How representative of the real MCAT is the AAMC official guide?

[OCDOCDOCD]

So I tried searching for this before posting this thread since I thought this would be answered already, but I didn't find anything so...

How close are the difficulty/types of passages in the official guide to the real thing? I'm most curious about how bio matches up, since it seemed like most of the passages in the official guide were the experimental types of passages that people have been freaking out about on here. On top of that, chem, physics, and orgo seemed significantly harder in the official guide than on the practice tests which would also match up with what people are saying.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[rjosh33]

So I tried searching for this before posting this thread since I thought this would be answered already, but I didn't find anything so...

How close are the difficulty/types of passages in the official guide to the real thing? I'm most curious about how bio matches up, since it seemed like most of the passages in the official guide were the experimental types of passages that people have been freaking out about on here. On top of that, chem, physics, and orgo seemed significantly harder in the official guide than on the practice tests which would also match up with what people are saying.

I took the 7/14 test, so I can only compare the AAMC Guide to the test I took that day. I thought Chem and Physics were about the same difficulty on the Guide as the real thing (though neither were particularly hard, IMO). I found Orgo to be a little easier on the real MCAT than the Guide, and Verbal was easier on the real thing than the Guide. YMMV, of course.

You're right about the experimental Bio passages in the book, and those are good practice for the real thing. However, I had a couple passages on my MCAT that dwarfed anything I came across in the book. One in particular was an absolute monster and probably tougher than anything I saw in the practice FLs too (including 11).

From reading other threads and my own experience, it seems to me that each MCAT will have a couple sections of moderate difficulty, with one section that's almost unanimously considered hard. The questions in the Guide didn't really follow that formula, though. There was a mix of easy, moderate, and a couple hard questions in each section, so I think at least one section will necessarily be unreflective of the difficulty you're likely to face on the real deal.

In any case, good luck to you when you take your test.