I love when a thread gets this passionate. While I question tendiw's tact proclaiming the ease of an exam before getting his score, he has opened a great can of worms and presented some good points that hopefully aren't lost in the rhetoric.
I'll take the OP's comments more seriously in 30 days. I rarely see people who know their score and the relative difficulty of their exam and the corresponding curve walking out.
The only point I definitely want to make is hopefully an obvious one. You are making a blanket conclusion about what is true on all MCATs based on one sitting (out of 26 in a year).
Going into the MCAT I knew what to expect. The reason being that I've spoken to AAMC people. And frankly they believe in keeping their test fair to everyone meaning that those who use prep materials like EK, TPR and BR will do the same as those using normal school textbooks. The AAMC know what they are doing, they've read the prep material that we've read and they alsO know what EK and TPR tell us are high yield. For example EK and TPR say hormones were high yield and the nervous system stuff too. I can tell you if you didn't study half of the important stuff in those books you can get a 15...the low yield stuff were high yield on the real deal, and I knew it was coming.
The people at AAMC do an amazing job with this test. Think about it for a second: they have to generate about 25 unique exams per year that have been assembled, editted, analyzed, tweaked, and honed in. They do more in a given year than all of the test prep companies combined. I have no doubt that the people at AAMC look at all of the review materials on the market. If a company is arrogant enough to proclaim insights and wisdom about an exam they could'nt have seen every version of, then it would make sense that AAMC would want to prove them wrong if they found out about their proclamation. This is assuming that they spend the energy to prove them wrong. But the reality is that AAMC's one and only job is to produce a fair exam that tests a wide array of material that requires far more questions than an MCAT has to cover in its entirety. They assemble a collection of tests that are fundamentally sound and are based on a list of topics they release to all interested parties.
As for a textbook being as good as a review book, let me ask you one simple question. "Does the
AAMC Guideline to the MCAT look like a textbook or a review book?" It's like saying all you need to do well in a college course is the textbook and that old exams, review sessions, and TA notes don't do much. All of it combines to get you ready. The same is true for the MCAT. I personally believe the people who see the most improvement are the ones who thoroughly work through passages and analyze their answers for speed and accuracy. The most important part of review materials are the answer explanations, and given that some prep materials are designed to teach test skills in those explanations, they'll beat textbooks in that aspect.
Same thing with verbal being all about the main idea, I posted earlier about verbal being all about the question stems and also how I felt the AAMC were making it seems longer by adding paragraphs...again that was proved today.
Don't you think if there was a simple formula like you're saying that everyone would be giving just that? Again, you are coming to a universal truth and giving us a
high yeild insight based on just one exam. The truth is that the VR section is a moving target from test to test and you need to have a large array of testing tools, which does include using the roots of questions as well as using the main idea. How much each tool helps will vary with each exam.
In PS AAMC 3 ironically had the most similar content(not difficulty but content) to the REAL deal...I laughed so hard at one of the passages that showed up as it was identical to one of AAMC 3's passages. So yeah AAMC 3 was most representative not AAMC 11 as most people think lol.
Laughing and counting "and corn balling. Sure, everybody's having a great time but what about Buster?" I apologize for my Arrested Development reference, but your post was reminiscent of a recurring scene in that show. I think you know my point here. You took one exam that reminded you of AAMC 3. I'm sure there are exams each year that are similar to each and every AAMC exam, given that it's their reference. All of the AAMC exams are useful, and which one a test taker finds most useful won't be known until they sit for
their MCAT.
I expected the exam to be the opposite of what is common believed by people...and that's what it was, atleast for today so I knew what was coming.
I appreciate that you acknowledge with an "atleast for today" comment. I'm not sure what is common believed by people, because threads around here have so many different messages about what to expect on the exam. Only a few things are true exam to exam, and those are listed in the AAMC Guide.
To be honest, I was impressed with the AAMC and believe that they are fair.
When I spoke to the AAMC official, he said he wasn't worried about people who use prep books and companies being at an advantage, with good reason I might add.
I think the most shocking aspect of the MCAT is how fair it is regardless of what you use to study lol. I applaud the AAMC.
I too applaud the AAMC for what they do. It really is amazing when you analyze the amount of work that goes into it. I am curious who you spoke to, how you reached them, and if it was by phone or at a conference between speakers. Based on what I've read in their
MCAT Guideline, they are candid and sincere about their exam. They leave their conclusion about prep courses ambiguous, which is very smart.
The TPR, TBR, EK books are meant to a review of the material you learned in your classes. IMHO reading through your textbooks would be a ridiculous waste of time considering the amount of extra information in them.
I guess to each their own. If it worked for you then great. (BTW all my MCAT books together cost about 20% of all my pre-req coursebooks combined.)
Also I looked back at AAMC 3 and think that it was probably the least representative of my MCAT today but eh.
Great post Tatertots.
I think this whole "high-yield" "low-yield" stuff is nonsense. The AAMC publishes a list of all the topics they may test on the MCAT and the test-prep books try to review all these topics. If you are well-versed with everything the AAMC says they are going to test, you will not have problems with content.
Exactly. Another great point brought up in this thread.
@Mshope, @iMedatUCI, and @MightyMoose2:
You also make some great points, but I've overquoted in my post and now it's one of those annoying cut-n-paste, never-ending rants.
