Just finish PCAT

Started by JOliv010
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JOliv010

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Alright here we go. Bio and Verbal was easy. Chem and Math were hard, but I did not have organic or calculus. Also, I got some crazy essay about national security and problems with taking away civil liberties. Luckly, I know about things like that.

Also about the no test score option: E mail your 5 or 6 top choices. Ask them if they take the highest composite score, if they do DO NOT do the no test score option. The reason is because you may actually recieve a good score. It's all about planning and asking to getting into pharmacy school. I am still learning the process.

Hopefully everyone scored well
 
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JOliv010 said:
Alright here we go. Bio and Verbal was easy. Chem and Math were hard, but I did not have organic or calculus. Also, I got some crazy essay about national security and problems with taking away civil liberties. Luckly, I know about things like that.

Also about the no test score option: E mail your 5 or 6 top choices. Ask them if they take the highest composite score, if they do DO NOT do the no test score option. The reason is because you may actually recieve a good score. It's all about planning and asking to getting into pharmacy school. I am still learning the process.

Hopefully everyone scored well
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I agree that the Verbal and Bio were pretty easy, although I ran out of time on the Verbal. I wish I had one the fill in the blank questions first, b/c they were much easier. The Biology section had too many evolution, ecology, and plant questions I thought. The reading comprehension section was cake, and i finished with 5 minutes to spare. Chemistry wasn't too bad, but I wasn't able to fnish that. I thought the math was more difficult than I had expected. I wasn't expecting so many logarithm and calculus problems.
 
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Yeah bio and verbal were easier, but how the hell were we supposed to finish that math in time? The chem was alot more specific than the practice. The scores just depend on how everyone did compared to each other so you never know
 
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Hey all, just finished as well... Found it pretty good, just thought the national security was really subjective and am curious to how they will mark it given the 30 minutes we had...

Good luck to everyone...
 
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disruptor said:
Hey all, just finished as well... Found it pretty good, just thought the national security was really subjective and am curious to how they will mark it given the 30 minutes we had...

Good luck to everyone...
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oh ****, is the essay for marks now?!
 
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On the Harcourt site they are really vague about it. They say it will count for marks in the 2005 year but not specifically when and which test dates.
 
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I finished with time to spare on verbal, reading, chemistry, and biology. Math kicked my butt. I opted to have it scored even though I was completely stressed about the blizzard I had to get through.

My essay question was *****ic... about peer pressure in young people. I'm not really young anymore and I never had any peers pressuring me. I wonder if that will be scored.

Chris

P.S. - I love the nomenclature stuff... easy points. 👍
 
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Drove through a snowstorm to get to my test center. It was easier than expected. I felt good about everything but the national security essay which I wrote in an ambiguous/PC manner as not to offend the grader... 😀

How long before we get our results from Harcourt? 4 weeks?
 
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This was my first time taking the PCATs and all i got to say is I had no idea they give u such short amount of time for each section. Verbal was lil easier than i thought it would be. Reading was fairly easy but still a lil more tricker than the practice books had. Chem was alright. For me, Bio was so hard cuase I only got up to Bio 1 and I did not know alot of those physiology and anatomy questions about the body. Math wasnt hard i thought except that i thought it was a little too easy so i took my time and when i had like 2 pages left to go the proctor yelled out 5 minutes so i was F''ked there. I couldnt finish like 10 of those questions. The essay as someone mentioned is quite subjective so i just bsed the whole way. So im curious how they will grade that section was well.
Overall I dont feel too confident i did that well even tho overall i thought the pcats wasnt really a hard test. I just didnt pace myself well and I never took that systems phsyiology class so i guessed on like half the bio section.
UGH im doomed.
by the way, how do they score you on this? Like whats a good score?
 
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They don't care so much as to what you write for the essay, as how you wrote it.

A good score is 99th percentile 🙄

Good job to everyone who took the Pcat! Now don't you feel relaxed now?
 
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Ahhhh....so I just finished the pcat today as well. I thought that it was like what people were saying, that is, between barron's and the kaplan prep guides. There were a lot of evolution/human phys/plant biology and chem had a lot of ochem(esp. nomenclature). The math section had a lot of precalc and some calc problems. I sure hope I did ok though*fingers crossed* The essay topic was easy though. It was about government regulation of the internet associated with spam, identity theft, and inappropriate behaviors. Now we can relax....kinda

-g
 
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Just thought I would let y'alll know, I took my PCAT on Oct. 23rd and didnt get my scores until mid December. Have fun waiting and try not to stress out about things you can't change. 👍
 
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Laferno said:
Just thought I would let y'alll know, I took my PCAT on Oct. 23rd and didnt get my scores until mid December. Have fun waiting and try not to stress out about things you can't change. 👍
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Right ....... Harcourt says that you will get your scores in 4-6 weeks. I got mine exactly 6 weeks after the October 23rd PCAT. It's definitely not cool waiting, but it's just something you gotta deal with 🙁 . Good luck on your scores 🙂 .
 
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signing names, filling out the forms, and all that crap took forever. they said to be there at 8:30am but the tests didn't start until around 10am

vocab/analogies/fill-ins were pretty easy, even easier than the practice PCAT. bio was definitely easy being a bio major. i didn't get to read the reading comp thoroughly so blah blah. chem was alright, it was after math and i zoomed through it w/o checking too much due to the previous math blunder. essay was about whether or not the internet should be controlled.

math was easy for me but the proctor only notified us when 1 minute was remaning (all other tests she notified us when 5 minutes remained) and that was the time when i started bubbling in all my answers. low and behold, i only bubbled in like 25 of them but i somehow skipped some numbers and had to start over or rather erase 15 of them. so i just have the first 10 bubbled in. i was really confident in the math too...probably 90% raw score !!!

i asked the proctor if i could fill in the answers somehow but she wouldn't budge...i'm so mad. damn her. arggggggggggggh

on top of that my car started smoking after a 30 mile, 1 hour drive to USC.

arggggggggggggh

!!!!!
 
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Laferno said:
Just thought I would let y'alll know, I took my PCAT on Oct. 23rd and didnt get my scores until mid December. Have fun waiting and try not to stress out about things you can't change. 👍
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That's how it was when I took the test in January 2004. However, the November 2004 test takers received their scores much sooner, so they may have changed things.
 
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I hope all you guys did well. i still have another stressed out week to go since they cancelled and rescheduled my testing to next saturday. It seems like everyone struggled with time on the math. Were they just difficult or were they just average problems that were time consuming and required a few steps to figure out? Were there a lot of derivative/integral problems?
 
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supermn54 said:
I hope all you guys did well. i still have another stressed out week to go since they cancelled and rescheduled my testing to next saturday. It seems like everyone struggled with time on the math. Were they just difficult or were they just average problems that were time consuming and required a few steps to figure out? Were there a lot of derivative/integral problems?
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You need to review calculus for sure, and logarithms and series. Also there was a lot of geometry. It seemed to me that most of the questions required at least a minute to do. I think i only finished 30 of them, and I had to bubble in the rest before time was up. I didn't study at all for math because I thought it was going to be mostly algebra which I am good at.
 
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yeah...in the math section, there were logs, limits, geometry, graphs, sin/cos, sums (E)...

SUCKED big time!
Hope you have better luck though 🙂
 
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supermn54 said:
I hope all you guys did well. i still have another stressed out week to go since they cancelled and rescheduled my testing to next saturday. It seems like everyone struggled with time on the math. Were they just difficult or were they just average problems that were time consuming and required a few steps to figure out? Were there a lot of derivative/integral problems?
Click to expand...


Despite the contrary opinions of almost everyone on this thread, I thought the math section was kinda easy. The best thing you can do is skip problems if you do not know how to do it. The summation of 1/(1+(x^2)) when i = 0 and n=5 is worth the same thing as y = 5x +4 when x=8. So go back to the confusing ones later. Also, when guessing try to take out the ones that can not logically happen. There was a question on the distance traveled of an object that had been falling for 5 seconds. There were 4 really small answers and one realistic answer. The correct answer was the only realistic one. And yes, knowing logs and calc a little bit helps (you really only need to know the basics of them and how they are used). I think I finished the math section with about 25 minutes remaining. It was a long freaking wait. And bring a watch, you always want to be able to know how much time is left.

- 99th percentile math section. 😀
 
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Finally took the pcats after it was rescheduled and to everyone's surpise it was just as everyone said. Verbal,bio,and reading was easy. I finished with 10min. to spare. Ran out of time with math and chem was a little challenging. Essay was ******ed and was on peer pressure. I took a stand that it was positive and negative. Either way, i hate knowing that no matter how good i think i did, my score only depends on how crappy everyone else did. Good luck to everyone else that took it. Just a thought, but since they tell you they will tell you your scores 4-6 weeks after the test and i took mine a week after half the county took theirs, will i get mine a week later or earlier?
 
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I'll second the notion for Kaplan. Oh, and do yourself a favor and build up your calculus skills while you've got a lot of time 😉
 
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WVURxGal said:
I'll second the notion for Kaplan. Oh, and do yourself a favor and build up your calculus skills while you've got a lot of time 😉
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I'll third the vote for Kaplan. However, they do a good job presenting the material, but seem to go into much more detail than you actually need. I felt skimming/studying the general/main topics was most time efficient for me. Of course I only started studying 2 weeks before the test ... (/prays for a good score 🙂 ).
 
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Kaplan's book has been voted for a few times and is the way to go (at least in my opinion) for PCAT prep. I will cast a vote against Barrons book. Looked at it once and realized it was not gonna help me study.

Kaplans has in depth info on almost all subjects covered in the PCAT. 👍
Barrons has a list of topics that are covered in the PCAT. 👎

Take your pick.
 
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you and me both chris. i just wanted to make sure my stuff gets done and turned in early so that i might get in early some where and chill until classes started. 🙂
 
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