July PCAT Score Advice

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moneyman244

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I studied for two months with collins and pearson practice tests. I felt confident going into the testing center. Verbal was of course random. But in Biology, all but 3 or 4 questions were ones I had previously seen before and knew. Got done with 10-15 left and reviewed just to make sure I didn't click on the wrong answer choice(I knew the answer just by the question without looking at the choices). I felt the exact same for Chemistry. Heading into my break, I knew I only missed 6 questions combined(from bio and chem) MAX. Reading was decent, and math was tough I had, the hardest subtest personally.

Got my preliminary scores back and the entire drive home I was dumbfounded. There is no way that I could have been so confident only to have done the complete opposite(literally the complete opposite).

verbal: 383 18
bio: 51 405
chem: 396 38
reading: 393 37
math: 399 45
comp:392 27

My score is hideous. I am still dumbfounded by my scores. I even called my parents after my exam and told them there has to be a mistake with my score, I knew reading and math were low when I was doing them but still did not expect them to be the equivalent of a 3rd grader taking the exam. It is really depressing to even think about taking it again because of how much time I put in only to have my results come back to portray the scores of a 3rd grader just clicking random answers. Anyways, what are some study options at this point that you guys would recommend... I know the concepts already of chem and bio... like I said, I'm dumbfounded and depressed..... (No, I'm not switching to business).
 
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i had the same problem the first time i took it. I did really bad on verbal and reading. Got 88 in chem and 60's in quant and bio. Still ended up with 46% composite score
Im taking it again tomorrow
 
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I thought it was really easy(obviously my score says otherwise...) but if you studied collins and pearson practice tests, chem and bio are pretty much the same. I want to get my score rescored, but it seems that the preliminary are precise. I don't know what happened..
 
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For the July 17 PCAT, do you have to memorize the atomic masses and weights of the elements? Also, should tomorrow's test takers review information on amino acid structures and nitrogenous bases?
 
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bmohning said:
For the July 17 PCAT, do you have to memorize the atomic masses and weights of the elements?
Click to expand...
On the practice tests they give you the atomic masses to use if a problem requires it, but I think knowing some of the more common elements you'll encounter will help. For example: C, H, O, N, Na, Cl, etc.
 
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@bmohning the exams are different, even if you take them the same day, you will still get different questions. If your exam is tomorrow, relax for rest of the day 🙂
 
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ouch that sucks man. I came in feeling nervous and came out feeling terrible. I didn't know I even did well getting the preliminary scores cause I had no idea how to interpret them
 
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Yeah, I am hoping the difficulty isn't a big change in Septembers exam. I'm just gonna study Pearson Practice Exams and do Dr. Collins chemistry, biology, and verbal(after I get his update in 2 weeks hopefully). Other than that, I don't know what else I can do.
 
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I did the experimental sections and it was not that bad. Many questions I could answer just glimpsing at the figures and maybe skimming the paragraph they gave. What killed me was verbal. Also did u use a really old dr collins?
 
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Yeah I did, I had collins and pearson practice tests. I knew everything that was asked in bio and chem. I just don't know what happened... I would say I had seen nearly 70% of my questions for bio and chem from dr. collins+pearson practice tests. I am praying that the September test is the same difficulty. Verbal is something that a person is either just good at or is decent. We can't improve vocabulary that much, at least you don't have to take it again man. I spent 2 months studying and it's depressing to even look at my score.
 
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sorry to hear man. It is peculiar to see u studying everything and score so low though. I didn't use the pearson practice exams and I studied hard, but not nearly as much as every1 else. I also only used the Dr collins stuff and took the class. Do u mind telling us how u prepared for the exam and maybe we can help=)
 
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Verbal- I memorized all the analogies/words from collins, and memorized the roots from Kaplan book.
Biology- Used Dr. Collins for all aspects. I reviewed the packet from Dr. Collins and used Kaplan during General Biology for in-depth factors. I got the concepts of everything that was taught by Dr. Collins. Biology was my best on prac. tests.
Chemistry- I spent a lot of time on Organic, trying to memorize all the strong nuclephiles, what certain reactions would do with specific catalyst, etc. I was good in General Chemistry but I reviewed it anyways. I missed many of the organic questions in Dr. Collins practice tests.
Reading- Didn't practice reading except one day(looked up tips/approaches on internet)
Math- Used Dr. Collins and felt that some of the things that were covered in his guide were not part of the PCAT. So I used Collins for the concepts that the 3 Pearson practice tests had questions over.

The answers at the end of each practice tests were amazing. So that was one of the things I spent time on, to understand why I got a question wrong and understanding what was the correct answer because of Dr. Collins' explanation.

The Pearson Practice tests- the first one I got 90-99, second one I got 70-90, third one I didn't complete(didn't finish the reading section) but did the other 4 subtests(got 70-90 on bio, 90-99 on chem, 65-85 on math). But I went over those tests and made sure I understood the ones I got wrong and the ones I got lucky on and guess right on.
 
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Ok. I will try to break it down for me personally and the Dr collins

Verbal- Didn't help much as is evident from my score. English is my primary language and I couldn't make heads or tails of the analogies. Nor did I find any of them in the packet when I came home.Sentence completion was better for me and that is prolly where I got all my points.

Biology- Dr collins gave a sloppy gloss over bio imho. I am a bio major and had to relie on upper level courses like cell metabolism and molecular bio of the gene to answer the PCAT questions. Hardly any anatomy/physiology or simple gimme points on mine that the packets had. I was surprised and a bit sad about that.

Chem- I would say this is Dr collins bread and butter selling point of even getting it. This helped immensely for me because I took o chem 2 years ago and gen chem 3 years ago. I studied this the most since it had the most practice tests and the most information. Unfortunately the answer keys were very bland and sometimes downright offensive to me saying like "obvious". I actually coupled this with khan academy videos for the concepts and used openstudy to get real help to understanding how to approach these problems. I can say all the effort paid off cause I use to score 50% on the first 10 practice exams. imho practice and applying concepts here is the best option

Reading- I had a plan of writing mini summaries, but it didn't really help. The dr collins packet was to easy compared to the actual exam. The actual exam had more in depth thinking questions that through me off

Math- This would be the second most beneficial topic for Dr collins. I also used studyopen for some questions, but the answer keys helped. Again I coupled this with PatrickJMT for the calc part(he is a great teacher for calc+ that I used when taking the course itself) The packet is nice and helps give interesting patterns of numbers that helped me make quick work of the calculations.

Hope this helped
 
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I will defintely use your methods and suggestions. Would you say you did practice tests a lot? I went through each bio and chem prac. tests once.. but no more than that. Would you say that repeating tests and getting a "feel" for questions helped?
 
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Jeeze Sunshao, you really put A LOT of effort into this. I feel so unprepared now. I take it tomorrow and the biology section + Verbal I can usually get down in the 80's range then With chemistry I'm around the 70's(from pearson) and Quant If i speed through it (cuz i know the material) I can usually get the majority of questions correct (this is from the Collins practice tests). And Reading comp is never my strong suite... I always have gotten like 50's or below (from pearson). My test scores in each section on the pearson test were just variable. Sometimes i got really high sometimes really low. It all just seems hit-or miss. I guess it depends on the "hand that's delt" to you.
 
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For math, I would also suggest the PCAT destroyer. It is very thorough and provides many examples. It really helped me brush up on my calc and algebra and I timed myself and did 48 questions at a time just like the actual PCAT. It helped me increase speed as well as find calc shortcuts and patterns and such since there are so many questions.

For verbal, seriously read through the list from Dr. Collins for analogies. I didn't see any of the same sentence completion ones, but I saw quite a few of the same analogy questions. Also for this, try to figure out the relationship of the first two words BEFORE looking at the third word and answer choices. Are they synonyms? antonyms? are they both types of a broader category? Is one describing the other? Does one lead to another or vice versa? Once you've established that, I find that it is much much easier to find the answer.

For chem, I agree with the above and would just stick to Dr. Collins. If you do purchase the PCAT destroyer, I would also just go through those chemistry questions because they are very helpful. Some of them are a little ridiculous because you would really need a calculator and the PCAT questions are not nearly as brutal as some of those are, but at least you get practice and get quicker at doing stoichiometry questions.

For reading, Dr. Collins is way easier than the actual exam and I thought that Pearson #4 was much harder. I don't really know how to prepare for this section. What I do, is I move the mouse along the words as I read. I also found myself easily letting the information just go in and out without processing it so I had to mouth the words as I went so I paid more attention. This really helped because I felt like my brain was dying during this section haha. Just keep practicing different passages. I heard someone on here said MCAT practice reading comprehension passages would help, but I have never used them so I'm not sure.

For bio, I think Dr. Collins is an okay review, but the content on Pearson is much more accurate. I used Kaplan to brush up on topics and even learn some since I have not taken biochemistry, microbiology, or physiology but it is also very detailed and the amount of information can be overwhelming. I used some of the videos from handwrittentutorials on youtube and I thought it was very clear and helpful. Maybe try to watch those and take notes. The biology was much more difficult than I anticipated it to be and I scored lower than I thought I would.

I hope this is at least somewhat helpful! Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be more than happy to help 🙂
 
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wow I guess some ppl have all the luck. Maybe 1 example of the verbal analogies was on there from both the practice exams/reviews. I guess some ppl got all the luck lol. I agree the MCAT passages are better indicators(I also took the MCAT)
 
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Just retake it, it's not the end of the world. It is kind of alarming when you said "there has to be a mistake" though.
You should look into the 50 points improvement thing. I read (not confirmed) on SDN that a 50 pts improvement will void your score. No idea if it's true or not. Make sure you don't bomb your second attempt, at the third attempt, schools start averaging the scores.
 
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Thanks for all the tips guys. I just finished registering for the September window. Signed up for the 12:00 test this time, I had 3 hours of sleep before the first test because I couldn't sleep. But I will definitly be doing everything you guys did that worked for you! If you got an 80% in chemistry, how many questions of the 40 that counted would you have to correct under the "norms."
 
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well that is 32 questions to get 80%. Gl with ur next test. Only 3 hours of sleep!? Maybe ur mind played tricks on u and caused this problem=/
 
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For the OP:
I took the Kaplan course (on-site). I used the Kaplan books but supplemented them with ExamKracker books. I didn't find out about Dr. Collin's until it was too late.../:

Basically, I woke up everyday around 8 and made sure I was at a library/coffee shop/quiet place by 9:30. In the beginning, I just read the chapters+took notes/did Kaplan pre-class material. I finished around..1 p.m, sometimes 2.
On days when there was no class, I set aside 6-9 p.m to review and look over notes/practice problems.
Towards the real PCAT, I did practice problems everyday. As for tests, I took 1 test each week for 3 weeks; for the last week I took a test every other day.
It really, really helps if you eat good food and get a decent night's sleep.
Okay, here goes.

VA:
-I spent more time looking at latin roots than memorizing words. Like other people have said, it's better to be able to deduce definitions than to know them straight-up--especially since the PCAT can throw any word at you.
As for sentence completion, Kaplan has a really good strategy. You predict whether or not the words are going to have a positive (+) or negative (-) charge, then match them with the answer choices.

Biology:
I found that the ExamKracker books helped more than the Kaplan prep. Even though the EK books are technically for the MCAT, they do a pretty good job of expanding on concepts and making the material easier to understand.
I had 4-5 questions about microbiology on this section--which was tough. (I've only taken Gen. Bio +Anatomy/Phys.)

Chemistry:
I focused most on this section because my chemistry is a little rusty. It's important to understand the concepts (again, ExamKrackers =good) but I just did problems from the EK 10001 Chemistry and McGraw-Hill 500 MCAT Gen. Chem. questions. I might have went overboard, but my chem section was pretty calculation heavy. IMO, the more practice problems you do, the better you'll get. (And you can pinpoint your problem areas).
Oh, and if you're having trouble with Orgo, then look at TPR's MCAT Organic Chemistry book. It's really good, much better than Kaplan's IMO.

Reading Comp:
Okay, so I was exhausted from the above sections (hence the low score). But, I heard that the EK 101 Verbal Passages is good prep material.
-Also, it helps if you read books. It sounds silly, but I found that my scores improved when I read books that I liked (Pride and Prejudice, Gone with The Wind, etc.). Plus it helps with the vocab.

Quantitative Ability:
I majored in math, so this section wasn't too bad. There wasn't a lot of calculus, but you have to have a good grasp of basic algebra/interpreting graphs/statistics.
-I also tutored math in college, so if you need help, just PM.


Feel free to ask any questions, and good luck! You'll do great this time around 🙂 .
 
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I ended up with a 98 composite, but I'd have to say I found Dr. Collins quant review to be EXTREMELY lacking in comparison to what I saw on the test (I got a 67 in Quant, I also had to guess on about 12-15 questions because I was also slow). Other than that, I thought Collin's did a great job on Chemistry (99) and Biology (99).
 
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well it isn't impossible. if ur quick on ur feet in terms of arithmatic manipulation, then it ain't that bad. quant was my highest with 96 so I don't think it is as hard as every1 says.
 
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I thought the test was fine. I just was shock at my composite score of 374. I contacted the school that I wanted to get in and they tell me that it all depends on what everyone else made when I took the test. I also contacted Pearson and asked the same questions I was told that the scores average from 300-400. majority of the time. It is very strange to me because the highest is 800. So do you all think that I should retake the test or apply anyway being that I have work experience, job history and if I was to retake it I would be taking it for a 2nd time.
 
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Not being a rude in any way, but what was your composite percentile? Also, the highest is a 600, with 400 being the median. Since that was only your first time, you should take it a second a time without a doubt. Once again, not being rude, but getting accepted into a Pharmacy program with a 374 composite isn't looking good even if you have work experience.
 
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