Preliminary score + tips for people taking next block I wish I had, ask questions if you like

[clutchtho]

Got 99 composite:
94 bio
99 chem
92 quant
71 reading

DONT FREAK OUT IF YOURE MISSING STUFF DURING THE TEST/PRACTICE TEST

I was freaking out during the bio section because I didn't know alot of them right off the bat. But just be calm, eliminate choices, and guess. I feel you can miss a decent amount and still get a good subscore. I felt I did really well on bio but defintely not 94% of questions right. Same with chem. I knew I did really well on chem, but YOU DONT NEED 90%+ of questions correct to get a high grade.

I got really sad and anxious during the test, especially during reading and math bc i thought i was missing stuff left and right, and I was defintely short on time.

Collins/Pearson was defintely a good combination to study with.

Anyways, the main reasons I was freaking out was I thought collins/pearson wasn't enough; i thought you HAD to read passages to do questions; I thought to get a 90+ percentile you'd have to get >85% of questions right, I'm not sure if any are totally true

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Teey09]

Congrats on your score!! It's really impressive! I hope I do that well! Did you see similar questions from Collins on the actual PCAT btw?

 

[atnguy13]

Got 99 composite:
94 bio
99 chem
92 quant
71 reading

DONT FREAK OUT IF YOURE MISSING STUFF DURING THE TEST/PRACTICE TEST

I was freaking out during the bio section because I didn't know alot of them right off the bat. But just be calm, eliminate choices, and guess. I feel you can miss a decent amount and still get a good subscore. I felt I did really well on bio but defintely not 94% of questions right. Same with chem. I knew I did really well on chem, but YOU DONT NEED 90%+ of questions correct to get a high grade.

I got really sad and anxious during the test, especially during reading and math bc i thought i was missing stuff left and right, and I was defintely short on time.

Collins/Pearson was defintely a good combination to study with.

Anyways, the main reasons I was freaking out was I thought collins/pearson wasn't enough; i thought you HAD to read passages to do questions; I thought to get a 90+ percentile you'd have to get >85% of questions right, I'm not sure if any are totally true

Impressive score! How did you utilize collins and pearson for quant? I felt collins didn't help much for reading, I did really well for collins reading and completely bombed the PCAT passages

 

[amaranthyn]

Wow, congrats on your score!! I am actually pretty shocked at mine. I felt like I did really bad when I walked out of the testing center.
Bio 85
Chem 99
Reading 91
Quant 96
Composite 98

For anyone taking the PCAT soon, the best thing would be to purchase the three Pearson exams + 4 writing prompts (if you're worried about the essay). There were a couple of repeat questions, and it is the same structure that you will see on the real thing. I was definitely freaking out in the testing center. If you have high anxiety, go to Pearson's website and take a virtual tour of what the testing centers look like. That helped me a little bit because I wasn't as surprised when I got there. Also, it might be wise to make a trip to the testing center to see what the building is like. I expected mine to be super cold, so I wore long pants. When I got there, it felt like I was sitting in a desert lol. I was sweating the entire exam! Make sure you wear something room-temperature appropriate if you have test anxiety.

I went through the Kaplan book once. The rest of the time I focussed on Dr. Collins packets. I will say that Dr. Collins sets were much easier compared to the real thing, which is why I STRONGLY suggest purchasing the Pearson exams. Dr. Collins was particularly helpful for biology and chemistry. I found that Kaplan was too detailed with unnecessary information. Use the Dr. Collins study guides, and go through all of the sets once or twice. Dr. Collins was decent for the quant section, but I think the most important thing to prepare for math is learning study strategies. Most of the questions were RIDICULOUS; half of the time I had no idea what they were even asking me to do. Eliminate some answer choices, guess, flag the question, and move on. You can come back later if you have time. Do NOT waste time on those lengthy calculations. Get your easy points first because many test takers will get hung up on the longer ones, and they won't complete the entire section. If you get more of the easier questions right than everyone else, you may end up with a higher score. Biology and chemistry were honestly a lot easier than I expected. I thought the Pearson practice tests (especially the last one) were much harder for those two sections. Take the 15 minute break! It was important for me to use that time to go to the bathroom, drink some water, and recharge for the next two sections. Reading and quant FLEW by. Reading was really difficult for me, and I didn't feel like Collins or Kaplan prepared me well enough. The best strategy is to just search for the questions that ask for specific information (ie paragraph 2 or key words) and answer those first. You might be able to answer the other questions without reading the whole passage. You can then read the rest of the paragraphs quickly if you need to for the other questions. Ultimately, you shouldn't have to read the passage more than once. Guess and move on.

Good luck to everyone taking the PCAT soon! Don't be discouraged if you feel you did poorly after a section. It might not affect you as much as you think! I walked out thinking I completely failed reading and math, but I ended up doing much better than I thought.

YOU CAN DO THIS!

 

[futurepharmD103]

Got 99 composite:
94 bio
99 chem
92 quant
71 reading

DONT FREAK OUT IF YOURE MISSING STUFF DURING THE TEST/PRACTICE TEST

I was freaking out during the bio section because I didn't know alot of them right off the bat. But just be calm, eliminate choices, and guess. I feel you can miss a decent amount and still get a good subscore. I felt I did really well on bio but defintely not 94% of questions right. Same with chem. I knew I did really well on chem, but YOU DONT NEED 90%+ of questions correct to get a high grade.

I got really sad and anxious during the test, especially during reading and math bc i thought i was missing stuff left and right, and I was defintely short on time.

Collins/Pearson was defintely a good combination to study with.

Anyways, the main reasons I was freaking out was I thought collins/pearson wasn't enough; i thought you HAD to read passages to do questions; I thought to get a 90+ percentile you'd have to get >85% of questions right, I'm not sure if any are totally true

Awesome!!!! Congratulations!

 

[clutchtho]

Congrats on your score!! It's really impressive! I hope I do that well! Did you see similar questions from Collins on the actual PCAT btw?

yes I defintely did. Even some of the passages were similar to one of the collins ones.

But there were defintely questions from collins, or similar based questions. I took most of the collins tests once and then twice, and then went over each of them (without answering) right before the pcat to make sure I knew all collins answers. Defintely not everything, but helpful for sure

 

[clutchtho]

Impressive score! How did you utilize collins and pearson for quant? I felt collins didn't help much for reading, I did really well for collins reading and completely bombed the PCAT passages

I mainly utilized Collins for quant, but went over EACH pearson math question (total of like 150)'s explanations. Sure it took forever but I made sure I knew how to do 150 unique problems. Collins explanations weren't detailed, but i read them anyways and made for good practice. I even went over some kaplan questions, but I have a pretty strong math background, so it was mostly reviewing for me. That and look for patterns. Practice tests had a lot of composite functions and and analyzing graphs etc. so get good at that.


Reading was a bit tough, I felt collin's reading was easier and had a ton of incorrect answers in the answer key. Like I could literally find a quote that disproved the collins answer. Plus Collins is too heavily based on conprehension compared to the thing as a whole. I'd say just manage your time and don't think too hard. More often than not, the first answer you picked was picked for a reason, and if you try to disprove it you will. Time management is really key, I goofed and had 5 minutes for 10 questions and ended up skimming the last passage and guessing (guessing I missed a bunch there), but yeah.

Practice reading the passages by yourself w/o questions and ask yourself questions: "what was the main idea of para 3?" "what was the author thinking when he said '___________'?" You won't know if you were right or wrong but its that type of thinking that really helps you. Also improve vocab if you're lacking there, when I was reading, if there was a word i didnt know, I'd google it.