AAMC3. NEW QUESTIONS NEVER BEFORE ASKED!!! PLEASE HELP :-)

[Premed315U]

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1) In the archives, it seems that a lot of people have gotten close to the same score on the real MCAT and AAMC3. However, for those people who scored very closely, did you take the real MCAT right around the same time as AAMC3, or did you take it 5 weeks in advance, for example?

2) How did you find the question topics on AAMC3 compared to the real MCAT? Did some of the same topics appear?

3) Was the difficulty level identical?

4) For those who posted AAMC3 scores that were curved by Kaplan or Princeton Review, was the scale identical to the one in the back of the AAMC3 booklet?

Thank you everyone

 

[Street Philosopher]

I just took AAMC3 this past weekend. From what I remember of the April '01 test, AAMC3 is definitely much easier. There fundamentals were the same (fundamental concepts you need to know), but the real MCAT had way more out-of-space type themes.

 

[Premed315U]

What type of weird questions did the real one have?

Is it true that AAMC 3 is a compilation of old real MCATs?

 

[TommyGunn04]

The people at Kaplan basically told us somethin along the lines of the following:

"The AAMC materials are useless. True, they're composed of lots of questions from old MCATs, but there's a reason these "old" questions aren't being used anymore: the AAMC thinks there's something wrong with them (too easy, too hard, too ambiguous, etc.)! If the questions were still "good" and "useful," they would still actually BE in current MCATs, and thus wouldn't be released. Only do the AAMC exams if you've already done all of Kaplan's stuff and still want more practice. But keep in mind that they're not very representative of the actual MCAT."

Of course, you need to take what Kaplan says with a grain of salt. After all, they're trying to get you to rationalize paying $1400 for their course! Personally though, I didn't think the AAMC released materials were even close to what the real MCAT was like (at least not the one I took last April). I think it's worth paying for Kaplan just to get to take their full-length exams, which were almost exactly like the real MCAT. Anyway, that's my two cents...

 

[Street Philosopher]

HAHAHAHAHA
Kaplan is full of $hit!
Why the hell would AAMC give you deliberately bad questions? That makes no sense. The fact that people reported VERY similar questions showing up on the actual MCAT (I know this because I read the threads right after the April test) goes to show how stupid that is.

Premed,
The off-the-wall topics were something about levetating trains, something about inelastic collisions of planets, something about frogs and the environment, and a lot of weird things I don't remember right now. It was a very weird test... nothing like I've seen before.

 

[Premed315U]

Was it just the same concepts with weird and stupid passages? i.e. instead of inellastic balls, inellastic planets? Or were the concepts also weird?

Thanks!!

 

[racergirl]

I took one practice Kaplan (the one at the back of their big review book), plus AAMC tests 1-4. I felt pretty prepared for the real thing. I took AAMC 3 two weeks before the real MCAT, and my scores were close to what I got on the real thing (I scored a few points better on the real MCAT).

I would indeed take what Kaplan says about the AAMC tests with a grain of salt--it is in their best interest to get you to take their course.

It was my experience that the real MCAT I took (last April) did in fact cover the same concepts covered on practice tests. They just tried to hide those concepts in odd contexts (frogs, turtles, planets, etc). Hope this helps...

 

[Street Philosopher]

yup, like racergirl said, same concepts in weird contexts. you had to kind of take a breath and go "woah.... ok what are they looking for here?" but yeah, i don't remember them testing a lot of "memorization" type stuff. there was one about solubility, so definitely know that, probably the s,v,t physics equations... I was very worried about the glucose/insulin/etc stuff and hormones, but I don't think those showed up on the real thing thank goodness. but of course, that was just one test, I haven't taken it enough time to know what the general trend in real mcat's are like.