Altius vs BP difficulty

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medtastic112

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Are Altius FL/s considerably more difficult than BP? I am studying for my MCAT retake which is May 26th. From like Nov- early jan, I took a few Altius FL's and was scoring between 498-502. This was after content review. After getting these scores, I decided to spend all of January redoing content review & UWorld every single day. Also got diagnosed with ADHD lol. The past 3 BP fl's I have taken have been 508, 510, 509. My goal score is a 515.

  1. I am wondering if you guys think this may be a solid indicator of my progress, or are the BP exams just easier than Altius? I known nothing is solidified until I get to AAMC stuff, but just curious.
  2. Any tips on where to go from here for the next 12 weeks? I typically am at 127 CP, 126-127 CARS, 127-128 BB, and 128-129 PS. Any tips would be super appreciated, especially for CARS and CP.
 
I never used Altius FLs, but I did use BP. Third-party are usually heavily deflated – I saw a 7 point increase from my BP FLs to my actual test. CARS on BP is garbage and not representative, but the AAMC diagnostic tool/qpacks/FLs will be representative of your test-day score. BP B/B sections are fairly representative (my official score was almost exactly my BP average for B/B), but the C/P and P/S are a lot harder and less representative. I scored >2 points higher on both sections on the real thing than my BP average for those sections.

You should continue with UWorld + Anki + BP exams if you have any more, and start the AAMC official material (qpacks/section banks, etc.) for the next 4-6 weeks, and then pivot to AAMC FLs and review for the next 6-8 weeks while still hammering your UWorld + Anki. Your FL average on the AAMC FLs will almost certainly be within 1-2 points of your real thing, barring anything crazy happening. Don't get discouraged by lower third-party scores, your scores will almost certainly go up with AAMC material. I think a goal score of 515 is well within your reach with a 509 BP average if you put in the work with CARS and continue what you're doing with the other sections. Best of luck!