practice MCAT

[PTtoMD]

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I have read the suggestion to take a practice MCAT to get a baseline score. I was told by someone (an advisor of sorts) that you should take it (practice one) cold without studying and should score atleast a 9-10. He said that if you do not score atleast a 10 on the initial exam that this is a red flag that one might not have the reasoning skills/knowledge base to ever excel on the test. He more or less said, if you get <10 then you should accept that med school isn't really going to be an option.

So, I am terrified to take a practice exam. Since my sciences were 10 years ago and standardized exams have never been my strength, i am concerned I would bomb it and that it would really knock my confidence.

Is there truth to this approach??
Can one come back and do well after scoring really low?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[DrMidlife]

I advise you to not trust this advisor too much. (Wait for another SDNer to weigh in before you trust my advice either.)

I agree to an extent: if you take a practice MCAT right now and get a 10, yes, that's a red flag. A 10 says that your English skills are weak, and/or you may have a learning disability, and/or that your reading comprehension and critical thinking skills are at a high school level. (Not that there's anything wrong with this, unless you want to go to a US med school anytime soon.)

So, for this advisor to tell you to get at least a 9-10 is really useless advice, based on what you've shared about yourself.

However, I do agree that taking a practice MCAT to get a baseline is a reasonable idea. I've said elsewhere that I think 75% of the MCAT is focus and reasoning, and maybe 25% is remembering specifics from subject material. You're going to do a lot better than you think you will.

www.e-mcat.org (which apparently was down today...?) Block out 4 hours and hammer that first, free one out. I recommend it.

Go get 'em.

 

[drizzt3117]

10 overall? That seems a little bit low. IIRC if you guessed on every question on the whole test you're still likely to get better than 10 overall. If you're talking about 10 per section, then that seems incorrect, b/c a lot of people study a lot and still don't get 30, and the average score of matriculants is around 30.

As far as a diagnostic predicting your MCAT score, I took TBR I with 0 studying and not having finished all the prereqs. I'd only taken intro bio, Ochem I, all of Gchem, and physics I at the point that I took the test, and got 11 BS, 13 PS, 13 VR. After having finished Ochem II, physio, and Physics II, as well as studying biochem on my own, I took the actual test about 6 months later, and the only change was improving VR by 2 pts. YMMV.

 

[ORBeaver]

It's been my personal experience that generic advice,
is usually worthless for most nontrads.
I received my BS degree 15 years ago. Why would I take
CBT3 cold, and demoralize myself?

Instead I could read the solid advice that QofQ has posted here,
and study and drill for several months to get to the level needed
for a solid shot in the admissions process.

 

[Empi]

I'm planning to start taking practice tests soon. I'll be applying to schools next year and I'm much better knowing what to expect when I take a test. Getting a "feel" for the style of the questions, the time constraints, and a predition of your scores (although they're not reliable, they're better than nothing😉 all of these things are helpful to me.

 

[RxnMan]

I think your friend had a good idea, but here's an improvement: I got a lot of free tests from Kaplan. They'll give you a free proctored exam (at least back when I took it) to get you to think about buying their services. The results of their exams are broken down by subject - o-chem, gen chem, etc. Those diagnostic exams will help you ID where your problem areas are.

Also try Princeton review. You can also try the AAMC website - they often have free test materials there.

I don't know about this 10 or better score stuff.

 

[ZarbK]

Sounds kinda silly to me, waste of a perfectly good test that should be properly studied for, THEN taken. 😛