Kaplan FL 1 Difficulty

[collegerer]

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Hi all, So I've signed up for the January MCAT and have been doing light content review for the past month and decided to see where I'm at so I just did Kaplan FL 1's chem and physics section. I scored a 125 on it and I have to say alot of the information was more recall. I assume the real MCAT is much easier and less memorization based. Should I be concerned? And I guess I should use Kaplan more for content review and less for accuracy of my scores?

 

[DoctorCakes]

Kaplan exams to me were less critical analysis and more recall, yes. They were not dense at all like the real MCAT and was not representative. They are good for content so my 2nd month of studying I did around 3 or 4 sections for each of the 4 subjects. In my 3rd and final month I switched over to Next Step and AAMC for full lengths and thank god every day that I did.

The MCAT is not easier than Kaplan. It is actually 10x harder. Sure they don't ask you super specifics but the nature of their passages are very hard to follow and sift through. NS exams got this part of the exam correct and the actual MCAT felt very similar. As for scoring, I wouldn't look into it. I rarely scored below a 125 or above a 128 on Kaplan. I got a 514 on test day. Just keep grinding and use Kaplan to cover your bases.

 

[theonlytycrane]

Use Kaplan for content and timing practice, but don't read into scores. I feel bad for their students who strictly take Kaplan exams and then take the real thing.

 

[aldol16]

FLs from any test prep company are really only useful for getting your timing down and getting into the "test-taking mindset"/putting yourself into the "test-taking atmosphere." None of them are any good models of the real thing (I've seen Kaplan, TPR, and NextStep - TPR is especially bad). So use them to assess your content knowledge and to simulate test conditions. But use the AAMC materials wisely because they are your best resource (along with Khan Academy for the B/BC and P/S sections).

Anecdotally, I used only Kaplan FLs 1-3 along with AAMC material and I did alright. I didn't put much thought into my Kaplan scores though.

 

[andelJ94]

yeah, most of the exams I saw stink but I settled on EK and Nextstep. Both are ok, but I was told since the exam is still new, all these companies scoring scales will be off, unless they happen to have 10s of thousands of kids take them and then do stat analysis like the AAMC does.

While Ek and the NS exams are good, I personally am ignoring the scaled scores for now. I'll take my 3 AAMC exams at 2 months out, 1 month out and 1 week out. The rest I'll fill in from EK and NS, along with the AAMC section banks.

Khan IMO is almost worthless. No ability to work on timing, strategy. the passages contain errors, terrible explanations, and many lack that AAMC feel completely. BUT, it is free so I'll use em just to get my content down. The AAMC Qpacks are way too easy, and don't look like the new MCAT at all. I read on SDN they just repackaged decade old Qs so that explains it. Better than nothing but the AAMC could sell em way cheaper.

We'll get there!

 

[aldol16]

Khan IMO is almost worthless. No ability to work on timing, strategy. the passages contain errors, terrible explanations, and many lack that AAMC feel completely. BUT, it is free so I'll use em just to get my content down. The AAMC Qpacks are way too easy, and don't look like the new MCAT at all. I read on SDN they just repackaged decade old Qs so that explains it. Better than nothing but the AAMC could sell em way cheaper.

Khan is actually your second-best resource, especially for B/BC and P/S. The P/S passages are very good models of AAMC questions. B/BC are usually hit-or-miss but most are pretty good. C/P passages are just categorically bad. If you can pick out the erroneous answers (there are several of them), then you are in good shape.

The QPacks are nothing like the exam - in that regard you are right. The QPacks are more for content knowledge rather than actually practicing for the format of the actual exam. However, the CARS QPack is actually quite good in my opinion - there's half of one that actually has really difficult passages and the "analysis" of the passage is based on very small subtleties. So don't worry if you don't do well in that one - the others are fairly good.

 

[DaAlienist]

Hi all, So I've signed up for the January MCAT and have been doing light content review for the past month and decided to see where I'm at so I just did Kaplan FL 1's chem and physics section. I scored a 125 on it and I have to say alot of the information was more recall. I assume the real MCAT is much easier and less memorization based. Should I be concerned? And I guess I should use Kaplan more for content review and less for accuracy of my scores?

How did the exam go? was Kaplan good preparation for the real thing?