am i being optimistic or is this plausible?

[octap]

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[osprey099]

I have my test on saturday, and my practice test averages are 32 on Kaplan (tests 1-4), and 31 on aamc (tests 3-5, 7-11). My goal was to score 34+, and obviously I have not done that. However, I was thinking that since I my scores were consistently at or near 31 (with evenly distributed subscores), I will actually do better on the real MCAT.

My reasoning is that since all the practice tests had different BS and PS topics, I have a solid overall content grasp. Going into the actual test, there would few, if any, topics (not specific passages, just areas of each subject such as work and energy, DNA and genetics, etc.) that I have not seen. Therefore, I will score better since I have "tested" on those topics already.

What do you think?

It depends on what kind of questions you got wrong on your practice tests. If you got specific detail questions wrong on your tests, then you definitely have a good shot at getting a 34+. If it's passage based reasoning questions that you got wrong, then you will probably end up with your AAMC average. I'm also taking the MCAT on saturday and my AAMC average is a 32/33. However, I know I can pull off a 34/35 as long as I don't make stupid reading mistakes or specific content recollection errors.

 

[gtbROX]

Well it depends on your breakdown. If you're doing lowest in PS/BS then probably, just continue to take practice tests/drills and review/practice/memorize concepts you're bad at.

If your problem is VR, probably not as easy to improve. You should be doing, AT MINIMUM, a 7 passage (hour long) verbal drill a day, whether you're good at it or not. You should be analyzing ALL ANSWER CHOICES OF ALL QUESTIONS; you want to have an idea of what answer choices you should eliminate versus knowing obvious correct answer choices (they simply don't exist on the mcat....).

In summary:
-practice test
-verbal drill
-analyze all Qs+answer choices
-review weak concepts

Good Luck!

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

It's not unheard of for people to get 3+ points higher than their average, but just as many people get 3+ points less than their average too. Typically you should expect a score within +/- 2 points of your average.

Being realistic though, if you're nailing 31 every single time, that's a pretty strong trend. The MCAT is essentially just another practice test; barring any extenuating circumstances there's no reason to believe that your score will be very different from what you normally get on practice tests. If seeing the previous topics helps you out like you think it will, then why didn't it make a difference on any of your last practice tests? It's not like each practice test exclusively covers material that wasn't on any of the others; you'll find the same topics repeated multiple times throughout all of them.

 

[octap]

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