How is everyone approaching the new passage questions? Pls respond

[clutchtho]

The passage questions on this new PCAT are a lot harder than the stand alone questions, and the passage questions on Dr. Collins.

For the Pearson Practice tests, especially on #7, it felt the questions were hardly about the passage and more from background information about complex topics we were expected to know. Anyone else feel this way, or was I just not reading carefully enough. Fact is I don't know everything about mutations at different loci and the effects of different statins, and I don't know how to study for such things, as the passages could be about a variety of things.

I still was able to get a 80-99 as composite and 75-95 on bio at the end, but I'm actually scared of passage questions if they are like this.

Please Respond haha

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[HunterrV]

The passage questions on this new PCAT are a lot harder than the stand alone questions, and the passage questions on Dr. Collins.

For the Pearson Practice tests, especially on #7, it felt the questions were hardly about the passage and more from background information about complex topics we were expected to know. Anyone else feel this way, or was I just not reading carefully enough. Fact is I don't know everything about mutations at different loci and the effects of different statins, and I don't know how to study for such things, as the passages could be about a variety of things.

I still was able to get a 80-99 as composite and 75-95 on bio at the end, but I'm actually scared of passage questions if they are like this.

Please Respond haha

I 100% agree with you about Pearson Test #7. The Passage questions on that test were much harder than the passage questions in #5 and #6 (especially Bio). The questions are based on knowledge and not the passage, which makes no sense because they are "passage-based." The best examples of a passage-based questions were on Test #5 when we were given an experiment on tetragenicity or whatever and we were asked questions on the experiment. I get that some questions have to be straight knowledge, but some of them should be passage-based. Hopefully the passage-based questions aren't too bad for Bio because it seems like the stand-alone questions are pretty easy usually. I'm mainly worried about the Bio passage questions because the Chem ones weren't too bad I thought, but definitely harder.

Sorry for the long response lol. You can probably tell that I'm very nervous despite getting 80-99 on the 3 tests. Good luck to you friend!

 

[atnguy13]

I 100% agree with you about Pearson Test #7. The Passage questions on that test were much harder than the passage questions in #5 and #6 (especially Bio). The questions are based on knowledge and not the passage, which makes no sense because they are "passage-based." The best examples of a passage-based questions were on Test #5 when we were given an experiment on tetragenicity or whatever and we were asked questions on the experiment. I get that some questions have to be straight knowledge, but some of them should be passage-based. Hopefully the passage-based questions aren't too bad for Bio because it seems like the stand-alone questions are pretty easy usually. I'm mainly worried about the Bio passage questions because the Chem ones weren't too bad I thought, but definitely harder.

Sorry for the long response lol. You can probably tell that I'm very nervous despite getting 80-99 on the 3 tests. Good luck to you friend!

Could you possibly tell me what the chemistry passage problems are concentrated on in the pearson tests? I am using collins to study and I have the opposite where i feel good about biology and not confident about chemistry.

 

[HunterrV]

Could you possibly tell me what the chemistry passage problems are concentrated on in the pearson tests? I am using collins to study and I have the opposite where i feel good about biology and not confident about chemistry.

Usually the Chem passages are based upon more OChem stuff and deals with reactions or experimental data. The general chemistry and biochem stuff is in the stand alone questions usually, but there are some passage questions about GenChem and BioChem.

 

[ceciij]

The passage questions on this new PCAT are a lot harder than the stand alone questions, and the passage questions on Dr. Collins.

For the Pearson Practice tests, especially on #7, it felt the questions were hardly about the passage and more from background information about complex topics we were expected to know. Anyone else feel this way, or was I just not reading carefully enough. Fact is I don't know everything about mutations at different loci and the effects of different statins, and I don't know how to study for such things, as the passages could be about a variety of things.

I still was able to get a 80-99 as composite and 75-95 on bio at the end, but I'm actually scared of passage questions if they are like this.

Please Respond haha

F-ck!! You got a really good composite, as for me I'm not doing so good on the passages, I've been practicing from a princeton sciencebook (mcat) but there are some things that Kaplan didn't cover. At least, on my country the competitivity is less due to the fact that english is not out first language I'm scared as f-ck. I no longer know how deep I have to study every chapter, I feel that Kaplan's not enough..

 

[clutchtho]

F-ck!! You got a really good composite, as for me I'm not doing so good on the passages, I've been practicing from a princeton sciencebook (mcat) but there are some things that Kaplan didn't cover. At least, on my country the competitivity is less due to the fact that english is not out first language I'm scared as f-ck. I no longer know how deep I have to study every chapter, I feel that Kaplan's not enough..

For bio i ended up guessing fairly decently for the passages but still pretty low, for chem (whom's passages I felt were easier), i got 11/20.

Thats 55%.

Luckily I got 28/28 on the stand alones so ended up with a 33/40 and 39/48 but idk man. These passages are scary. Hopefully the actual PCAT ones aren't like this

 

[pharmdextradionaire]

For bio i ended up guessing fairly decently for the passages but still pretty low, for chem (whom's passages I felt were easier), i got 11/20.

Thats 55%.

Luckily I got 28/28 on the stand alones so ended up with a 33/40 and 39/48 but idk man. These passages are scary. Hopefully the actual PCAT ones aren't like this

Also we have to take into consideration that the actual PCAT is based off a percentile..so we are being graded on how everyone else did on those sections as well. The practice tests (I think) just gives you a raw score and then the little bar at the top indicates what range your percentile would be likely to be in. I'm trying to be hopeful in that we could actually do better than we are expecting because of this.

 

[ceciij]

Also we have to take into consideration that the actual PCAT is based off a percentile..so we are being graded on how everyone else did on those sections as well. The practice tests (I think) just gives you a raw score and then the little bar at the top indicates what range your percentile would be likely to be in. I'm trying to be hopeful in that we could actually do better than we are expecting because of this.

Lol maybe everybody fails and our composites will be higher😢

 

[ceciij]

For bio i ended up guessing fairly decently for the passages but still pretty low, for chem (whom's passages I felt were easier), i got 11/20.

Thats 55%.

Luckily I got 28/28 on the stand alones so ended up with a 33/40 and 39/48 but idk man. These passages are scary. Hopefully the actual PCAT ones aren't like this

I am getting 50-60, even though that's a "good" composite here...i wanna get above 70%