How you felt vs. how you scored

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born2run

born2run

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Hi guys, I've come across a few people who have felt really badly about their test and have ended up with a solid score. I'm curious if this is a trend or not. If anyone out there feels comfortable sharing, how did you feel feel after your test and what did your score end up being? Was it higher/lower than your aamc FL?


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Out of all of my friends (n=10 or so) that have made 508+, none of them have felt good coming out of the test. A few of them even hovered the void button.
 
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DrShephardWannabe said:
Out of all of my friends (n=10 or so) that have made 508+, none of them have felt good coming out of the test. A few of them even hovered the void button.
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Good to hear. I just took mine this weekend and feel pretty badly about the whole thing. I usually feel good about cars and p/s, but not this time.


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DrMantisTobogganMD said:
I felt TERRIBLE after walking out, C/P and P/S rocked me, but I ended up doing well. You'll be fine man!
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Hope you're right. I was definitely hovering over the void button. It's also not helping that questions are randomly coming back to me and I'm realizing I made some dumb mistakes.


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born2run said:
Hope you're right. I was definitely hovering over the void button. It's also not helping that questions are randomly coming back to me and I'm realizing I made some dumb mistakes.


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I feel the same way, I've yet to get my score back but the further away from the test date I get the less and less confident I feel. I feel like it's close to impossible to assume how you did based on how you feel about it. If safest to assume your scored FL +\- 2, but that obviously isn't always(seeming even less so recently) true


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I felt terrible and wanted to cry so badly. Especially when I got to CARS section, I thought I had to void and get scolded by my parents. I didn't end up voiding. I took it last weekend. I hope I did well 🙁
 
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I wish the spreadsheet with everyone's scores on it also included how they felt after the exam on a scale from 1-10 or something. A friend of mine told me that the feeling bad about it is probably a good sign, but that contradicts every experience I've ever had with tests.


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Hoping my curve will be generous too. Though I'd feel better if I actually understood how they determine the "curve".

I'm most concerned about my CARS. I usually destroy CARS but I felt like this one was pretty convoluted and difficult. Other people who seemingly had the same CARS thought it was easy. Not doing well in CARS could ruin my score :/
 
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The thing people seem to not understand is that you need to keep the difficulty of the questions in mind when evaluating how well you did. If a question was extremely difficult, you shouldn't feel too bad about getting it wrong because everyone else probably did too.

The reason people feel bad and then get 520+ is that they are used to being confident and answering every question correctly. Now all of a sudden the test is more difficult, but they expect to still be able to get every question so they feel bad. Don't get hung up on the impossible questions. Be worried if you miss a lot of easy/medium questions you "should" have been able to get.


I walked out of my test feeling like I did about as well as I could have hoped for - I got all the questions I would expect myself to be able to get, and who cares about the extremely difficult questions. Ended up with a 519 (scored aamc = 516). My friend felt terrible, considered voiding... Ended up with a 524 🙄😡😕
 
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Gurby said:
The thing people seem to not understand is that you need to keep the difficulty of the questions in mind when evaluating how well you did. If a question was extremely difficult, you shouldn't feel too bad about getting it wrong because everyone else probably did too.

The reason people feel bad and then get 520+ is that they are used to being confident and answering every question correctly. Now all of a sudden the test is more difficult, but they expect to still be able to get every question so they feel bad. Don't get hung up on the impossible questions. Be worried if you miss a lot of easy/medium questions you "should" have been able to get.


I walked out of my test feeling like I did about as well as I could have hoped for - I got all the questions I would expect myself to be able to get, and who cares about the extremely difficult questions. Ended up with a 519 (scored aamc = 516). My friend felt terrible, considered voiding... Ended up with a 524 🙄😡😕
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Does that mean that a difficult question holds more value than an easy/medium question if you get it right?


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born2run said:
Does that mean that a difficult question holds more value than an easy/medium question if you get it right?
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I don't know the system well enough to answer that confidently, but I doubt it. My intuition is that the easy/medium questions are largely what separates people in the 490 - 510 range, and then the higher up you go the more difficult questions you need to get right. If you miss a bunch of easy questions that 80% of people get correct, I don't think getting a difficult question correct is going to make up for that. This is speculation though.
 
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I wrote the old test. I felt like I did much worse on the physical science section than my practice tests, but that everything else felt very easy. My score was in line with that. (My physical science ended up being the same as my lowest practice score -- I was scoring 14 usually and got 11.)
 
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Gurby said:
I don't know the system well enough to answer that confidently, but I doubt it. My intuition is that the easy/medium questions are largely what separates people in the 490 - 510 range, and then the higher up you go the more difficult questions you need to get right. If you miss a bunch of easy questions that 80% of people get correct, I don't think getting a difficult question correct is going to make up for that. This is speculation though.
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That makes sense. Now I'm going to obsess over the couple of easy questions that I'm pretty sure I answered incorrectly lol


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In truth I felt like it had gone better than my practice tests (mainly because I knew more of the C/P and B/B material), though I felt P/S had gone slightly worse, and CARS about the same.

Overall, I thought I did best on CARS, then P/S or C/P.

My scored AAMC was around a 511-512 though I took each section individually so I knew it wasn't necessarily representative.

I googled all the questions I could remember (after initially promising myself I wouldn't) and found of the ones I wasn't sure of I got between 60-70% correct. As the weeks got closer to the score release date, I began to get more nervous, and by the day of the score release I was just hoping for at least a 506+ to make me competitive for DO.

Finally saw on here that scores were up, scrolled through the percentiles on my laptop at work, saw the score and rejoiced. I did better on CARS slightly than expected, and a little better on P/S (I was thinking a 127-129), and got a decent but not better than expected score on B/B.

How I felt about the test and each section was essentially in line with how I did on those sections, but this was usually the case during preptests also. I have seen a lot of people who thought they did terribly who wound up doing very well.
 
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I didn't feel that good about most of it, especially the CARS section, but I ended up doing just fine. I usually feel terrible about exams in general, just because I interprit any question that I am not 100% sure about as a question that I got wrong. If there is anything I've learned, it is to not go with how I feel. I just try to take my mind off the whole situation until I get my scores back. That's easier said than done, though.
 
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C/P- good but then ****ty a few days later (130?)
Cars- ****ty (126?)
BB- good (131?)
PS- good? (130?)

I'll let you know if this is true in a month 😉
 
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I felt great and I did better than I ever did on any practices. I am more or less the exception it seems.
 
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I got a 514 on the scored AAMC FL which I took 2-3 weeks before the test.
On test day I felt confident and really tried hard to keep my cool.
I came out feeling like I did about the same as the scored FL, although I knew I really couldn't be certain and felt like I may have done worse than 514, but overall I felt optimistic.
I scored a 516 on the real thing. I was expecting a 514 +/- one point, so it was a pleasant surprise.
It also helped that I previously took the MCAT once before and got a 29 on it, and comparing my mental state/ general feelings between the two there was a huge difference in confidence/ how calm I felt on test day.
 
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partypantss said:
I got a 514 on the scored AAMC FL which I took 2-3 weeks before the test.
On test day I felt confident and really tried hard to keep my cool.
I came out feeling like I did about the same as the scored FL, although I knew I really couldn't be certain and felt like I may have done worse than 514, but overall I felt optimistic.
I scored a 516 on the real thing. I was expecting a 514 +/- one point, so it was a pleasant surprise.
It also helped that I previously took the MCAT once before and got a 29 on it, and comparing my mental state/ general feelings between the two there was a huge difference in confidence/ how calm I felt on test day.
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I won't have my score back for a couple weeks but I felt terrible after the test. I can't figure out it was a nerves, test difficulty, or a combination of the two. I felt like my test was much more difficult than practice ones. I feel like I would do better on a retake just because I would naturally be calmer after having experienced it once. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not counting on it.


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born2run said:
I won't have my score back for a couple weeks but I felt terrible after the test. I can't figure out it was a nerves, test difficulty, or a combination of the two. I felt like my test was much more difficult than practice ones. I feel like I would do better on a retake just because I would naturally be calmer after having experienced it once. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not counting on it.


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It's very hard to say. There are MANY stories on here of people who felt awful after the test and ended up doing much better than they expected. If the scoring works how it should, than you should still score the same on a more difficult test, but it could have felt more difficult due to just testing you on subjects you're weaker on. There's really no way for either of us to know.
 
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Felt terrible myself, and it ended up alright. In the end, it's not your feelings.....it's more about your past performance on the AAMC practice materials (especially the scored). From what I've seen, that is a very strong indicator of how well you will score.
 
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I was planning on voiding after my C/P section. I guessed on an entire passage (only 4 questions though) and couldn't get some calculations to work out.

Ended up with a 128 C/P so the curve for that section must be massive.
 
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Can someone share their experience with the real exam CARS section? It seems like a great deal of people were doing great in CARS practice, but got subpar score. What was different in the real exam?
 
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I felt like I legitimately got a 118-121 on C/P. It was bad. I had no idea what SO many of the questions were even saying. When about 3 p.m. came around, I convinced myself I needed to go buy groceries because I just wasn't ready to face it yet. I was cringing as I opened my score report and...127. Not fabulous but not shabby at all.

Conversely, I thought I absolutely rocked CARS and got a 127. Again, not shabby, but I felt like I had a 129 at the lowest.

Bio I only scored 125 on, and coming out of the exam, I said, word for word, "I think I stand a shot at a 125, but I'm just not sure." So I guess that about matched my feeling.

Psych, I honestly thought I stood a chance at 131-132...got a 130. Good enough.

I think the harder a section was, the less likely your score is to match your feeling and vise versa.
 
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Did any of you guys feel badly about cars and end up pleasantly surprised with your score? I usually get 129-130 on cars practice, but on my real test I felt like it was not nearly as straightforward as I was used to. I guess it could've been nerves and anxiety. My score is pretty reliant on a strong cars so I'm really afraid it didn't go well. For reference, I usually only mark like 6-9 questions, and on this one I remember marking around 13-15.


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Took the June 02 test and there was so much crazy hard orgo in the chem/phys section I genuinely thought I was going to get a 125. Ended up with a 132. The curve must have been MASSIVE. The rest of the test I felt okay but not super great about, ended up with a 524. I think the harder it seems, the better the curve.
 
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moggat said:
Took the June 02 test and there was so much crazy hard orgo in the chem/phys section I genuinely thought I was going to get a 125. Ended up with a 132. The curve must have been MASSIVE. The rest of the test I felt okay but not super great about, ended up with a 524. I think the harder it seems, the better the curve.
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Wow, congrats! Mind sharing your practice test scores?
 
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I took the June 2 MCAT and thought it went TERRIBLY. I have felt sick since and was preparing myself to have to retake. My B/B section was unlike anything I had ever seen and I was shocked at the difficulty. I didn't finish C/P or B/B and had to randomly guess on probably 5 questions for each section. I ended up with a 520, 9 points higher than my highest practice exam. The curve must have been insane.
 
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Titus Andromedon said:
I took the June 2 MCAT and thought it went TERRIBLY. I have felt sick since and was preparing myself to have to retake. My B/B section was unlike anything I had ever seen and I was shocked at the difficulty. I didn't finish C/P or B/B and had to randomly guess on probably 5 questions for each section. I ended up with a 520, 9 points higher than my highest practice exam. The curve must have been insane.
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Congrats! If you don't mind, could you share what you think might have helped you most for C/P? My exam is July 22 and I'm freaking out. would you suggest doing TPR SWB or EK/NS/Altius C/P section tests instead at this point?
 
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walloobi said:
Wow, congrats! Mind sharing your practice test scores?
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Yeah of course! I actually only took the two AAMC tests for practice (I know, terrible student). Scored AAMC 514, unscored ~522. I took the scored 2 weeks before the MCAT, and the unscored the weekend before (~3-4 days before). I think my chem/phys scores were 126 and 129 respectively.
 
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moggat said:
Yeah of course! I actually only took the two AAMC tests for practice (I know, terrible student). Scored AAMC 514, unscored ~522. I took the scored 2 weeks before the MCAT, and the unscored the weekend before (~3-4 days before). I think my chem/phys scores were 126 and 129 respectively.
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Wow, that's really something. What do you feel contributed to the incredible score jump on test day?
 
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believe <3 said:
Congrats! If you don't mind, could you share what you think might have helped you most for C/P? My exam is July 22 and I'm freaking out. would you suggest doing TPR SWB or EK/NS/Altius C/P section tests instead at this point?
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Thank you. I actually did not do any of those materials. To study I used Kaplan and supplemented with my biochemistry textbook. For practice, I only did 2 of the Kaplan exams and all of the AAMC materials. I probably should have taken more practice tests. If you haven't yet, then I'd suggest doing the section banks. Those were the most similar to the real exam. Knowing the formulas for C/P helped me a lot. I made a sheet with every formula we needed to know and I would write them out until I had them memorized. I hope this helps. Good luck.
 
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believe <3 said:
Wow, that's really something. What do you feel contributed to the incredible score jump on test day?
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Honestly the curve probably helped a lot; luck of the draw on that one. C/P was also my weakest subject (well other than Psych) so I was drilling it a lot the last week. I also managed to accidentally unplug my computer in the middle of the test. The heart attack I had gave me such an adrenaline boost that I was hyper focused for the rest hahaha. Not necessarily a recommended approach, but definitely effective.
 
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