PCAT Experience

[YooperPharm]

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I am sophomore and will have all of my pre-req's done for admission to pharm school.... and am kicking around taking the PCAT in October as well as in January. However i do not feel that i am prepared for the material since i will not have had a full year of orgo, bio, or micro-bio.....

So basically my real question is "Would it be a good or bad decision to take the October PCAT as a trial run to see the format and gauge how much i know as of right now.... and then gear up for the January PCAT. If i do bad on the first one and then do really well on the second are schools going to look at my first score as well and look down on that?".....

Also how many people on here have taken the PCAT multiple times and how did the score difference end up?... Positive? or Negative?... how much did you go up or down?...

 

[SobeGekko]

I don't know why people consider taking the PCAT for practice. All schools will see all you PCAT scores and while you're best score is probably the one that they care about, taking the test is expensive if you're just taking it for practice! Especially if you haven't taken all the prereqs.

If you're interested in content, format, time pressure etc, there are plenty of practice tests out there in review books or even on the Harcourt website (they have 2 practice tests, $19 each, that are shortened versions of the real thing with very representative questions of the real test.)

Save yourself the expense of taking the real thing for "practice." And if you do take it, take it seriously and prepare appropriately because if you don't, it takes away from the integrity of the testing process itself for everyone.

 

[ForcedEntry]

If you really want to take the real deal for practice, you can finish your essay and check the "do not score" option. You won't know how you did, but you will get great exposure to the content.

Additionally, you don't need a full year of orgo, bio, or micro to do well. I know this because I took the June PCAT during the 6th week of Org1. I got an 83 on the chem section, 92 overall. The information you need to know is in the test preps.