JohnB79 said:
Never change you answers... learned this the hard way on many many many multiple choice exams. I learned it just in time for the MCAT, I figure if I would have changed any of my answers I probably would have gotten alot of those that I changed wrong and would have dropped my score... so Def not cool.
I would agree with this, except I'd add the caveat that you SHOULD change your answer if you KNOW FOR A FACT that you've marked the wrong answer. How would you know? There are several possible scenarios, including but not limited to some of these:
1. You misgrid an answer. For example, you meant to mark A, but you accidentally marked B instead. You catch this at the end of the section when you are checking over your answers because the answer on your grid doesn't match the one you circled in the book. (If you don't circle your answers, start doing this from now on!)
2. You misread the question and picked an answer choice that is the exact opposite of what was asked. For example, the question actually said, "which of the following is NOT....", and you read it the first time as "which of the following IS....". Again, something you'd possibly catch later when checking your answers.
3. On the science sections, you are doing a calculation and you miscalculate. The MCAT will use common mistakes as the wrong answer choices, so there is a real possibility that you will come up with an incorrect answer and it will be one of the answer choices. For example, if you are calculating the Gibbs free energy and you use the Celsius temp. rather than converting it to the absolute temp.; this kind of mistake can be reduced or avoided by using dimensional analysis.
The thing that these examples have in common is that there is a DEFINITE error that you have made and caught. That is the only time you should change your answer. Do not change an answer just based on a "feeling" that it might not be the right answer!
