How was the July 24th MCAT?

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Yo my fellow MCATers. Here's my take:

PS: I also had the 57Fe passage that totally messed me up. I ended up guessing blindly on like 4,5 of the questions since I ran out of time. PS was definitely really hard for me this time. Dunno if its due to anxiety or difficulty of the test or both, but I hope I do okay. Also, wtf with them asking "What is Hess's law?" Thats not an MCAT type question??? People could easily get that wrong or right.

VR: This is my hardest section. I felt the same that I usually do so whatever.

BS: I would like to think that I shined on this one. It might be because I thought I did so bad on PS that I concentrated harder haha. But it was definitely passage based. Very surprised that there was only one OCHEM passage. Overall I felt that I did the same on BS as on AAMC.

Also, this was asked before, what do you guys mean by an EXPERIMENTAL PASSAGE???
 
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Four letters for you:

O

M

F

G

I got my arse served to me on a platter, with a big side of my ego/self confidence.

My back hurts like nothing.

Same story with me: PS was my forte - found myself struggling with the questions in it. IMO, the PS on this MCAT resembled *nothing* on the practice AAMCs.

VR: Reasonable, but had a few tricky questions

Bio: Big WTF moments about every 30 seconds (averaging to about 3 WTF moments for every question)

WS: Didn't practice doing WS, but felt decent about my responses. Crossing my fingers here.

Had a super nice test proctor. Told her about the poor arse chairs, and said that if I had told her, she would have swapped out her sweet chair for my crappy one 🙂

Oh...and I had the biggest zone out during the last passage on BS. I pretty much went from "WTF IS TEH KRAP ON THS?" to "Ahh...pretty mushrooms"....

Wow.

Hoping for the curve here. Either that, or I hope that your button for 'Yes, score my MCAT' was "bugged" and actually entered 'Void my score'.

I think I'll go drown myself now.
 
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PS-->Challenging, more so than the AAMC 8,9,10
VS-->Challenging, at least 4 humanities passages, similar to AAMC though
BS-->Challenging, Can we say Molecular Genetics, very, very little recall necessary for this section.

This definitely was a test that if you hadn't prepared extensively would really mess with you. I thought I had prepared very extensively and I still felt is was one of the more difficult exams I've come across. Angular momentum was OK, but I think that was a bit left field.

I definitely am not saying I scored high 30s on this one.

30 days and counting...
 
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Why does everyone keep talking about angular momentum in physics? I guess I didn't have that passage ... or I just missed it if it was the point of one of my passages 😳 I had one discretes question on angular momentum.
 
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J DUB said:
How did the PS relate to Kaplan PS?
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The test was nothing like Kaplan PS. The passages on Kaplan PS don't do AAMC justice. Even the AAMC-endorsed practice exams don't. Just expect to apply yourself on all the passages, it's 70% application and 30% content in my opinion. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I don't have my score back yet 😛
 
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J DUB said:
How did the PS relate to Kaplan PS?
Click to expand...

Difficult. And different from AAMC and Kaplan as another poster said.

From my perspective, PS has always been my forte, but never have I felt so utterly owned, in all possible connotations of that word, by an MCAT.

So much for feeling good after doing practice AAMCs 😛
 
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I have to agree. Balls! Balls on this test. I felt it was much harder than AAMC 8, 9, 10

PS I had the angular momentum 57Fe also.
VR eh I only liked the very last passage, the rest sucked arse
Essay - eh, whatever
BS challenging

I was tempted to void my scores also but thought better of it. Although I am tempted to register for a test in Sept....only time will tell on this one.
 
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Once again, I'm glad my fellow students suffer as I have.

TBH, at the end of the test, I was having fun trying to decide whether or not I should void my score.

I ended up playing "eenie mini miney mo"

G/L to all of you - it's over.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who is feeling better after beating a dead horse :\
 
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Oh this thread was a huge relief that I wasn't the only one that felt beaten after todays test.

Im hoping for a big curve like everyone else.
 
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NJDIF said:
turtle01- i think you and i are the only ones who had the same version... what anyone else think of the chem-centered version today?
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I had this one too!

PS was pretty easy for me,

VR was average with a few questions being tricky.

WS was decent, but who really cares as long as you don't bomb it...

BS was the hardest section for me. I don't know if it was fatigue or actually being hard, but i thought it was pretty challenging except for 1 or 2 easy passages and the discreet q's...but I'm one of those freaks who likes orgo so i was disappointed by how little there was! 👎

overall, i feel kind of good, but i don't know if that's relief from it being over or confidence.

anyone else?
 
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physical science was heavy physics, but it was good. i ran outta time and didnt put in 3 questions (i marked them to go back, but left em blank). i felt it was easy. def highest score.

verbal... 2 passeges were okay... but 1 was super hard, the other 4 were hard. def. lowest score here

bio.... man that was hard. a few easy ones but quite a few confusing passages, and very passage based. mid score here.
 
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surfsafari- yeah i hear that. i like organic, but i am in love with molecular genetics. its too bad that even though these passages were about mol. genetics, the questions required no actual knowledge of the subject. ALL passage. really knocked my ego down a few pegs.
 
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here is my breakdown...
PS: Impossible...I ran out of time and guessed on a **** pile of them. Luckly I guessed right on the hess law crap. ohh and I'll never trust EK osmosis again ( no angular momentum???) I guess thats my punishment for downloading it

VR: easy as pie...not the sin of 800 pie, just regular pie!

BS: all passage based which some how represented everything i didn't study...damn immune system

WS: who cares
 
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OIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII....IT IS OVER!!! AT LEAST IT IS OVER.

ps: brutal. no angular momentum? damn you EK!
vr: solid. nothing crazy.
writing: I got the chance to bash on O'Reilly so that was pretty satisfying.
bs: ok but im not confident.

overall, it wasn't an out of the ordinary exam but it was brutal.
 
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The PS section of this test was totally not what I was expecting. I usually got 12-14 on my AAMC tests, but I don't think I can even oull a 5 out of this one. I got so stressed since I noticed I can not solve any questions. I ended up guessing most of the questions which makes me hopeless. I do not think this was a fair test, at least for me. I thought I know most of the material (I studied from the Kaplan book), but I screwed up.

I think the verbal was OK and easier to read than most of the passages in AAMC, but they were a little longer.

Bio was very hard too, but not as bad as PS. I could at least come up with an answer.

Overall, I think I will get something around 25. By the way, does anyone know when can we register for another test for this application cycle?

Wish you all luck
 
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Hi guys. Good job on being done. I was just wondering if you had any advice for last minute studying...I'm taking it August 6th. Thanks
 
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PS-Really difficult! Ambiguous questions/answers
VS-Long and the questions were a little tricky. This is usually my strong point 🙁
BS-I didn't find it TOO awful, but I am not sure after reading all of the posts.
Writing-EASY!

I'm pretty bummed out as I was scoring pretty high on the practice. I felt like the questions were not reflective of all of the practice exams I took. Oh well, what's done is done. Time to enjoy my life again!
 
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if anything im just freaking out abt the physical sciences ...(at least its done) but i hope there is a huge curve !!!



not much ochem on the exam...perhaps one passage if i remember right and maybe one or two free standing questions~!
 
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Ok, I was really nervous to come home from my test and get on SDN because I expected everybody to say "oh, it was SO easy!"...but thankfully everybody else feels just like I do!!

PS - AWFUL! It definitely brought my confidence down and that stuck with me through the whole test. I would be sitting there in the writing section thinking about how I bombed PS....grrr...

VS - Not bad...this is always my strongest section though. The passages did seem longer than the Kaplans and AAMCs.

WS - Easy! I was a little worried about getting hard prompts and having to come up with examples but I think it went really well.

BS - Crazy passage based...I don't really know how I feel about it yet. I think I did so-so...we'll see in a month!

30 days....
 
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waterlilly said:
Hi guys. Good job on being done. I was just wondering if you had any advice for last minute studying...I'm taking it August 6th. Thanks
Click to expand...


My suggestion would be to purchase the MCAT 45 book. I only completed a couple of passages, but now I wish I had did more. The material tested on the AAMC was more application based instead of content centered. Any testing materials you can get your hands on that will focus on drilling your application skills will be best. I would highly recommend the Kaplan full length tests (I used the old paper versions). Their difficulty level seems to mirror the difficulty I saw on today's MCAT. I'm not a Kaplan rep, I promise! I also have PR and EK books, but their tests were very different from Kaplan's and today's MCAT in my opinion. Does anyone else have suggestions?

Oh one more thing - pray - before the test, during the test, and after the test...lol. No, but really, relax during the test and take your time. If you don't know something, press on! You can always go back if you have time at the end. Good luck!
 
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Glad that one is over...

PS: Holy cr*p! It was at least 80% physics, and a good percentage of that was angular physics. This better have one monster curve or I am going to be in deep doo-doo. It was much harder than the AAMC practice tests. I was finishing those with 10-15 minutes left to look over answers. This section was down to the wire, and I basically had to guess on four or five of them. Lame...

VR: About what I expected, not a big problem. There were about three that were just ridiculously ambiguous (or I am just an idiot who doesn't understand the meaning of "circumstance" or "spirituallity").

WS: Stoopid Kaplan training. I dodged the logical examples for the first one trying to stay away from controversial topics. That hampered me the whole way through. I may get a 3 on that one. The other was a breeze.

BS: Very little chemistry. I was quite pleased with this section, it flew by. Whether or not that translates to a good score is another matter entirely.

All I can say is congratulations to all! We'll just have to see how it shakes out.

Oh, and another note, Thomson Prometric sucks. The procotor threatened to throw us out if we looked at any materials on our break between sections. The computers had issues with check-in / check-out leaving us over 30 minutes late and with functionally reduced breaks. They are a joke.
 
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I gave this test too much credit in my first post. It was pretty stupid. The main thing that bothered me was the absurdly lopsided nature of the BS. (BS, what a coincidence...that's what it was) I am a physiology guru, not nearly as strong with molec. genetics...drove me nuts. At least all the info was in the passages.

So, it was tough, but not so much because it was difficult material, just that it was a big time curveball.

Also, angular momentum is in the Kaplan book? I thought that was a pretty fundamental physics concept--spent a ton of time on it in class. (probably still bombed it though :scared:)

Glad I didn't have the Fe57 everyone is talking about.

Also, VR passages were longer, but more interesting and easy to read, I felt.

Good luck to all! I hope we all screwed up like we think so we get a big fat curve 😀
 
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Glad that test is over, time for summer version 2.0! 😀

Honestly, though, did you guys really think it was that different from the AAMC tests? I only took 3-7, but it seemed about the same to me, except that there was minimal organic and organ system stuff in BS. It does look like I missed out on some of the harder PS questions, though.

Good luck to us all with the scores :luck:
 
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FurmanJon said:
The main thing that bothered me was the absurdly lopsided nature of the BS. (BS, what a coincidence...that's what it was)
Click to expand...

i agree twice! almost nothing was covered, 3 or 4 of the passages involved some kind of genetics (major or minor) and only 1 orgo passage...no physiology, maybe a few discreets. that was definitely lame....we'll see what happens.
 
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i had a pretty cool one about bruce springsteen, blues artists, and the draw of "authentic" musicians to fans.:corny: it was probably the coolest passage ever. then i came back to reality and read about how literature gets harder to write as time goes by 😴
 
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PS Not too bad if you forget about the angular momentum (is it conserved?)

VS Really rushed for time. Not b/c it was too long but just had trouble deciding on answer choices

BS Not too bad except for the last passage on the genetic stuff which i had to guess on given time constraints.
 
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this was so weird. no physio, minimal biochem, and a **** load of mol bio, that i couldnt even have studied for. what am i going to do with all of this kidney knowledge???
 
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Augh, this test sucked. My testing center started late and I was just nervous through the whole thing. I am really depressed about verbal, its usually my best/favorite section and I just lost my concentration. I am totally kicking myself because everyone else seems to think that the verbal was not that bad today. 👎

I just wanted to comment on the comparability of the july 13th and july 24th mcat. I was sick while testing on the 13th but I STILL thought it was much easier than the 24th! Too bad I voided. Ah well, that's life. 🙁
 
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This is my second time taking the test in about 2 months 😉 -
May 31: 31 (12 PS, 10 BS, 9 VR)

Last night, I scored my all-time in terms of MCAT practice test @ 37 on AAMC - Right now, that's feeling like a complete & total fluke.

PS: You know, overall, I thought it was a nice balance of Physics vs GenChem - but I came out feeling better than last time & even that's making me nervous.

I don't think I had to guess other than that but I was DEFINITELY not 100% sure on a huge percentage of the questions. I finished with 0 min to spare (which is unfortunately pretty usual for me).

VR: I saw the poetry passage & I was like "Really? THIS is how you want to play it?" I felt like shooting a cannon down the MCAT's proverbial throat. I had about 3min to answer the questions on the last passage.

BS: LOTS of passage based questions for biology (which I'm terrible @).

How do you figure out whether a gene is X-linked recessive or dominant if it shows up in only males in a family?

Felt pretty decent about the organic fatty acid passage. The rest of the discretes were ok.

I came out not feeling so good about anything so I hope I don't do much worse than my previous score - but it's realistically what I'm expecting 🙁
 
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until i read the responses by you guys/gals, i dont feel like i want to blow my brain out for not knowing wtf was going on with the test. straight craziness. :scared:
 
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PS: I finished this section about 10 minutes early and had sometime to go back to double check my work. It was ok.

VR: I agree with most of you how the passages were somewhat longer than the practice tests. However, most of them were not to0 bad. I like the one about "Photosynthesis." I remembered cruising through the second or third paragraph of that one where they describe the photosynthesis process. So, by doing that, it saved me alot of time to put my focus elsewhere.

BS: very passage-based. Let see how it goes.

WS: wasn't too bad.

Overall: Despite all that, I also hope for a big curve, just to be on the safe side!
 
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I guess I lucked out. I took developmental biology (embryology) this spring, and the course focused on the way genes induced/ controlled one another through transcription/translation etc. the passage on the MCAT about dpp was a research topic that I studied in class! how sweet is that. Kaplan spent exactly zero time on it so thats why I say I am lucky. Sorry for all of you guys that didn't but hopefully a curve will be in your favor. (I hope the PS curve works that way for me haha)
 
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Oh my gosh!!😡

Can't believe what happenen!!😱 I was typing the first essay, and about 6 minutes left, the keyboard was locked!! I apparently pressed the "shift" key too long, but I couldn't type or delete after that! I still needed a conclusion and finish up one paragraph!

The proctor didn't know how to "unlock" the keyboard and called the Help Desk but was told that there was nothing they could do about that section. I could only watch the timer goes to zero....🙁

They restarted my computer and I moved on to the second essay.

Other sessions were like what everyone has said.

The BS was really passage-based and I had a hard time focusing after the incident in which my stupid keyboard was locked. But I finished in the end.

Advice: Don't hold any key for too long, and read the messages that pop-up on your screen before clicking anything!!

Hope I don't have to take the test for a 3rd time!
 
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Hey, This really sucks. But the good thing is that the writing section is not that important. If that would have happened for me, I would have passed out. At least you could manage finishing the damn thing.
 
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Parfee said:
Oh my gosh!!😡

Can't believe what happenen!!😱 I was typing the first essay, and about 6 minutes left, the keyboard was lock!! I apparently pressed the "shift" key too long, but I couldn't type or delete after that! I still needed a conclusion and finish up one paragraph!
Click to expand...

So sorry to hear that. Glad it was only on the writing sample.

Why the heck can't Thomson make their own proprietary software? What probably happened is that the computer, running Windows, brought up the dialog to start Sticky Keys. With the Thomson program demanding to run in the foreground, you couldn't get rid of the dialog box.

Bastards! Sorry again...
 
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greg1184 said:
Did anyone have that annoying passage on "Poetry and looking back at the past works,etc?"
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heh - I had that, and I really enjoyed it =). The questions were tricky, but the passage I found to be very interesting. On the other hand, I love to read, so it's pretty consistent.

But, can someone please explain to me AAMC Verbal's obsession with the ORIGIN of the earth/universe?! or global warming or carbon dioxide?? It seems ubiquitous - it was like on Every single practice test I took. You'd think they'd run out of things to say, but never! damn. makes me wonder if anthropology majors find the verbal section easier.
 
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tripleg said:
So sorry to hear that. Glad it was only on the writing sample.

Why the heck can't Thomson make their own proprietary software? What probably happened is that the computer, running Windows, brought up the dialog to start Sticky Keys. With the Thomson program demanding to run in the foreground, you couldn't get rid of the dialog box.

Bastards! Sorry again...
Click to expand...

What the heck are Sticky Keys anyway!! Screwed me up!!!! AHHHHH!!!
 
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Polynikes said:
Soccerpunk, I had the exact same test as you.

Any of you guys that had the 57Fe...dude...that was a hard passage.

So, I have a question guys: I keep hearing about experimental passages. What exactly are you talking about?

Do they throw out one passage in each section or something?

Like, do they just not score that section or what?
Click to expand...

Yea, are there experimental passages in each section? Are they not included in our score?
 
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