previous mcat takers--good practices but bombed the real deal

[mcatbird]

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i've been reading the handful of inspirational posts by people who said they thought they bombed it then got 36s

just to keep things real, are there any people out there who were getting 35+ on the practices who ended up bombing one section so badly that they had to take it again? i mean even if you got two 13s, if you got an 8 on the third section you'd probably take it again right?
what's the biggest drop between average practice test score and the real deal?

 

[tigress]

I hope somebody answers this. I've been wondering the same thing myself.

 

[mcatbird]

i know there's no sense in worrying about it now, but i can't help it

my scores on the 6 aamc practices i took never dropped below the high 30s and occasionally went into the 40s
but i really screwed up my pacing on the ps and i'm wondering whether my fears right now have a chance of being a reality

 

[Orth2006]

just to keep things real, are there any people out there who were getting 35+ on the practices who ended up bombing one section so badly that they had to take it again? i mean even if you got two 13s, if you got an 8 on the third section you'd probably take it again right?

Why would anyone retake the MCAT if they got two 13s and an 8 ==> thats 13+13+8 = 34. Whats wrong with 34. That is still good enough for competitive schools. People tend to forget that the MCAT is just one of the admissions criteria. I have seen a case where a person got 42 and GPA 4.0 and harvard didnt take the person. So its not all about the MCAT. I would gladly take a 34. But then again to each his own

 

[mcatbird]

do the schools care more about breaking 30 or getting double digits in each one...or is that just an unanswerable question

 

[tigress]

See, I've read admissions info for a few schools that actually say they only consider individual scores and don't add them together. So it doesn't matter if you got a 34 if one of your scores was an 8 and the average for that school is a 10 or 11. Of course you could still get in (an average is only an average), but it really reduces your changes.

I was getting mid-30s on my practice tests. I probably broke 30 on this one, but only because I think I did really well on VR. If I get below a 10 on any section I might retake it, and if I get below a 9 I will. Even if I got a 15 on VR!

 

[chaeymaey]

Below 8 on a section is my cutoff.

 

[MoosePilot]

do the schools care more about breaking 30 or getting double digits in each one...or is that just an unanswerable question

I'd say unanswerable. A lot of what the schools do is tough to pin down and varies by the school. I was taught in my TPR class to shoot for the "triple double" = all three scores meaured in double digits, so at least 10, 10, 10 and a 30 overall. Anything below a 10 is going to hurt you overall (depending on the school, but I think that's pretty fair as far as generalizations go).

 

[MoosePilot]

If you want a really good answer to this one, post a poll asking if people got within +/- x number of points of their last practice test or the average of their practice tests. You could either make it a simple two response poll (yes, within x number of points or no) or you could make multiple responses (-6, -4, -2, 0, +2, +4, +6 would be my recommendations).