July PCAT study group

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Wallace12

Wallace12

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  1. Pre-Pharmacy
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Who all is taking the PCAT in July and would maybe want to join together in this thread and ask for help and keep each other motivated for the test??
I'll be studying starting ~may 13th it's the Monday after my spring finals. I'll be using Dr Collins and MAYBE cracking pcat by PR. But it doesn't matter what materials we use we can still help each other out. Lets kill this test and get accepted into pharmacy school!
LETS GOOOOO!!!
 
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Serenoir said:
I was wondering, I just finished my Pearson's pcat practice but I haven't checked my composite score yet, can you check the composite and then go back to review? or do I have to review all the questions and then check the composite score?
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once u click review ur score or wutever button, u neither can change the score nor answers
 
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Kimpauli said:
How are you guys preparing for the essay?
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You can buy a Pearson practice writing test, or just find an example PCAT prompt and time yourself so you can see how long 30 minutes really is. I just practiced once and I feel good about it. It helps your pace yourself, but you don't want to practice too many because there are more important sections of the test to worry about.
 
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n all my practice tests i get about 90% in verbal,biology,and reading comprehension. But in quant and chem, i'm either hitting 60% on the dot or getting about 57% or above. Sooo my "composite" is somewhere at 70%+...i think. When it comes to chem and quant i think it just comes down to answering everything that easy to me,then going back and seeing what points i can rack up, and then just flat out guessing.

Hopefully when it comes time to send out those apps, these schools really do look at the ENTIRE app and not just pcats.



Good luck and Godspeed to us all
 
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Well, Im new here, and my test is on Wednesday. Im not nervous, but I feel as though I should be. On all the practice tests I did, I scored 80-99th percentile, even on my last one where I bombed RC and got 15th-35th percentile. In all honesty, my biggest concern is with the Verbal and RC. At this point, its too late to learn new words for the Verbal, but I am desperatly in need of suggestions for the RC. Id love to get 90th percentile composite (this is my first time). Im just hoping that if my 80th-99th percentile on the pearson practice tests matches up with how I do in two days, and I can get the RC up to even the 70th percentile, I should be able to do so. I just really hate how Pearson gives you the range of 20% rather than an actual percentage based on the real numbers they use. Also, I would really love a way to figure out my scaled score for each of the sections out of 40, that way I could get a real feel for how I am going to so.
 
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And I suppose I may as well ask if there are any websites you know of where I could practice RC
 
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I think today I'm going to go over gen chem and quant mostly and hope I can offset my bad RC and VA... but I'll probably study tomorrow with practice tests and just review on test day because I'm taking it at 5pm
 
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I took pearson practice test #4 today, and I agree with everyone else that it is by far the hardest.
Composite: 75-95% (dropped 5% from other 2 tests)
VA:62-82% (about the same)
BIO: 65-85% (dropped 15%)
CHEM:80-90% (same)
RC:30-50% (dropped around 40%)😡
QA: 75-95% (improved a little)
Overall: I thought i did decent on RC but wow I bombed it lol ill have to see where I went wrong. The biology had a lot more questions that I didnt even recognize and I usually get 80-90% easily on bio so it was very unexpected. Other than that I was ok with my other scores, I just hope the real test will be more similar to practice tests 2 or 3!
 
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isanders said:
I took pearson practice test #4 today, and I agree with everyone else that it is by far the hardest.
Composite: 75-95% (dropped 5% from other 2 tests)
VA:62-82% (about the same)
BIO: 65-85% (dropped 15%)
CHEM:80-90% (same)
RC:30-50% (dropped around 40%)😡
QA: 75-95% (improved a little)
Overall: I thought i did decent on RC but wow I bombed it lol ill have to see where I went wrong. The biology had a lot more questions that I didnt even recognize and I usually get 80-90% easily on bio so it was very unexpected. Other than that I was ok with my other scores, I just hope the real test will be more similar to practice tests 2 or 3!
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Yea I agree. I did it Saturday, and my scores were almost identical to yours. I got 15-35 on the RC, and also thought I did very well on it. And yea, some of the bio questions made me go WTF, even though I ended up getting 35/40 :laugh: . The math did seem slightly easier on the 4th, but again, I got absolutly man handled by the RC
 
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isanders said:
I took pearson practice test #4 today, and I agree with everyone else that it is by far the hardest.
Composite: 75-95% (dropped 5% from other 2 tests)
VA:62-82% (about the same)
BIO: 65-85% (dropped 15%)
CHEM:80-90% (same)
RC:30-50% (dropped around 40%)😡
QA: 75-95% (improved a little)
Overall: I thought i did decent on RC but wow I bombed it lol ill have to see where I went wrong. The biology had a lot more questions that I didnt even recognize and I usually get 80-90% easily on bio so it was very unexpected. Other than that I was ok with my other scores, I just hope the real test will be more similar to practice tests 2 or 3!
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That is is a solid score!! But how are you scoring that high on QA and Chem??? its soooooo hard to me. Are you using any particular strategies or do you just know the stuff that well?
 
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Xeal0007 said:
That is is a solid score!! But how are you scoring that high on QA and Chem??? its soooooo hard to me. Are you using any particular strategies or do you just know the stuff that well?
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Thanks man! I am a chemistry major so a lot of that comes natural to me. Math, however, is a different story haha. My only strategy on it is to skip time consuming and hard calc problems beacause i am great with algebra but confused with calc but i can go back afterwards if there is time (keyword "if") and make educated or on some random guesses. So at least i get like the majority of questions right, and even a few calc ones like basic derivatives, integrals, and some limits are easy.
 
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TigersWings said:
Yea I agree. I did it Saturday, and my scores were almost identical to yours. I got 15-35 on the RC, and also thought I did very well on it. And yea, some of the bio questions made me go WTF, even though I ended up getting 35/40 :laugh: . The math did seem slightly easier on the 4th, but again, I got absolutly man handled by the RC
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Good to hear I'm not the only one who got clobbered by RC😎
 
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I think they are too many people on the pearson practice site or something because it keeps freezing on me! lol
 
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isanders said:
Good to hear I'm not the only one who got clobbered by RC😎
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Yea Im "glad" I wasnt the only one either lol. I just stared at my screen and just shat my pants when I saw it. For me, my RC score is going to depend on the article. If the article is something Im interested in, like a biological or technology based topic, I'll be golden because things like that tend to stick in my head. But something like an ethical issue or political/state of affairs puts me to sleep, so Ill have a hard time identifying the parts they ask for, like authors main point, or strongest/weakest argument. If only they gave us articles on sports or xbox, we would all get 99th percentiles😀 (or at least the guys would lolol)
 
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nk89 said:
I think they are too many people on the pearson practice site or something because it keeps freezing on me! lol
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I just noticed that! I was reviewing one of the practice tests, and all of a sudden it stopped loading
 
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I feel as though I am spamming the message board, but I am going to throw one more thing out there: anyone else kind of concerned with the microbiology questions they are asking? Like there have been a couple ones like: "what bacteria would be responsible for the disease_____", or "what antibiotic would be best suited to combat the bacteria ____?" I havent taken micro in two years, and there is no way I remember details like that
 
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Wallace12 said:
Yeah, I got on to review missed problems and the questions won't load for me haha
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I called Pearson's just now, and they told me everyone is experiencing the issue. The agent also said that they just are working on it, and it should be up in an approximately one hour. That means one hour break woo.
 
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Ccwm said:
I called Pearson's just now, and they told me everyone is experiencing the issue. The agent also said that they just are working on it, and it should be up in an approximately one hour. That means one hour break woo.
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Instead of going over my verbal on there now I'm reading ochem and biochem of dr Collins packet.... Haha I might go run tonight for my study break, it's rainy here today and it's making me so tired! :sly:
 
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anyone know any website have the potential words on the PCAT or just for study for the verbal ability part?
 
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Binchen222 said:
anyone know any website have the potential words on the PCAT or just for study for the verbal ability part?
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Honestly, I have not been able to find any sites that show what words you expect to be on the test. From the practice tests, 75% of the words were not overly sophisticated, but for the other 25%, it was a toss up for me. They say your best strategy is to do a lot of reading, and define words you dont understand. Clearly for us, with the test being a couple days away, we dont have that luxury anymore.
 
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TigersWings said:
Honestly, I have not been able to find any sites that show what words you expect to be on the test. From the practice tests, 75% of the words were not overly sophisticated, but for the other 25%, it was a toss up for me. They say your best strategy is to do a lot of reading, and define words you dont understand. Clearly for us, with the test being a couple days away, we dont have that luxury anymore.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I would tell anyone to give up on studying for RC or VA now. Just focus on the other subjects and memorize/learn those last details. I'm just hoping with all I have that I get a 70% or higher so I don't have to re-take the PCAT in September. I've gotten that on 1-3 of the Pearson tests, so I'm crossing my fingers and toes...
 
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im just hoping to get a 50% on the VA... but that might be a little bit hard to achieve...
 
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Wtf!? It won't let me access the last practice test. It keeps saying "an error has occurred please try again"
 
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i called them and they said they had a short outage so they are waiting to get everything back on
 
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The Pearson practice test is such a broad percentile range. I dnt like that. I wish it would give a narrower range. Telling me my percentile range is 70 to 90 isn't helping. It could be closer to 70 which would suck or closer to 90 ( which would make me do cartwheels! Lol)
 
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Doing McGraw Hill Chemistry practice test. Super tough!!! Stopped the timer after 10 questions, wouldn't be able to complete this exam in half an hour.
 
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Jessica1992 said:
Yeah, I would tell anyone to give up on studying for RC or VA now. Just focus on the other subjects and memorize/learn those last details. I'm just hoping with all I have that I get a 70% or higher so I don't have to re-take the PCAT in September. I've gotten that on 1-3 of the Pearson tests, so I'm crossing my fingers and toes...
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This made me laugh( crossing fingers n toes!)
 
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Jessica1992 said:
Yeah, I would tell anyone to give up on studying for RC or VA now. Just focus on the other subjects and memorize/learn those last details. I'm just hoping with all I have that I get a 70% or higher so I don't have to re-take the PCAT in September. I've gotten that on 1-3 of the Pearson tests, so I'm crossing my fingers and toes...
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I'll be satisfied with a 70% or higher, but I'm hoping for 80%+
 
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niftydoc said:
The Pearson practice test is such a broad percentile range. I dnt like that. I wish it would give a narrower range. Telling me my percentile range is 70 to 90 isn't helping. It could be closer to 70 which would suck or closer to 90 ( which would make me do cartwheels! Lol)
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I agree 100%. I did Kaplans practice PCAT, and it actually gave a scaled score. Idk how accurate that was, but it was nice actually seeing numbers that meant something, not a range of 20%
 
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Okay I'm practicing chem and I think the answer given is wrong in this problem:

"What vol of.1M NaOH is needed to titrate 100mL of.2M H2SO4? "
Choices: 50, 100,200, 400mL.
It says it's 400, this just a typo and it should be 200, right?
 
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Wallace12 said:
Okay I'm practicing chem and I think the answer given is wrong in this problem:

"What vol of.1M NaOH is needed to titrate 100mL of.2M H2SO4? "
Choices: 50, 100,200, 400mL.
It says it's 400, this just a typo and it should be 200, right?
Click to expand...

The correct answer is actually 400mL because you need to multiply the .2M by 2 since there are two H's.

You can find somewhat of an explanation on page 21 of Collins...it's kind of confusing though because normally we are taught to only do M1V1=M2V2. I just keep in mind now that if the problem requires that kind of setup and also contains an acid and base to also account for the number of H's and OH's that would dissociate
 
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Wallace12 said:
Okay I'm practicing chem and I think the answer given is wrong in this problem:

"What vol of.1M NaOH is needed to titrate 100mL of.2M H2SO4? "
Choices: 50, 100,200, 400mL.
It says it's 400, this just a typo and it should be 200, right?
Click to expand...

The answer is 400 mL because H2SO4 produces 2 equivalents of H+
 
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It is 400mL
.1V=.2*2*100
solve for V and it's 400mL

I just used the (acid) N*V*M(molarity)=N*V*M(Molarity) (base) formula

honestly I don't really know what N means but I think it's how many Hs it can donate (for acids) and N is for how many H it can accept...
 
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Member529 said:
The correct answer is actually 400mL because you need to multiply the .2M by 2 since there are two H's.

You can find somewhat of an explanation on page 21 of Collins...it's kind of confusing though because normally we are taught to only do M1V1=M2V2. I just keep in mind now that if the problem requires that kind of setup and also contains an acid and base to also account for the number of H's and OH's that would dissociate
Click to expand...

Okay yeah, that explanation in Collins confused me... Haha 2 more days...
 
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