ANYONE HERE HONESTLY Score a 14 or 15 on any MCAT section?

InVictus · Jul 1, 2002

If so, What did you get on the AAMC practice exams 4, 5, 6?

Also, did you take advance science courses like cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, P-chem...etc...

tatabox80 · Jul 1, 2002

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by InVictus:
If so, What did you get on the AAMC practice exams 4, 5, 6?

Also, did you take advance science courses like cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, P-chem...etc...<hr /></blockquote>Yeah, I got a 15..................total, on a kaplan diagnostic!

I'd like to know the answer to this too!

JimmyD · Jul 1, 2002

I got a 15 on the Biological Science section. ahh...I only took AAMC VI (which I found to be slightly, but JUST slightly, easier than the April 2002 MCAT). I got a greater than 12 but a raw score of 69 on that test in Bio. The key for me was relaxation. I felt good about Verbal and Phys (and they turned out ok) and during lunch I actually went back to my college (just a few blocks away) and sat and chatted with friends who were NOT taking the MCAT. In fact, they were just sitting around having a few beers. Well, after I returned I was COMPLETELY relaxed. I felt no pressure because the sections I was worried most about were over. That, I feel is the key, absolute relaxation. Its hard to come by initially, but for Bio at least, it is attainable.

good luck!

Doctor Octopus · Jul 1, 2002

13-15 Verbal. I guess I'll never know if it would have been 13, 14, or 15. But then again I could care less.
I got 12s on AAMC 4 and 5.

ga07 · Jul 2, 2002

i got a 15 on bio. i took biochem this past fall, but i never had a physiology or anatomy course, and had virtually none of either in my general courses. i got a 12+ (67) on amcas VI. some hope for those of you struggling with practice tests: i got a 6 on bio my first practice test (total of 22, april total of 37).

Doctora Foxy · Jul 2, 2002

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by tatabox80:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by InVictus:
If so, What did you get on the AAMC practice exams 4, 5, 6?

Also, did you take advance science courses like cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, P-chem...etc...<hr /></blockquote>Yeah, I got a 15..................total, on a kaplan diagnostic!

I'd like to know the answer to this too!<hr /></blockquote>me too, and also on the princeton one!

Kry · Jul 2, 2002

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by tatabox80:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by InVictus:
If so, What did you get on the AAMC practice exams 4, 5, 6?

Also, did you take advance science courses like cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, P-chem...etc...<hr /></blockquote>Yeah, I got a 15..................total, on a kaplan diagnostic!

I'd like to know the answer to this too!<hr /></blockquote>I got a 25 on my Kap Diag (10B7P8V)

Hopefully I can bring them up to 12 across the board with enough studying.

How likely is this?

jot · Jul 2, 2002

very liekley - i did and more from that diag - keep practicing
-jot

marq_bme · Jul 2, 2002

i miraculously got a 14 on PS. I lucked out with quite possibly the easiest PS section I have ever seen (august 2001). too bad the other sections were 9 and 10! I think part of (a lot) of it is just pure luck! To get a 14 or 15, i think you need like 0-4 wrong or something. You have to be lucky enough to get "equalizer questions" that you know. Equalizer questions are those weird "out there" questions that very few get that justify scaling the score up to 15. I think they are going to make a few verbal questions very hard so that they can get it back to a 15 as well. Anyway, yeah I knew my physical sciences cold---plus you can tell after you finish the test whether or not that was a >13 section bc you will feel like you seriously aced it

Noeljan · Jul 2, 2002

hey ga07
What did you do to study? I have taken physiology, cell bio, micrbio, anatomy and patho, but no Biochem. It seems like people do really well with biochem. i have like no time to take it, but did you find it helped you a real lot or did you study/review course? Can you let me know?
Thanks

Katie · Jul 2, 2002

ga07,
are you from gustavus aldophus in saint peter, MN by any chance? great school and great MCAT scores! we have a dude in our class at Tufts who went to GAC; I know he took the MCAT twice but I don't know how he did. good luck to all of you, and to anyone wondering, I didn't score anywhere near a 14 or 15 on any of the sections in April 2000.

jkai · Jul 2, 2002

14 on biological science. I took the MCAT while still taking introductory biology and I didn't do so well in that bio class either. I have taken biochem though. Our gen chem is only one semester long, so we take biochem as our fourth chem class. But I think it was mainly my luck that helped me. I didn't used the AAMC practice exams. I got 10-12 on my Kaplan tests. And my initial diagnostic score was only 21 (6V7P8B). So you have a good chance, Kry. Good luck.

gassman · Jul 2, 2002

15 on PS. Took one OLD MCAT of unknown origin (from 1991??) and got a 15 on that PS section, too. No prep course (no dinero).

ga07 · Jul 2, 2002

noeljan-

i took an abridged princeton course, which basically meant we got the practice tests and the material, but not the weekly instruction. i read the chapters and took the tests, as well as some awfully sporadic independent-passage work. i'd recommend taking as many practice tests as you can; endurance is paramount. it gets to be such a long day, and you've still got to me kicking mentally by the end.
as far as taking biochem goes, if you can't fit it in, don't sweat it. just know the basics (you can find that much in any review book), and that should be enough (caveat: the mcat's never quite that simple...).
i agree with previous posters that scoring 14 or 15 requires some luck. and yes, katie, i am from gustavus adolphus. thanks for the compliments; it's always nice to hear of people who know of/think highly of gustavus.

Noeljan · Jul 2, 2002

Thanks for the advice ga07

The Mysterious Stranger · Jul 2, 2002

I had no questions on my test (well maybe 1 or 2) that required BioChem. I did have a lot of questions about the neurvous system which I lucked out on b/c neuro is my strongest subject. That's the thing about the MCAT, it's not even--you don't get 10% biochem, 10% immuno....I had two passages, about 20 questions on the nervous system! I wouldn't worry about upper-div courses. It's more about problem solving. Almost everything you need to know is given in the passages. I would like to know if the people who score 14's and 15's scored those on all sections or just one. I assumed usually the physics/engineering majors scored 15's on PS but not in verbal, the humanities majors scored 15's on verbal and not PS and that only a small amount of people score 14-15 on all three sections. It makes sense that if you have extensive training in one subject such as physics you will not have been able to have extensive training in Bio. I guess I'm just hoping that there's only a small group of students who actually score great on all sections. What do y'all think?

dr kevin40 · Jul 3, 2002

I got 14 on physical and 15 on bio

on those aamc practice tests, i was scoring similarly high.

it's also a lot due to luck i think.

rjhtamu · Jul 3, 2002

I got a 14 on PS, I don't remember which AAMC test we took in the Princeton Review, but I think I made like an 11 on PS then. I still don't know how I did it, I was expecting BS to be my strongest section, but I made a 12 on it.

NE_Cornhusker1 · Jul 3, 2002

For those who are telling the truth about your scores congratulations, you did very well. But when you consider that only .1% of test-takers get a 15 on Bio. Sci. and multiply this times the 30,000 or so test-takers only 30 or so people get a 15.

That we have 10% (3 people) of this population responding to this post is pretty remarkable. Consider the scores people post from the relative annoymity of a computer with a grain of salt.

DW · Jul 3, 2002

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by NE_Cornhusker1:
For those who are telling the truth about your scores congratulations, you did very well. But when you consider that only .1% of test-takers get a 15 on Bio. Sci. and multiply this times the 30,000 or so test-takers only 30 or so people get a 15.

That we have 10% (3 people) of this population responding to this post is pretty remarkable. Consider the scores people post from the relative annoymity of a computer with a grain of salt.<hr /></blockquote>I was wondering about that too, thanks for the math. Yeah, maybe we've got some really smart people on this site, but I'm sitting here thinking to myself "I got a 13 on Bio, and that was top 3-1 percentile according to AAMC, I must be finding all the kids that beat me on this website <img border="0" alt="[Laughy]" title="" src="graemlins/laughy.gif" /> "

Mudd · Jul 3, 2002

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by InVictus:
If so, What did you get on the AAMC practice exams 4, 5, 6?

Also, did you take advance science courses like cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, P-chem...etc...<hr /></blockquote>I got a 14 PS and 13 BS back in 1994. At that time, only AAMC exams 1 and 2 were available. Considering they max their scales at 12 and above, I cannot tell you how I did in terms of an exact breakdown (not to mention the fact I can't recall how I did exactly). I remember doing about the same on AAMC stuff and the real MCAT though, right down to my very sub-standard verbal score.

At the time I sat for the MCAT, I had only taken two quarters of general biology and two quarters of biochemistry (through the chemistry department, which focussed on experiments). I also took a full year p-chem prior to the MCAT, which didn't necessarily help in the questions, but I felt pretty confident on the PS because of it. It helped that I knew what an activity coefficient was, given that the MCAT passage contained one in their formula for boiling point elevation. Again though, it only helped in confidence and not actual information.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by NE_Cornhusker1:
For those who are telling the truth about your scores congratulations, you did very well. But when you consider that only .1% of test-takers get a 15 on Bio. Sci. and multiply this times the 30,000 or so test-takers only 30 or so people get a 15.<hr /></blockquote>Consider also that a 15 was not awarded on all administrations of the MCAT. While the title of this passage should draw people who will skew the data up from 0.1%, I agree that is amazing that there is a 100x increase in population. What is equally amazing is that these same people also got 15s on AAMC material, even though the scale tops at 12. I'd be willing to bet a couple of them have 4.73 GPAs and got 1850 on their SATs as well.

Lastly, I predict that the next post will be from someone that will suggest that those of us who are smart enough to use common sense in figuring that a few posts here are not factual are actually jealous skeptics. They will then go on to suggest, in a self-righteous manner, that we do not question the authenticy of posts from people with hidden identities. Probably the best thing they will do is edit their post after someone has replied to it. Of course I have not had this prognostication verified by Miss Cleo or Dionne Warwicke, but I just have this sneeky feeling. Let's see if it turns out to be true.

chandler742 · Jul 3, 2002

Ha, the people on this string are a nice cross section of premed students.

Mudd · Jul 3, 2002

What is skepticism to one is common sense to another. Personally, I'm glad the statistical inbalance topic was breeched, because that is as much a part of this thread as anything.

And I definitely agree that the major factor distinguishing a 15 from a 12 is luck of the draw in terms of questions.

ANYONE HERE HONESTLY Score a 14 or 15 on any MCAT section?

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