Official Kaplan Aug 2004 Thread

MCAT is Hard? Not with BeMo's 515 Score Guarantee.
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willthatsall

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Just so Kaplan people have a place to discuss their practice tests and progress. How's everyone doing?
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I'm kinda going slow on the topicals. But I went thru three of them yesterday... gonna put them in and see how well i did...
 
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I have done the first two Physics topical tests. Talk about humbling.

Force, Motion, Gravitation, and Equilibrium: 7/17 correct
Work, Energy, and Momentum: 8/18 correct

:(
 
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SleepPsych72 said:
The topical test only alot you about 23 minutes or so to complete the section. I take my good old time and answer the questions. I hope this doesn't hurt me too much come test day. I am scoring well but like I said I go slow.
Is anybody else doing this also?
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I rarely finish it all on time either. I usually finish as much as I can and then have it graded before I finish the rest. Makes me realize that I didn't really get a 90 % on a section just because I get 90 % of the questions right. I think that Kaplan's PS is a lot harder to finish quickly than the AAMC stuff, but it's good practice to try.
 
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Yeah, the physics topicals have been kicking my butt as well. You gotta hand it to them for thinking up weird questionw. Only a fevered imagination can come up with that circus clown smacking into the ceiling question on the translational motion test.

Anyone done the verbal practice tests yet? I've heard both good things and bad things about them.
 
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Got my first full-length score today. 12VR, 13 BS, 10 PS. I'm happy overall, but disappointed because I paced myself horribly on PS. I got stuck on a couple questions in an early passage and ended up spending way too much time on them (probably between 7 and 10 minutes between the two of them) and there were a couple others and I ended up having to guess on about 20 problems. I have to learn to give up more easily on some of those questions. I ended up missing the ones I spent all the time on anyway. I guess that's what the practice is for though.
 
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I took my General Chemistry thermodynamics and thermochemistry topical test and scored a whopping 41%. Did anybody else bomb this section. what was up with that tea pot question yowsers!
 
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bah... that topical test... i can't wait to light this crap on fire :mad: :mad:

oh well. time to work on some verbal. does anyone practice the writing section?
 
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lilithny said:
bah... that topical test... i can't wait to light this crap on fire :mad: :mad:

oh well. time to work on some verbal. does anyone practice the writing section?
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I think I'm just going to do it on the practice tests. It's not really worth practicing a whole lot to me.
 
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Nice job on the full length Willthatsall. I hope I'm scoring above the 30 range here soon that would be a great confidence boost. So far my topicals are pretty good except themodynamics. The rest are above 70% which is fine with me. I think an 80% converts to about a 30 composite scaled score on the real thing.
 
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SleepPsych72 said:
Nice job on the full length Willthatsall. I hope I'm scoring above the 30 range here soon that would be a great confidence boost. So far my topicals are pretty good except themodynamics. The rest are above 70% which is fine with me. I think an 80% converts to about a 30 composite scaled score on the real thing.
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I think 80% on the topicals is better than 30, especially on physics.
 
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What do you think about them? are they representative of your score in the real MCAT...or
 
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I would say they are kind of hard. They don't really predict your score to begin with, because they aren't scaled scores like the MCAT. I am getting mostly 80's and then some 70's on physics and 90's and 100's on bio. But I would say harder than the MCAT, especially physics. Oh and when I do the physics I usually don't finish on time, so real scores would be lower in some cases.
 
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Well we are only 42 days away from the big day. I am trying to finish up the general chemistry section so I can move on to physics and verbal. I'm saving bio for last since it is the most interesting to me. I kind broke from the format a bit by studying only chemistry but I needed to have at least one subject area under my belt before taking my first full length practice this saturday.

I think its safe to say that I will be studying full throttle until the date of the exam from this point. It feels like I have been doing this already however.
 
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In the syllabus various AAMC practice items are listed (e.g. Newtonian Mechanics Passage 9). Are these passages just taken from the AAMC MCATs that Kaplan has in their offices? Is there any point to doing them if I am planning on taking the AAMC's released MCATs prior to test day?

Thanks!
 
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polargirl said:
In the syllabus various AAMC practice items are listed (e.g. Newtonian Mechanics Passage 9). Are these passages just taken from the AAMC MCATs that Kaplan has in their offices? Is there any point to doing them if I am planning on taking the AAMC's released MCATs prior to test day?

Thanks!
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No, they aren't. They are part of a practice set AAMC released in the early 90's. They are a little easy, but good practice. Not part of old tests as far as I know.
 
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Can somebody verify for me that on the General Chemistry Subject test #1 that #12 and #18 are wrong in the explanations. These things are hard enough without having wrong answers to deal with. Are they trying to keep me out of med school or what?
 
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I've noticed there are a few wrong answers in the subject tests. Also, their online scoring system has a few wrong answers too. A little annoying.
 
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I have been a silent follower of this thread for a while and it boggles my mind to see the effects of some one doing so good on the test (tony) on the rest of the sdn community. I have to say that I have only seen scores from diagnostics and follow ups for tony montana and a couple other people.

I have decided to intervene...... I have a couple very close friends that teach for kaplan and have been doing so since before they started medical school. After every diagnostic and every practice test they get a list of the names of all the students in the class and the the MCAT scores their getting. I have been lucky enough to see them and I will tell you that almost nobody starts off with a 33. Here is what I think... you get a 33 on your diagnostic either because 1. you are a genius (by the way geniuses do not need reinforcement, they know what they are capable of and should not go around making others feel like ****) or 2. they have taken a prep course before or taking the reall thing and have spend a significant amount of time studying before this so called 'diagnosic'. My two friends always tell me stories about this kind of people, a girl in particular had taken the MCAT and reviewed for it a couple times (with kaplan) and when she got her diagnostic back again (after taking it twice, mind you) started bragging about her 29.


Moral of the story..... take every thing you hear about MCAT scores with a grain of salt and do not be afraid to show your scores.

I got a 22 on my diagnostic and a 26 on my first practice exam, I am not happy about my scores but they are going up.

On a separate note, from what I have heard the topical test are extremely difficult and almost impossible to finish in time. I personally just take my time and do it for knowledge.

Good Luck everybody!

:thumbup: :thumbup:
 
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Besides TPR and AAMC released items and exams, what is a good source for extra practice MCATs. Also I am having a hard time with the verbal and I have been trying to do as many kaplan verbal exams as possible (I have almost gone though all of them), are there any books out there with just a lot of practice Verbal exams that are representative of the real thing.

Thank you

:) :D
 
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paranitroxide said:
I have been a silent follower of this thread for a while and it boggles my mind to see the effects of some one doing so good on the test (tony) on the rest of the sdn community. I have to say that I have only seen scores from diagnostics and follow ups for tony montana and a couple other people.

I have decided to intervene...... I have a couple very close friends that teach for kaplan and have been doing so since before they started medical school. After every diagnostic and every practice test they get a list of the names of all the students in the class and the the MCAT scores their getting. I have been lucky enough to see them and I will tell you that almost nobody starts off with a 33. Here is what I think... you get a 33 on your diagnostic either because 1. you are a genius (by the way geniuses do not need reinforcement, they know what they are capable of and should not go around making others feel like ****) or 2. they have taken a prep course before or taking the reall thing and have spend a significant amount of time studying before this so called 'diagnosic'. My two friends always tell me stories about this kind of people, a girl in particular had taken the MCAT and reviewed for it a couple times (with kaplan) and when she got her diagnostic back again (after taking it twice, mind you) started bragging about her 29.


Moral of the story..... take every thing you hear about MCAT scores with a grain of salt and do not be afraid to show your scores.

I got a 22 on my diagnostic and a 26 on my first practice exam, I am not happy about my scores but they are going up.

On a separate note, from what I have heard the topical test are extremely difficult and almost impossible to finish in time. I personally just take my time and do it for knowledge.

Good Luck everybody!

:thumbup: :thumbup:
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I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Are you saying I am looking for reinforcement to make others feel bad? I'm sorry if anyone else felt like that (I doubt it) because I thought this has been a strictly positive thread so far. I have said before that I had briefly gone through the review notes for everything but bio when they arrived in the mail and I just finished bio last semester. So while I hadn't really studied per se as in working problems, I was more prepared than most. I'm sorry if you think I'm lying about my diagnostic, but if you check my posts you'll see I'm not a troll. I was actually a little worried after my diagnostic because I thought, "How much can I realistically expect to improve?" Anyway, about the verbal stuff, I have heard a lot of people swear by the EK verbal book so that might be worth checking out. I'm not sure about the exams, you can find them from Barron's, Gold Standard, The Berkeley Review, etc. but I haven't really heard a whole lot about how good they are. If you have all the Kaplan full-lengths, the TPR ones, and the AAMC ones, do you really need more?
 
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If it makes anybody feel any better I will post my first full-length practice test scores when I get them. We won't take it until Sat. (day after tomorrow). I will post them even if they suck! I have worked hard though and I hope to get at least a 24-26 range. In return however I would appreciate it if people would post the question # and test segment when they find wrong answers or otherwise discrepant information in the practice material. This process is hard enough without having to worry about that sort of thing.
Oh and wish me luck this saturday! I have been studying hard and will be applying 100% effort.
 
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Oh and by the way I plan on incorporating the word "dude" somewhere in my writing sample on the real MCAT no matter what the topic is!
 
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Tony I never said you were lying about your diagnostic, on the contrary I am happy for you and I wish I could be doing as well. The purpose of my post was to encourage people to discuss their Kaplan test experiences and for those experiences not to be limited to the brightest people. You said you got a 33 on your diagnostic and a 39 (if the math is correct) on your first practice exam. My question is......... what else do you need? Again the sole purpose of my post was for more people to share their experiences and for others sensitive soles (you can call me one) to not be intimidated by your success.

Anyway, good luck tony... I am sure you will do great on the reall thing.

:thumbup:
 
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I got a 25 on the Diagnostic, about what I expected. Overall, my experience with Kaplan so far is this: lectures not very helpful, but the practice material is invaluable.

I tried some of the topical tests, people are right in that the physics tests are very difficult to finish on time. I usually give myself 3 more minutes on those.

Can we access the AAMC practice passages online at all? If we can't why are there answer forms for them?
 
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silkworm said:
I got a 25 on the Diagnostic, about what I expected. Overall, my experience with Kaplan so far is this: lectures not very helpful, but the practice material is invaluable.

I tried some of the topical tests, people are right in that the physics tests are very difficult to finish on time. I usually give myself 3 more minutes on those.

Can we access the AAMC practice passages online at all? If we can't why are there answer forms for them?
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No you can't access the passages online, but you can input your answers and see the explanations online. It has something to do with copyright stuff.
 
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So, online it say click "go" to go to the AAMC practice passages, but there are no downloadable files. where do i find them? i have the blanks to submit answers but there are no tests. kind of weird since the subject and topical tests are there. anyone?
 
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dukejen04 said:
So, online it say click "go" to go to the AAMC practice passages, but there are no downloadable files. where do i find them? i have the blanks to submit answers but there are no tests. kind of weird since the subject and topical tests are there. anyone?
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You can do the subject and topical stuff online because that is Kaplan's material. The fact that you can't do the AAMC stuff online is because Kaplan is not allowed to post the AAMC stuff on the internet. It has something to do with the agreement between Kaplan and the AAMC regarding their use of AAMC materials. I guess the AAMC didn't want their copyrighted material on Kaplans website.
 
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So what do people think of full length #1?

I took it today and was just blown away by the physical sciences. I thought I did horribly on the diagnostic PS.. but i did even worse here (under 50% right!!)

I omitted 22 problems either b/c I didn't get to it or I didn't have any idea (even where/how to start guessing).

My verbal saw the greatest improvement.. about a 4 point improvement. I'm pretty happy with that. I will be happy if I can just maintain this (ie: this wasnt a fluke).

Bio was ok. I did a little bit better than the diag, but there are areas I know I can still work on.

But PS.. dayam... I have my work cut out.

Heres my breakdowns between this one and the diag:
Diag: PS 9, VR 7, BS 8
FL#1: PS 9, VR 11, BS 10

How I've been studying:
I've been using EK's study set and EK's verbal 101 to supplement my studies. I think that EK's textbooks are WAY better than Kaplan's textbooks. I like Kaplan mainly for their volume of practice material. I've been attacking verbal pretty hard, doing most of Kaplan's practice VR tests to date as well as a couple of the full lengths in the EK verbal 101 book. I think that has helped me tremendously in learning to approach and analyze the questions.

Coming into this test, I know that I wasn't up to par on my physics. Although I did well in my physics courses, I have only a vague recollection of the material today. I definitelly didn't have all of the formulas at the tip of my fingers.. so I'm sure that hurt me. And I totally bombed the gen chem material. I thought alot of the material was new, and I don't think we've covered it yet (i guess its coming in Gen Chem 3).

So how are other people fairing and what study techniques are you using and how are they panning out for you?

For those of you who already took Kaplan as well as the MCAT, how reflective was this of the real MCAT? Are these questions reasonable MCAT questions? Were they too easy? Too hard?

Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts.
 
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I was also really disappointed with my PS. I guessed on 18 questions because I was running out of time. I could have easily gotten 10 to 15 of those right if I would have gotten to them. I think the trick is to make sure you pace yourself and learn to guess earlier if a question is giving you too much trouble. I spent 5 minutes each on a few problems early on and it killed me. But I think I will be alright on PS for full-length 2 if I just keep that in mind.
 
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wow i bombed everything except verbal as expected. 6 on the Bio ive had no organic or havent studied yet for the bio. 6 on PS, if only I had those formulas memorized. 13 on the verbal 3 pt improvemtn from diagnostic! I got through everything with 5 min left over. I expected it because i didnt know how to do alot of them, or really had no clue about the formula.
 
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Just a heads up, on the Stoichiometry Topical test, #18, there appear to be an error. The question states: 365 gram, but the answer explanations used 36.5 grams.
 
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so, i've spent the last few days really making sure i get the physics stuff. i was feeling great after acing some of the AAMC practice tests. then i took the kaplan topicals and i now feel like crap. how concerned should i be that i'm only scoring 60-70%? my self esteem now sucks, especially since i really believed i had it down. wtf? someone tell me something to make me feel better.
 
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dukejen04 said:
so, i've spent the last few days really making sure i get the physics stuff. i was feeling great after acing some of the AAMC practice tests. then i took the kaplan topicals and i now feel like crap. how concerned should i be that i'm only scoring 60-70%? my self esteem now sucks, especially since i really believed i had it down. wtf? someone tell me something to make me feel better.
Click to expand...

hey duke, i am in the same boat. i just don't get it! today i spent all morning doing the thermodynamics workshop and then the quiz-and i bombed it. man, it is driving me nuts! any suggestions from anyone on how to improve on the physics? :eek:
 
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The physics topicals are just tough, I wouldn't stress too much. They are calculation heavy and basically impossible to finish in the allotted time. The AAMC ones seem a little too easy, but I think the real test is probably somewhere in between.
 
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Scubadoc said:
hey duke, i am in the same boat. i just don't get it! today i spent all morning doing the thermodynamics workshop and then the quiz-and i bombed it. man, it is driving me nuts! any suggestions from anyone on how to improve on the physics? :eek:
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I don't think you should make a big deal out of the topical tests. They are here to make you learn the stuff in a high pressure way. Most of people agree they are very difficult to finish on time. Give yourself a little more time on each one and see how much of your difficulties are from the questions themselves or the nervousness caused by the short time.
 
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silkworm said:
I don't think you should make a big deal out of the topical tests. They are here to make you learn the stuff in a high pressure way. Most of people agree they are very difficult to finish on time. Give yourself a little more time on each one and see how much of your difficulties are from the questions themselves or the nervousness caused by the short time.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I usually time the bio and organic tests but I have never been able to finish on the PS topical tests. I tried the PS section tests to work on my timing for PS. They are about half length, so maybe like 40 min with 30 questions or something? And they are a little easier to finish on time.
 
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Scubadoc said:
it'll be all right diesel, we'll get there!!! :luck:
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eh thanks scubadoc :)..just not feeling so up right now
it was my 1st full length and i never really realized how long that test can be * whew * i need to build up some physiological and psychological stamina...tennis anyone?

Thank god for the vending machine in my kaplan center ..i love snickers and i motivated myself with a bite for every passage i read ...sad i know...but i felt sooo sleepy after the 1st 10 questions!
 
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To the people worried about their diagnostic scores not measuring up:

Being a teacher for Kaplan, I've seen it all. I've had students get a 29 on the diagnostic and then end up with a 30 on the real thing, and I've had students start out with a 17 on the diagnostic and get a 35+ score on test day. The diagnostic is made tough to be a swift kick in the arse for Kaplan students to wake up and start studying for this very important test. Likewise, it's scaled harshly to produce less favorable scores. Don't be discouraged by a low diagnostic score. I myself went up like 14 points from my diagnostic score when I took Kaplan as a student.

A lot of unprepared students get lucky and score well on the diagnostic (primarily because there are only a handful of passages and they end up seeing lots of stuff they know particularly well). Then they end up not studying as hard as other students, resulting in their scores not increasing very much by test day. The fact that a half-length diagnostic test can be scaled at all on three separate 1-15 scales is a debate in itself. So the diagnostic can be very misleading in giving students a false sense of complacency/confidence.

The moral here is that the diagnostic means little and should only be interpreted as a rough starting point for your scores to improve. Little to no content review/practice almost always leads to little to no score improvement (and it can even mean a decrease in score for those who thought they were hot ish from the diagnostic). Take this from someone who teaches Kaplan regularly.
 
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Hey flash or anyone else who has taken the class, is there a pattern to the degree of difficult for the full-lengths? (e.g. 1 is hard, 2 is easier, 3 is etc...) Or are they pretty much the same difficulty?
 
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I found an interesting pattern in the Kaplan full lengths. Firstly, I thought the VR is about the same difficulty for all the full lengths. The more interesting part is that they usually alternate the difficulty of the BS and PS sections in each full length. Meaning, when the PS section is especially tough in one test, the BS is easier and vice versa. I rarely found a very hard PS and BS section on the same test. But this is just my perception of "difficult," of course. I didn't find a general trend in overall difficulty either, as they are about the same difficulty level, since the you've always got one hard section, the VR and one easier section.

Be wary of the scales in the later Kaplan full lengths. In #7 and beyond, the scaling for scores is a bit screwy since Kaplan never really tested them on a large sample size of test-takers.
 
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is their a solution to the full lengths somewhere? I just took #1 a 21 yay! same score as my diagnostic. Their answer key stinks too =p, its not numbered hard to keep tracking back and forth.
 
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TheFlash said:
To the people worried about their diagnostic scores not measuring up:

Being a teacher for Kaplan, I've seen it all. I've had students get a 29 on the diagnostic and then end up with a 30 on the real thing, and I've had students start out with a 17 on the diagnostic and get a 35+ score on test day.....

I myself went up like 14 points from my diagnostic score when I took Kaplan as a student.
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Hey Flash, for those students who went up so dramatically, and also for you, what did they/you do? I guess I am asking what you think is the best way to study for this. I am doing all the online workshops/quizzes and a lot of the topical tests but find I am not having enough time to read the books which I think I should be doing. I'm worried I may not be studying effectively. What worked for you/for your students? (and I know it is individual but just some examples would really be great!) Thanks!!
 
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