AAMC V Verbal Reasoning!!!

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DZT

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Hey y'all, I just took the AAMC V test and I was extremely disappointed with my Verbal performance. I got a 6, where on the other sections I got 12's. I know I broke a 30, but still I could have been lucky on the other 2 sections. Do any of you guys who have take AAMC V think that its VR section is a good representation of the actual test?
I was doing great before this. I have gotten 9 and 10 on Kap #4 and #5, and on AAMC IV, I got a 9VR. I recieved a 31 and 33 on Kap 4 and 5 and I was riding on a 50 foot wave, and now I just got wiped out by V's verbal. Any thoughts? Do any of you guys think that its verbal section was harder than other AAMC's practice tests, Kap Tests or even the "real thing" if you have taken the test already. Please respond. Thank You. :p

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I think the VR on AAMC V is a very accurate represenation of the actual MCAT. I got 9's on my Kaplan tests too, and scored lower on AAMC V, which also replicated on test day.

Maybe its just a coincidence, who knows. Best of luck. :)
 
I think I got a 9-10 on verbal reasoning on aamc V (that's how the scale was, right?), and I got a 9 on the real thing. Pretty accurate correlation, although I finished the VR on test V with timne to spare, but not so on the real thing.
 
It's tougher I tell you!

I've taken about... let see... 12 full verbal sections. I have a pretty good idea of the difficulty level of the verbal section by now. AAMC V's verbal section was tougher than AAMC 1-4. (I'm saving AAMC6 for later). Score-wise, I got 1-2 pts lower than what I usually get. (my scores are fairly consistent). So my opinion is that AAMC V is harder.

BUT... it doesn't hurt to expect the worst. At the least it'll help you mentally going into the test.
 
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aamc tests 1-3 are pretty old I think, so it makes sense that the newer ones are harder. I think test I may be from 1991?!?!
 
You guys have got me thinking,
It's probably more than a little bit of sour grapes (my verbal reasoning score finishes with a limp among my MCAT scores), but I take a little bit of issue with the way the VR test is structured. Let me survey the big gripes I have about it:

1. It's shorter than the other two sections, therefore already harder to evaluate with statistical methods (the methods by which AMCAS assigns us scores)

2. It assigns concrete values(because as we know, there's always a right answer!)to abstract points, which adds another blurry spot. For example, I had questions marked incorrect on a practice passage closely aligned to my field of research because of a slight disagreement with word choice. Since I can't remember the questions on the actual test day, I can't prove anything, but I think it's still possible during the Main Event.

3. As I recall, the average raw score tends to be higher as a percentage of questions asked, when compared to PS and BS. Thus if you want to score well (which every single one of us does), there's a narrower range of raw scores in which to do so.

4. (All opinion) From my experience, the materials published on this section by AMCAS and the greedy review corporations least reflect the test day materials.

Based on the fact that they can't even evaluate the highest scores on the test with any relevance (they just group them together as 13-15), it seems to me that they're going on very high margins of error when they seperate the groups of raw scores into scaled values. And unlike a test in a class of say 100, the graders won't see clusters of peaks in a test thousands of people are taking.

This, taken with the fact that the test is normalized based on a raw score, caused a huge problem for me. During the test, I hit a rough patch with one passage (god knows which, I took it in August 2000) and I knew right then that my score was going to be at least a point, probably two, lower than either of my other scores, because it can't be more than four or five (65/13=5) right/wrong answers to put you into another scaled score. And while my score was not bad, it was frustrating to know that it was such a miniscule thing as one passage that didn't click on the first two reads.

Now I know it's nitpicking... but this is a test I could really only commit to once, and it for such a big hurdle it seems pretty arbitrary in retrospect.

I'm not saying people should get all worked up about it, of course you've got to play it cool on test day, but I always caution people to be wary of this devious little section.

your thoughts?
 
I agree with some of the things you say, but then again I also feel like just saying "deal with it." It's true, there is little margin for error and sometimes the word choice isn't precise. On AAMC V there was a question about friendship in the "truest sense" and "fullest sense". Naturally, as a philosophy major I nitpick very closely on word choice, so that threw me off, whereas the answer explanation totally blew off any issues of word choice and assumed they meant the same thing. But that's the hand we're given. It's much more constructive to just move on.
 
•••quote:•••Originally posted by Street Philosopher:

(I'm saving AAMC6 for later). •••••How much later are you thinking about for AAMC6 - it's getting pretty darn close to the time...

Anyway, I think it's a good indication - I got the exact same score on AAMC V and the real thing (which I took 1 week later). Leorl, I agree, what was up with that Picasso passage??
 
Heck, its been a long time since the last message and I just wanted to share. 11 on the Verbal, this AAMC V. THE PICASSO PASSAGE I HAD 4 WRONG+pissed+
 
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