Princeton Review to AAMC

[strugstofunc]

Hello!

I am currently studying for the MCAT, which I plan to take April 2019. I am using TPR bookset for content review. For practice exams, I plan to take the NS, EK, TPR, and AAMC tests, respectively.

As I am going through the problem sets in the book, I can't help but feel discouraged because I am not doing too well. On average, I miss 2-3 questions per passage. It is only day 3 in my "winter break self-bootcamp", but can't help but feel worried.

I am looking for answers to these questions:
1. How difficult/easy is TPR in comparison to NS, EK, and AAMC tests/questions?
2. What are other resources you are using, and find helpful?
3. How are you/did you perform on drill questions in review books?
4. How well are you/did you scoring on pMCATs and the MCAT?

Thanks for your help!!

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[eggtarts]

Good luck with studying! I know the whole process can be grueling (I had to take it 3 times before I was finally satisfied with my score!) but the most important thing is to be diligent and stick to a study schedule.

As for your questions,

1. TPR (from my experience at least) is harder than what you'll find on AAMC and the curve has been known to be lower. When I took TPR tests, I couldn't break past 510 but for the AAMC ones, I consistently got around the 517-518 range.

2. I cannot stress this enough but AAMC practice tests and their test bank were definitely the most helpful for me. I purposely did these tests/questions a month before my actual MCAT date just so I could accurately gauge where I was and see what areas I needed to address. For the Psych/Socio section, you definitely should check out Reddit for this giant masterlist of Psych/Socio MCAT notes. When I first took the MCAT, I got around the 50th percentile because I had never taken a Psych or Socio class before but after diligently making notes of the Reddit notes, I got 100th percentile 🙂

3. For drill questions, I personally missed around 2 per passage when I first started learning the material. This is up to you but I kept track of the types of questions I missed whenever I did practice passages so I could see what topics were more difficult for me.

5. For the pMCATs, I think from the 3 available at the time I went from 515 -> 518 -> 517 and on the real thing, I got 517

Feel free to message me if there's anything I can do to better help!