Question for those that have taken Princeton Review exams

[ugagirl4]

Hello everyone,

I am a new SDN member, but have been a 'silent reader' for a while. I have a question for all those who have taken Princeton Review MCAT exams, either the diagnostic or the A-D series. Do you find them to be scaled more harshly than Kaplan or AAMC exams? The A-D series seem to have the score conversion of an AAMC exam, but the difficulty is much harder. I dont even have a score conversion for any of the diagnostic exams (471-474), but I do have the scores of a friend that took the course (so I can roughly approximate the score). It seems that it is hard to get a decent score on any of these. What do you guys think?

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[altaskier]

I don't know about the Kaplan tests, but I can tell you that Princeton Review's A-D tests are way harder than the actual MCAT.

 

[kidsmd]

Yeah, the tests that they give in the beginning are usually harder, and if you think about it, it should make sense that they would do this. After all, they are a business and they do want you to think that their course will help you to improve; even the instructors will tell you this though not in so many words. But I found that the tests after the initial two are pretty accurate as to the difficulty level of the MCAT. Some people will say to add 2 points or so to what you get on the tests, but don't do this. Just stick to what you get; that way, you'll be shooting for higher scores.

 

[ugagirl4]

If you have taken Princeton tests and have already taken the MCAT, how did your Princeton score compare to your actual MCAT score?

 

[kidsmd]

I took it last August... My score was 1 point higher than the princeton review tests score.

 

[geneman]

I went to one of those free MCAT deals and took Princeton Review's 470 diagonostic test as my first practice MCAT ever; I received a 35. The next week I took AAMC III and got a 30. I got a 37 on the real one.

My advice is to take the numbers with a grain of salt (b/c not only are most scaled inaccurately but the amount you know is different with each test you take). Try to hammer down what you don't know from each exam. AAMC V and VI, IMO, were both very similar to the April MCAT.