How do you approach the biol?

[Sammy1024]

My score is always fluctuating but I took AAMC 11 today and got a 26, 9-8-9 and was about a point away from 10 on physical sciences which always hurts.

I feel like my content is very good for the sciences but I keep making mistakes on passage based questions where they'll be like you have protein hdfs and they're like if you decrease this other thing that we talked about in the middle what so you expect to happen to hdfs. Stuff like that.

I feel like I need to approach the questions the way other people who do better approach them.

So how do you approach the questions/ passages?

I feel there's something that I'm missing.

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[clairephillips]

Well, is" this other thing" a precursor for "protein hdfs?" Is it an allosteric regulator of "hdfs?" Is it an enzyme that catalyzes "hdfr" and without it, "hdfr" can never turn into" hdfs?" I have to look at the pathway and understand how we get from"hdfa" to" hdfb" and onto "hdfs." That's about all I can say without seeing a question. :/

 

[SuperSneaky24]

I know exactly how you feel. I'm sure many people also do the same, but for the science sections, what I found helped the most was reviewing all the practice sections I've done (especially for fl exams). When I reviewed (review even the ones you got right), I asked myself what was my mindset was and why I chose the answer I picked. Then if I made an incorrect choice, I'd try to understand what my mistake was and make sure I don't make the same mistake twice. If you do this, I'm sure your score will improve.

From my experience in the past, when I just started, I thought content review was the most important. I finished the entire TBR collection, but I felt I didn't retain as much info as I wanted to. However, while content review is crucial, it's really about shaping your mindset during testing situations. I found even when I knew the content, I'd find myself second guessing on those questions and usually end up picking the wrong answer. Using that strategy, I would score 7, 8, and 9s consistently on each science passage. However, once I started to review the questions I got wrong, I started to see improvements immediately. I bumped up my science section practice exams to the 10-13 range.

But still take content review seriously. What I did was when I was going over my questions, if there was a topic I wasn't too confident in, I'd write it down in a notebook. Then, either later in the day or the next day, I'd read up on the subject and made sure my knowledge on the subject was sufficient.

Good luck! In the end, it's always about practice. And don't let yourself down! When I was scoring 26, 27, 28s, I knew eventually those scores would increase, and that's exactly what happened a few weeks later.

 

[Sammy1024]

Changed. Sometimes I read passages a bunch of times during practice and it's always missing a connecting piece. And then when I read the answers it's SO obvious. They're like well if you see A and then B in paragraph 3, you can assume they're linked and so with that conclusion all the other answers are wrong and B is the answer. And i'm like well yes, if I totally concluded/linked those it would be obvious!

 

[Czarcasm]

Lol ...holy ****. I need to avoid Sammy's thread's. It's like diarrhea of the mouth. Some of us haven't taken AAMC 11.

 

[Sammy1024]

Sorry. I tried to be very vague and the topic I listed wasn't even the main topic. I just wanted to see if someone could help me given an example.

 

[Sammy1024]

I know exactly how you feel. I'm sure many people also do the same, but for the science sections, what I found helped the most was reviewing all the practice sections I've done (especially for fl exams). When I reviewed (review even the ones you got right), I asked myself what was my mindset was and why I chose the answer I picked. Then if I made an incorrect choice, I'd try to understand what my mistake was and make sure I don't make the same mistake twice. If you do this, I'm sure your score will improve.

Do you tend to look for the answers in the passages, or given whatever the gist of the passage is, you try to make a conclusion? I think sometimes I get hung up on finding something in the passage so that I can feel good about picking the answer since i'm not really sure.

 

[SuperSneaky24]

Usually I skim the passage and read the questions. Remember that AAMC also tests recall or outside knowledge, so don't be surprised that the passage doesn't help. If I do encounter a question where I'm not 100% sure, I go through the passage and see if anything there can help me. Otherwise, I use the process of elimination and make an educated guess. But try to never panic! If your content review was good enough, you'll probably have the knowledge to be able to answer those recall knowledge questions. Otherwise, don't worry about it. One or a few squestion wrong will not reduce your score THAT much in comparison to everything else.

 

[moop]

26 means you don't know your content as well as you think. Back to basics and EK.

Source: SDN knowledge and 37 MCAT.

 

[Sammy1024]

When I go through the section to post game I get all the content based questions correct but get questions wrong that are asking about the passage itself because I'm having a hard time linking the answer? Like ill understand the gists of the passage but when they ask specifics then I get questions wrong.

 

[moop]

When I go through the section to post game I get all the content based questions correct but get questions wrong that are asking about the passage itself because I'm having a hard time linking the answer? Like ill understand the gists of the passage but when they ask specifics then I get questions wrong.

If you're sure of that, then I was wrong. Note that often the passages are distracting, and you don't need to "apply the passage" to all the questions to do well. Tread carefully.

 

[Sammy1024]

I was wondering if anything helped you, since your mcat was 37.

Like lets say it's a passage where they're like protein abcd affects ligang abcd which can influence respiration and blah blah. Then the question asks what would happen if you increase CO2, I get the content part where CO2 increase leads to the necessity to breathe more, so that the level can be decreased. I have trouble relating it to the specifics of the passage because the answers will say something like increase the number of protein abcd, decrease....etc.

Does something help you get everything in order in your mind, or something that helps you understand the passage better?

Sometimes they give the passage of the linkages out of order and I waste time trying to find the order of the stuff.

I know practice helps, but i'm trying to figure out the best way to practice.

 

[moop]

I was wondering if anything helped you, since your mcat was 37.

Like lets say it's a passage where they're like protein abcd affects ligang abcd which can influence respiration and blah blah. Then the question asks what would happen if you increase CO2, I get the content part where CO2 increase leads to the necessity to breathe more, so that the level can be decreased. I have trouble relating it to the specifics of the passage because the answers will say something like increase the number of protein abcd, decrease....etc.

Does something help you get everything in order in your mind, or something that helps you understand the passage better?

Sometimes they give the passage of the linkages out of order and I waste time trying to find the order of the stuff.

I know practice helps, but i'm trying to figure out the best way to practice.

Ping me tomorrow if I forget about this and don't answer