*Official MCAT January 2017 Thread*
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Good luck! Make sure you don't skip out on any of the AAMC material. A lot of people spend too much time on third party exams and don't have enough time to do all the official AAMC stuff before their exam. Since the AAMC is the most accurate and predictive, I would consider that a grave error.
Imo, full length practice exams aren't all that useful until you have a pretty solid foundation of knowledge down. You won't be able to answer a lot of questions solely based on not having the knowledge, so it's much more difficult to actually learn strategy and the style of the MCAT. Focus on getting back on track as far as the material is concerned. If necessary, switch to a "lighter" source (i.e. EK) and focus on big concepts.
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If you're referring to the Biochemistry book in Kaplan, the first few chapters are much, much, much more important (and high yield) than the last ones (9-12 specifically). Don't get me wrong - metabolism is important and major concepts from glycolysis, TCA, FA metabolism, ETC is fair game. But I can almost guarantee you'll get a question about amino acids/carbohydrates on your exam.
Yea my plan is to take the NS then Kaplan and TPR...then save AAMC material for last. Hopefully spending all of January until the 28th on only practice materials. I hope to spend a day or two reviewing each exam and what I missed after taking each one.
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Yea I actually switched from Kaplan to EK for this reason. Kaplan was taking me way too long to get through. I've been working through the EK books and supplementing with Kaplan on the topics I don't feel EK explains in detail. I think once I finish P/S and start Chem ill take my first practice test.
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Great decision. Also feel free to take just 1-2 sections of the full length in the beginning. That way you can look at your mistakes and learn from them (the whole reason why you took it to begin with) without feeling burnt out.
https://members.aamc.org/eweb/Dynam..._prd_key=841325CB-84CB-40D1-B5E1-9AFD4055F75D
Use FL 1 & 2 and the sample exam to predict your score. They're pretty spot on. The rest of the material should be used as pure practice.
Hi everyone... Relatively new to SDN and relatively new to studying for the MCAT!
January 19th is my date... I started studying in June/July but was working full time and didn't know what I was doing. I am now taking a full load of classes (Fluid Mechanics, Circuits, Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry II, and Biology) and squeezing in 3-5 hours/day on most days.
Pushing through the Kaplan books, I'm about 2/3 done and when winter break comes in the middle of December, I plan to quickly wrap up content and hit the practicing materials HARD. I bought the 108 CARS Passages book from NextStep and I've been doing one passage almost daily. I anticipate CARS will be one of my weakest areas. (Averaging 60-70% on each section, WOMP, but trying out different strategies) I went against others' advice and took a free Kaplan half-length before virtually ANY content review... Did poorly. Very poorly. I'm motivated by that score, though! Can only go up from there, right ?
I am definitely with a lot of you on feeling behind on content review. Finals are coming up, too and that tends to get in the way. I'm doing everything I can to stay consistent and stay right just below the level of burning out
After reading enough forums I've decided Kaplan for content review might not have been the best choice and waiting until the final month to practice might have been a bad idea as well, but I'm sticking to my plan. Gotta get through the content either way!
We're in this together, guys! Good luck to everyone.
January 19th is my date... I started studying in June/July but was working full time and didn't know what I was doing. I am now taking a full load of classes (Fluid Mechanics, Circuits, Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry II, and Biology) and squeezing in 3-5 hours/day on most days.
Pushing through the Kaplan books, I'm about 2/3 done and when winter break comes in the middle of December, I plan to quickly wrap up content and hit the practicing materials HARD. I bought the 108 CARS Passages book from NextStep and I've been doing one passage almost daily. I anticipate CARS will be one of my weakest areas. (Averaging 60-70% on each section, WOMP, but trying out different strategies) I went against others' advice and took a free Kaplan half-length before virtually ANY content review... Did poorly. Very poorly. I'm motivated by that score, though! Can only go up from there, right ?
I am definitely with a lot of you on feeling behind on content review. Finals are coming up, too and that tends to get in the way. I'm doing everything I can to stay consistent and stay right just below the level of burning out
After reading enough forums I've decided Kaplan for content review might not have been the best choice and waiting until the final month to practice might have been a bad idea as well, but I'm sticking to my plan. Gotta get through the content either way!
We're in this together, guys! Good luck to everyone.
Did you use the old AAMC exams (3-10) for your prep? I heave heard that the questions in these exams are repeated in the section banks? Thanks!
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From what I've heard, the question packs simply pulled stuff from AAMC 3-10, so hypothetically, if you were to have access to them, use them since they'll have more questions. Note that concepts such as momentum and simple harmonic motion (among others) are not part of the new MCAT, though you may see them in some of the older exams. The advantage of the question packs is that they probably wouldn't include those.
I've also heard that your scores on the AAMC 3-10 are actually very predictive of your MCAT2015 score once converted to the new scale (of course without the psych/soc section). So you could use it as an indicator of your progress (and certainly a better one than TPR, EK, Kaplan, NS, etc)
Is anyone taking the March 31 exam?
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I honestly don't see the testing companies coming out with whole new practice tests. They might be tweaking certain passages or changing the score scaling, but probably not coming out with completely new exams.
On another note, how is everyone's studying going so far? My goal for December is to do one FL every week while practicing with EK 1001 and continuing to keep up with Anki.
I'm still truckin! Luckily my semester is almost over, it ends next week. I still have about 20 chapters of Kaplan to do, but I plan on finishing those very quickly, as quickly as I can and getting on with the practicing. I will probably incorporate practice in more once I have entire days to study, rather than a few hours every day. I like the idea of one FL/week.
I would definitely encourage you to start practicing as soon as possible 🙂 I definitely fell in the trap of overwhelming content review when funnily enough, many of the facts that I've memorized are not as much help as developing the endurance and test taking skills you get when taking FLs or doing passages.
Depends on how much you want to pay for it! If you haven't done NS yet, their FL 1 is free. I've also heard good things about EK, but their exams are $50 per FL. I just took NS FL 1 and I like how they show you how many people chose every answer choice.
Studying is going well. Planning on taking 1 exam per week until test date (1/28).
Anyone have experience with Gold Standard's FL and/or Altius' FL? I have already taken tests from Kaplan, TPR, EK, and NS - Looking for more diversity.
No company is perfect; there are some errors and a few duplicate passages in Altius' FLs, but Altius is still well worth the money in my opinion. Their exams are all sold in bulk, so I would actually advise against purchasing all ten now if you registered for January.
Ok great. Doesn't Altius offer 1 free test?
They only offer one half-length for free.
See, I know this and I've read enough on SDN to KNOW the content review is not even half the battle. Unfortunately, I didn't plan very well and this ended up being my toughest semester, yet. Biomedical engineering, year 3, and I squeezed in 5 core classes (3 of which relevant to the MCAT - biochemistry, biology, and second semester ochem, the other two engineering - circuits & fluids, to my surprise ALSO relevant to the MCAT). I just took on a part time job, as well. Needless to say, I'm lucky if I can squeeze in a few hours a day. I've studied about 200 hours this semester. I do some practice passages here and there, but you're right, I need the stamina and the endurance to get through the long test. That's why I'm dedicating my entire winter break to the MCAT - 8+ hours a day of straight practice will hopefully make up for these past 5-6 months of only content review. My studying wasn't ideal, but I can at least back it up with knowing I held a good GPA this semester... Right?
I haven't still finished the content review. With the end of semester projects & exams. I am not spending much time on MCAT prep. I am yet to finish part of Chemistry and behavioral sciences review. I have taken an intro class in both psychology and sociology - not sure how much that helps.
Like others, my plan is to work fully on MCAT during the break (one month) before Jan 19 exam. I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted during the semester -- courses were taking lot more time than I expected.
I will do a practice test right after my semester and then do the Question packs from MCAT bundle and 2 or 3 more practice exams. Based on how I do with the first practice test, I will adjust my study plan. Good Luck, guys!
Like others, my plan is to work fully on MCAT during the break (one month) before Jan 19 exam. I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted during the semester -- courses were taking lot more time than I expected.
I will do a practice test right after my semester and then do the Question packs from MCAT bundle and 2 or 3 more practice exams. Based on how I do with the first practice test, I will adjust my study plan. Good Luck, guys!
Hey everyone--January 19th taker here. I just wanted to help everyone out a little and highly recommend the new Examkrackers biochemistry 101 book. These passages are all experimental and it closely resembles the AAMC section bank. These passages/questions are pretty difficult, but I have yet to find anything this representative of the new test. Good luck!
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We're in this together! It's almost comforting to know others are in the same boat. We are doing what we can! Only a few more finals and then helloooooo eating/sleeping/breathing mcat for the next month. Good luck to EVERYONE!
Haha that's exactly the same as my plan! I have finals/work this week, and was planning on full-time studying for the month of winter break. Unfortunately, my classes start in mid-January so I will have 2 weeks of trying to study while in class before my MCAT. Hopefully by then I will have done a lot of practice, though!
Yeah, I feel you on the working full time and studying thing! I think the biggest issue for me is the cognitive dissonance between how I feel like I'm doing (usually horrible) and how the score scales (usually better than I'm thinking). I would never think that getting a 74% on an exam is good, for example, but apparently that's pretty darn good for an EK FL.
I'm definitely excited for winter break to come so I can study in peace. Or at least whenever I want!I've heard that you should do at least a couple CARS passages a day. Everything else I think is up to you – and make sure that you're fully reviewing your correct and incorrect answers as you go along.
This is literally me right now lol. Definitely going to be looking to this forum for motivation and encouragement to get through this next month.
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Alright guys! Today's the day for me! Last final was yesterday and I spent the rest of the day traveling home and relaxing. Slept in this morning and just getting started.... Let's do this thang
I'd say as many as you can. When your brain starts hurting do 3 more. 🙂
January 19th test taker. Took AAMC FL1 to see where I stand and got a 518: 130,127,132,129. How accurate do the AAMC scores tend to be? This score was highly unexpected as I was never a great standardized test taker back doing ACT in high school. CARS was pretty lowunfortunately.
The following link contains a compilation of notes from Khan Academy. They've got just about every section from Khan including Psych Soc. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y4ancipr305f001/AACwrHVVVP9pHEzr2g3_9doxa?dl=0
That's awesome! I think the consensus is that the AAMC FL scores are the best predictors that you will have for the MCAT. Your actual MCAT may or may not be more difficult than the FL, however. It looks like you still have some improvement with CARS practice 🙂
Well, I just took NS 2 today and scored exactly the same as I did for NS 1 a couple weeks ago (slight adjustments in subscores): 127/127/128/129 -> 128/128/127/128. Percentage-wise, I scored marginally better in C/P, marginally worse in B/B and P/S, and much better in CARS. So it seems like a bit of a wash to me.
I have noticed that I keep running out of time in the NS C/P sections, though - something that doesn't usually happen to me in the TPR/AAMC materials that I've used previously. (I was probably only 1/3 of the way done by the 50 min. mark and had to rush through the rest of the section). Does anyone who's taken the NS FLs have advice or experience with that?
So far, I've taken NS 1, EK 4, and NS 2. I'm planning on taking NS 3, AAMC 1, NS 4, AAMC 2, and maybe EK 3 or 5 in the upcoming weeks, along with review and the AAMC section banks/question packs. Any other suggestions?
I have noticed that I keep running out of time in the NS C/P sections, though - something that doesn't usually happen to me in the TPR/AAMC materials that I've used previously. (I was probably only 1/3 of the way done by the 50 min. mark and had to rush through the rest of the section). Does anyone who's taken the NS FLs have advice or experience with that?
So far, I've taken NS 1, EK 4, and NS 2. I'm planning on taking NS 3, AAMC 1, NS 4, AAMC 2, and maybe EK 3 or 5 in the upcoming weeks, along with review and the AAMC section banks/question packs. Any other suggestions?
Hello everyone! I was wondering how long it usually takes to go over practice exams. It just took me 6 hours to review the Chem/Phys section of a NextStep Full Length exam. It usually takes me up to 3 days to fully review exams... Is this normal or am I taking way too long? Thank you and good luck studying everyone!
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How can I move more quickly through it? And how long should I actually be taking?
I disagree with him taking too long. It is far better to take a few practice exams but thoroughly review each one. A lot of people get caught up in taking as many exams as possible. Yes, that increases test taking endurance which is important, but if people feel rushed to fit in as many exams as possible then there is no chance they will review properly. It becomes more of a "ok cool, I got this answer right/wrong," rather than a "why did I get this answer right/wrong." I highly recommend everyone uses the 7sage blind review method. Learn about it here
Also mcatmatt's blog has some great advice on how to properly review exams. It should take a few days to review an exam, and obviously it will take longer the worse you do. Remember, reviewing an exam is content review itself.
Also mcatmatt's blog has some great advice on how to properly review exams. It should take a few days to review an exam, and obviously it will take longer the worse you do. Remember, reviewing an exam is content review itself.
Pace yourself. Take your time. Be kind to yourself.
