Mcat third party exams

[lebronthegoat]

Should i just do the five aamc practice exams given bc i dont rlly know if theres a use of taking third party exams that do not use the same reasoning as the mcat creators

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[MCAT-MVP]

We do not offer full length exams so I feel that I can give a fairly unbiased opinion.

I feel that third party exams do a good job at mimicking the exam, but they may not be perfect. I would do the third party exams early in your prep and save the AAMC exams for last. I would do this because the way the AAMC ask the questions will be fresh in your mind just before you take the test and you will still have practice through 3rd party exams when you do content review.

 

[lebronthegoat]

We do not offer full length exams so I feel that I can give a fairly unbiased opinion.

I feel that third party exams do a good job at mimicking the exam, but they may not be perfect. I would do the third party exams early in your prep and save the AAMC exams for last. I would do this because the way the AAMC ask the questions will be fresh in your mind just before you take the test and you will still have practice through 3rd party exams when you do content review.

bet i will do that then

 

[Blueprint Med School]

We do not offer full length exams so I feel that I can give a fairly unbiased opinion.

I feel that third party exams do a good job at mimicking the exam, but they may not be perfect. I would do the third party exams early in your prep and save the AAMC exams for last. I would do this because the way the AAMC ask the questions will be fresh in your mind just before you take the test and you will still have practice through 3rd party exams when you do content review.

I agree with this. I think seeing stuff with slightly different style and wording is helpful early in a study plan. Now, when it comes to the end you want AAMC stuff all the way. But one of the classic tricks of medical test writing is to take something simple and twist it in a way so it looks unusual and fools someone who has only seen perfect question writing styles. By doing 3rd party exams early, you learn how the same concept can be tested different ways using slightly different language. Very helpful in my opinion.

David D, MD - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

We do not offer full length exams so I feel that I can give a fairly unbiased opinion.

I feel that third party exams do a good job at mimicking the exam, but they may not be perfect. I would do the third party exams early in your prep and save the AAMC exams for last. I would do this because the way the AAMC ask the questions will be fresh in your mind just before you take the test and you will still have practice through 3rd party exams when you do content review.

We do offer full length exams, and I still 100% agree with this comment.

I will come across a little more harsh with my comment than MVP, because I see the gap between third party exams (including ours) and AAMC to be pretty massive. Third party exams have a tendency to reward memorization and regurgitation more than AAMC. AAMC has mastered the art of overloading you with a challenging passage that chips away at your confidence and then asking you simple questions that focus on fundamentals. If you have a tendency to overthink things, you will make their questions harder than they really are. That is an important lesson you can only get from AAMC, because those of us in the third party realm have a propensity to make questions that are unnecessarily tricky and often exploit a random fact rather than doing what AAMC does.

In the end, use third party exams for content exposure, but only trust AAMC for score prediction and for mastering test skills.