Can AAMC give question topics not specifically stated on their outlines?

[jjtheairplane]

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Hi,

I took the MCAT this past August and there was one PS question that really frustrated me. I didn't even know what category it fell into during the test or after. But I finally figured out the question was an "error propagation" question from "error analysis", something on the old AAMC outline.

Basically if you memorized a few rules, you would have gotten it right.
Does this mean it was an experimental question or can the AAMC actually do this...

 

[brood910]

Maybe it could have been answered by referring to the passage?

 

[jjtheairplane]

The passage gave a formula, and the question stem gave you an initial numerical bit of information. It was clearly set up to plug and chug, but you had to know the rules...

 

[Jepstein30]

It can do that.

In those situations, there should be enough information presented in the question stem and passage to reason the answer out.

 

[jjtheairplane]

Honestly I just don't think there was anything in the passage that itself taught error analysis... the passage was about a certain experiment. This question was designed to use the "rules" of error propagation in a weird formula they gave you..the question plainly asked for the the overall error lol.

It just really pisses me off, then and still now, because no material- BR, EK or kaplan covered this...

Basically I am asking, If I see something like this again and I am certain it was not covered even in the AAMC outline, safe to assume that it is experimental and not waste time?

 

[Jepstein30]

Again, no.

There is no difference between experimental questions and 'real' questions outside of the fact that one counts towards your score and the other doesn't. That question on the hybridization of carbon could very well be experimental. It's not like the hard/unique questions are experimental.

They aren't experimenting to determine whether they can test that topic.. they are experimenting to determine the difficulty of the question so they can create future scaled tests. The question itself is already fine.