Practice Test difficulty

[kjep]

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I've been studying with Kaplan and I was wondering if their practice tests are more difficult than the real OAT?

If so, how much harder? For those who have taken the OAT and got scored on the practice tests.. were the scores much different?

 

[SonofanOpt]

I would say the sciences on the real test are a little bit easier than the practice test. The non-sciences on the other hand, seem to be about the same or a little more difficult on the real thing.

Practice:
Bio - 390+
Gen Chem - 340ish
Org Chem - 350ish
Physics - 320ish
QR - 390+
RC - 350-370

Real:
Bio - 400
Gen Chem - 390
Org Chem - 370
Physics - 340
QR - 320
RC - 300

I found that the QR questions on the real test, while not entirely more difficult, took more time than the problems on the practice tests. Because of this, I felt uncomfortable and had to rush myself, leading to a score that was much lower than what I had anticipated.
For RC, on the real test a lot of the questions were set up like this:
Statement A + Statement B
a) Only A is True
b) Only B is True
c) Both are True
d) Neither are True
While this might not be that much more difficult, it was not something I was expecting, again causing me to feel uncomfortable and simply pissed off at Kaplan for not having questions like these on the practice tests. These questions also take more time as you have to look back to find the correct answer for two statements rather than one.

This is just my experience and while it might not reflect other's, it still should give you a better idea of what to expect.

 

[jc10101]

i think bio is harder, only bc they ask a lot of questions i felt were not covered by the kaplan material.

gchem, ochem, and phys are MUCH EASIER on the real exam.

qr is the same, and rc is just different.

 

[Optogirl12]

I agree with everyone else. The Kaplan practice tests were alot harder than the actual test. Almost in all the kaplan practic test i was flip flopping between GCHEM and Physics being my lowest scores..i would always end up geting like 280 on either GChem or Physics each time i took the test so i was getting worried that these would be my actual scores but when i took the real OAT i got 350 in GCHEM and 330 in Physics...and I scored higher on the actual OATs for most of the sections than for the Kaplan practice tests

I do agree that quantitative reasoning section on the actual OAT is hard, not sure if its necessarily harder than the Kaplan quantitative reasoning section but be prepared for it!