Format of the New Shortened MCAT?

[freshdoe]

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I've seen many broader concerns into the shortened MCAT, but nothing too specific yet so I thought it would be beneficial to pose this question. The original exam gave us 95 minutes to do 44 passage based Q's and 15 discretes for each of the 3 core science sections. The timing, as a result, was very clean-cut as we could allocate 15 minutes for discretes and 8 min/passage for 10 passages (80 min total). With the shortened version, we have 76 minutes to do 48 Q's. Here's my question: do you guys think that AAMC has proportionately reduced the number of questions such that the ratio of passage based Q's to discretes is still the same? If so, what is your numerical prediction for the division of passage based Q's and discretes out of the 48Q's? I'd like to believe that AAMC would update us on this info in the coming weeks, but there are obviously far more important tasks at hand.

 

[freshdoe]

bump

 

[Blueprint Med School]

The truth is, nobody knows. I think we would expect for the AAMC to change it in a way that would not create significant timing issues, but nobody knows if that means passages will be shorter or if there will be more discretes. Just remember that everybody will be affected in the same way by the new exam, and since it's a scaled exam based on how everybody else does, it won't actually have any significant negatively or positive impact on your score.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors