how would you guys suggest structuring the AAMC exams with 1 month? More importantly, how long did it take to thoroughly review the exams? Would two days be enough to review each AAMC exam? That would give me a few extra days to focus on BR passages. I'm not too comfortable with content still.

Thanks!

 

[NickNaylor]

Do as many practice exams as possible without burning out. AAMC tests are invaluable if you simulate the testing conditions for reasons beyond simply testing your knowledge of the material.

It didn't take me too long to review tests, but it really depends on your process. I would say no more than a couple of hours at most. It usually only took me 30-45 minutes.

 

[MShopes]

Do as many practice exams as possible without burning out. AAMC tests are invaluable if you simulate the testing conditions for reasons beyond simply testing your knowledge of the material.

It didn't take me too long to review tests, but it really depends on your process. I would say no more than a couple of hours at most. It usually only took me 30-45 minutes.

What? It only took you 30-45 minutes to review the whole test of 144 questions? Unless you did great on those tests and are only reviewing the wrong answers, this does not seem possible. At least for me, I would review my right and wrong answers because sometimes the right answer might be right because of a different approach than the one I used and maybe I luckily just guessed on some and got the answers right. So I would review all questions carefully which should take some hours.

 

[Altair89]

Do as many practice exams as possible without burning out. AAMC tests are invaluable if you simulate the testing conditions for reasons beyond simply testing your knowledge of the material.

It didn't take me too long to review tests, but it really depends on your process. I would say no more than a couple of hours at most. It usually only took me 30-45 minutes.

Let me see if I can put this into proper context. Assuming you spent the 30-45 min solely on your incorrect answers on the practice AAMC tests, and since it takes the average person about 5 minutes to go over an incorrect answer (assuming average difficulty), you got between 6 and 9 questions wrong on an entire exam. That would mean your practice AAMC scores were between 37-39.

Thanks for sharing your scores with us.

 

[tman5890]

Let me see if I can put this into proper context. Assuming you spent the 30-45 min solely on your incorrect answers on the practice AAMC tests, and since it takes the average person about 5 minutes to go over an incorrect answer (assuming average difficulty), you got between 6 and 9 questions wrong on an entire exam. That would mean your practice AAMC scores were between 37-39.

Thanks for sharing your scores with us.

If you check his mdapps he got a 41S, so that makes total sense.

 

[km17]

There used to be a post here that said "41s? Unbelievable" or something. Unbelievable? No. Ballin? YES.

Let me see if I can put this into proper context. Assuming you spent the 30-45 min solely on your incorrect answers on the practice AAMC tests, and since it takes the average person about 5 minutes to go over an incorrect answer (assuming average difficulty), you got between 6 and 9 questions wrong on an entire exam. That would mean your practice AAMC scores were between 37-39.

Thanks for sharing your scores with us.

Was that last line supposed to be snide? Cool math bro. But you could also just look up C's entire review plan on MDapps.

 

[Dr Dazzle]

So at this point mostly focus on AAMCs, despite not having finished BR passages and not being very comfortable with the content? For review, i guess it does come down to how many you miss/ how comfortable you are with material to move on.

 

[NickNaylor]

What? It only took you 30-45 minutes to review the whole test of 144 questions? Unless you did great on those tests and are only reviewing the wrong answers, this does not seem possible. At least for me, I would review my right and wrong answers because sometimes the right answer might be right because of a different approach than the one I used and maybe I luckily just guessed on some and got the answers right. So I would review all questions carefully which should take some hours.

This is why I said that it depends on your process. Spending five minutes reviewing one question seems pretty ridiculous to me. Most of the PS/BS questions I missed were extremely basic "either I knew it or I didn't" type of questions. They really aren't tricky or all that difficult. Verbal took a little longer, but still, with the explanations the answers usually make sense.

I do think there would be some value in going over the correct answer as well, but I chose not to because I didn't want to spend that much time reviewing tests. I also went over questions that I knew I guessed on, right or wrong.

 

[NickNaylor]

Let me see if I can put this into proper context. Assuming you spent the 30-45 min solely on your incorrect answers on the practice AAMC tests, and since it takes the average person about 5 minutes to go over an incorrect answer (assuming average difficulty), you got between 6 and 9 questions wrong on an entire exam. That would mean your practice AAMC scores were between 37-39.

Thanks for sharing your scores with us.

Well, considering my practice exams were 35-38... yeah. I appreciate your attitude though. You should probably not act like a prick without knowing what you're talking about.

 

[NickNaylor]

So at this point mostly focus on AAMCs, despite not having finished BR passages and not being very comfortable with the content? For review, i guess it does come down to how many you miss/ how comfortable you are with material to move on.

I'm not sure why you have this notion that you can't do content review and do practice exams. They aren't mutually exclusive; I did content review during the week and practice exams on Saturday. If you want to continue to do passages, you have time to do it. It's not as if FLs take 24 hours of the day to do.

 

[tak08810]

It takes me 45 minutes to an hour to review too, and my practice scores are in the same range as Naylor's. I go over correct answers too, but much more quickly than incorrect ones. A quick glance will tell me if I need to take note of a different/better method or if I should just keep doing what I do for those type of questions.

Some people do advocate spending hours on reviewing. Whatever works better for you, and I could see the need if your scores are in the mid or low 20's or something.