- Joined
- Sep 2, 2008
- Messages
- 128
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 4,566
Does it matter which one you take? I will do like 2 or 3 CBT
Paper AAMC or AAMC CBT
- Thread starter tanny
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2009
- Messages
- 226
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 4,531
- Non-Student
Yeah, it's best to practice with CBT because the format of the test can affect how well you do, and you need to practice, and experience taking practice tests in the format of your actual MCAT... but since the CBTs are more expensive, you can replace some with paper tests, as long as you still leave a couple of CBTs to practice with... the consensus on SDN is that the last 4-5 AAMC are the most indicative of the actual MCAT, hope this helps
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2009
- Messages
- 560
- Reaction score
- 10
- Points
- 4,621
- Location
- Michigan
- Resident [Any Field]
CBT of course. You want to take your practice tests as similar to the real thing as possible. Taking it on paper is completely different in my opinion anyway.
Totally agree. In fact, some of the paper exams that I had, I got scanned to PDF and then took the exam "on the computer". I used an excel spreadsheet as my answer sheet and did the questions on the computer. You should always try and simulate your actual test taking conditions as closely as possible.
May be a dumb question but how exactly do you convert files to a .pdf format? Is there a specific software for it and is it useful? Some one asked me how to do it a few weeks back and I had no clue.
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2007
- Messages
- 1,841
- Reaction score
- 290
- Points
- 5,171
- Location
- NYC, Baby!
- Resident [Any Field]
There are several ways to do this, actually.
1. If it's an Office document, for example, and you have the time, you could just do the "lazy" thing and google "Word (or Excel) to PDF converter." Usually, this will bring up a website where you'll be provided an email address to which you can email your document and it will be converted to PDF and emailed back to you.
2. If you have Office 2007, there's a plugin you can download from microsoft.com that converts Office documents to PDF. After you download the plugin, the option to "Save as PDF" will appear when you wish to save your document. Just choose that option, and you're good to go.
3. Of course, if you have the full Adobe Professional software, you can use that to convert any kind of file (Office documents, web pages, images, etc) to PDF.
4. You can get other PDF software (I believe Nitro PDF is very close to Adobe Professional, and costs ~$30) and use that instead.
5. Don't quote me on this, but I believe that some scanners have the option to save whatever you scan as PDF directly.
6. If I'm working with images, I prefer to use Primo PDF. It's a program that's available for free from www.primopdf.com, but it has a paid version that has more features. When you install it, it shows up as a printer, so to convert your file, you have to select the "print" option as if you were going to print it. Then you'll see "Primo PDF" as one of the printers. So say you've scanned something, and it's available as a jpeg. Just click "print," select "Primo PDF" as your printer, select the quality of the file you want, then "Create PDF" and voila! You've got a PDF file. With the program, you can combine several PDF files into one, so if you scanned book pages (for example) and ended up with several images, you can convert your images to PDFs and combine them into one single file instead of a bunch of files.
Hope I answered your question. If not, just say what it is specifically you want to know.
That's actually quite a thorough explanation actually lol thanks. I think I'll go the Office 2007 route. I've actually been meaning to upgrade soon anyway.
