Is MCAT reliable? An unsolved mystery.

[turtle00]

---

Members don't see this ad.

How can the MCAT be reliable?

As I have read here and elsewhere, their were two versions of the Jan 22 MCAT. A physics and gen chem heave version, and a biochem version. Some people had hardly any physics/gen chem questions and had mostly biochem questions. Others had lots of physics questions.

In my exam, taken Jan 23, I had hardly any physics questions. Just ONE on electricity/magnetism, just ONE on oscillations and NONE on sound.

Mine was full of biochem. But I am best at physics and gen chem. So if I took the Jan 22 MCAT and got the "right" version, I would have gotten a higher score, correct?

So, I can only think of two explanations:

1. People don't remember well, and remember incorrectly. But how can this be? Some people had lots of physics, some had hardly any. Lots of people agree, can they all be wrong? Can it be that everyone had about equal, but just remembered wrong? How can this be?

2. The MCAT is not reliable. Can this be the case? If so, how? apparently scores stay very consistent. But how do scores stay so consistent if the content varies so much?

How can the content vary, and the scores stay the same? This is a mystery.

 

[Necr0sis713]

Off topic: So you didn't have anything about fluids? I ****ing hate those kinds of questions.

 

[Jack Westin]

As you may already know, the MCAT is a standardized exam. Basically that means no matter when a student takes the exam, that student gets the same exam difficulty.

Although each student will always get the same number of easy, medium, and hard questions, the topics they choose to test will vary. This is why the MCAT advises students to know all the content of the exam prior to taking it. Yet, a lot of students study partially, hoping they won't get tested on concepts they do not necessarily know or like. Such concepts include fluids, magnetism, optics, waves, etc. By doing this, you are gambling with your score.

On any exam day, there are 2-3 versions of the exam. Some students will get the exam version with more physics on their physical section. Some will get more chemistry. But on average, the level of difficulty is always the same. That doesn't mean its good at testing your intelligence. But it does mean that it is very good at predicting your true score.

 

[turtle00]

As you may already know, the MCAT is a standardized exam. Basically that means no matter when a student takes the exam, that student gets the same exam difficulty.

Although each student will always get the same number of easy, medium, and hard questions, the topics they choose to test will vary. This is why the MCAT advises students to know all the content of the exam prior to taking it. Yet, a lot of students study partially, hoping they won't get tested on concepts they do not necessarily know or like. Such concepts include fluids, magnetism, optics, waves, etc. By doing this, you are gambling with your score.

On any exam day, there are 2-3 versions of the exam. Some students will get the exam version with more physics on their physical section. Some will get more chemistry. But on average, the level of difficulty is always the same. That doesn't mean its good at testing your intelligence. But it does mean that it is very good at predicting your true score.

But why don't the MCAT makers make all the exams have about equal number of questions on each topic? So, basically the test is not reliable then, because someone can score quite differently depending on the version?