one general concern i had (having taken the MCAT recently)

[northwestmedic]

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this is something i don't understand and i did wonder about it before i wrote the MCAT.

i took the CFA exams and CFA institute provides books with original content and then summary services put out books that condense the info... off topic: for one of the 2 key levels, the summary helps. for the other, the summary book is almost same size as original content.

now, my understanding is that AAMC doesn't provide original content other than topic lists (with some extra info on some topics)...

anyway, when i wrote the exam, i often wondered in P/S if something with similar wording to what i'd learned in K or EK was correct or not.

when i did practice Q's (many sources), answers seemed to swing between

"why would you pick A, the passage doesn't say XXXX, you assumed or inferred it. therefore you are incorrect"

vs.

you basically had to infer something from the passage to get the question correct.. and im talking about the 3 scientific components, not just CARS where i do think it's made clear you must infer.

so my two problems:

1) definitions that sound somewhat similar to a Kaplan concept? i really wrestled with this.

2) whether you should infer something in a passage or not.

3) ok, so i'll add one more............ this is NO such thing as "more correct"

thx in advance........ p.s. i may be wrong on AAMC original content or they may talk regularly to Kaplan and others

 

[Examkrackers]

I'm a bit confused what you mean by "original content." Do you mean that AAMC doesn't itself provide any premed courses, so that beyond releasing topic lists they don't actually have a definitive source of "content" that students could use as reference? In that case, I think that would defeat the (at least AAMC's stated purpose) of the MCAT. The AAMC states that the goal of the MCAT is to assess your scientific and logical reasoning skills when applying the skills you gained from your premed coursework. If the AAMC created a master "book" that had all the information it would ever possibly assess on the MCAT in it, that would incentivize preparing only using the book and deincentivize success in premed coursework. It also would assert that the AAMC was the fount of all knowledge regarding these premed course topics, which is not true.

I'm not very familiar with the CFA exam, but it looks like its stated purpose is much different than the MCAT. It is assessing an individual's preparedness from a similar training background to do a specific task (be a successful financial analyst).

AAMC's topics come from the determined bare minimum of topic familiarity that medical students should have before entering medical school.

Another reason that AAMC probably couldn't have a definitive "book" is that the test also assesses students' abilities to apply the knowledge they gained in premed coursework in new situations (as a way of simulating a student's performance in med school). In this way, it'd be difficult to have a definitive "book" since they wouldn't want to give away all the applications they may use.

I hope this helps!

 

[northwestmedic]

thanks for the response....

but how do i know if what AAMC calls X is the same that EK, K, PR etc. call something moderately different? especially when they give you two choices that are reasonably similar.

and then they go through the bizarre charade of telling you X answer is "more correct" than Y answer.

i found they are very particular on alot of answers but then they haven't given you their definition of the concept.

i understand not giving students an standardized text but what about making it available to the study guide firms... by your logic, why even give a concepts list?

thx again 🙂