Sept 8. Thoughts?

[detvar]

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what'd people think?

generally, i'd say the feel was what one would expect from AAMC tests, but difficulty was certainly taken up a couple notches on each section.

thanks

 

[ChubbyChaser]

hey if you do get a 25 with a 12 in verbal, you always have the schools that take the best in each section, and a 12 in verbal is not shabby by any means!!

And utah jazz. No my caffeine didnt have antibodies, it was about purfication and separation mainly.

 

[mohi]

me neither, i had barnum, something about reality vs imaginary, honeybees,underwater life forms, dont remember the rest

hey i had the exact same exam as you. There was also the volcano one, wait i think that was the under water life one= same thing. that was the last one..the one i had to rush thru..
I had the TSH passage too...was more confused that i should have been.
And someone made the right comment..the reading in those bio passages required deep comprehension..it was hard to keep up.
And like everyone said, the verbal passages were loong. The AAMC tests were very reflective of the passages though. They actually seemed easier after doing AAMC 9 & 10. I dont think the Ek 101 verbal book is very indicative of the passages. The content is way off. I think the most confusing and the ones requiring fast comprehension of crazy ideas are those 'brain' passages. This time it was something about perspectives and reality. EK doesnt have such content.. they're good to get an idea of verbal..but i found after a while they just didnt help much..mainly because of content. Any thoughts?

 

[ChubbyChaser]

woooo, mohi did you just say CBT 9 and 10 were easier than the test today???? wow then I am screwed lol,

In regards to the Ek 101 verbal, yeah i think the reading in the 101 passages was easier and shorter, but I felt that EK had a higher percentage of very ambiguous questions than the Verbal section today did though, but im sure the curve will adjust accordingly

 

[Coffee]

could someone say something more about orgo? bc i only remember caffiene.......nvm i think it was carboxylic acid.

 

[Tajam]

I thought PS was simple, but I relaxed too much causing me to rush at the end. Plus I found it stupid how instead of telling you how many questions you have left it says how many passages you have left. By the 6th passage I thought I only had one more page left, forgot about the non passage related ones, BAH.

VR was not bad at all I thought, but again, thinking you did well on verbal is scary.

Bio- DAM when I hit that stupid micro MRNA passage I got stuck, I had to read over that passage at least three times, and still had trouble, I dont know maybe I was just freaking out. I remember there being a mistype, in one of the passages where they had the word pancreas in it for no reason... maybe I was hallucinating. I thought the bio part was unclear, and I was suprised that they had a question that asked what would the author believe... that should be a verbal question not bio, but it wasnt bad.


This was my first time taking the test, and I was extremely disappointed by how horrible the program is. Seriously, all the money AAMC makes and they cant make a decent program? Its as if they made it in 1995.

 

[nolahomeboy]

I also had the same test that most of you had. It was my first (and please lord, last) time taking the MCAt.

My thoughts:

That RNA passage in the middle of the Bio section was nuts. I was wholly unprepared to answer almost all of the questions in that section. Luckily, I realized this immediately and skipped the section. I'd hoped to spend some time on it later, but I only had enough time to randomely fill the bubbles.

Otherwise, I thought Bio and Orgo were about what I'd expected. However, I wish there had been more questions that tested the trivial knowledge that I've been studying for the last three months. That's basically how I feel about the physical science section, too.

The verbal passages were definitely longer than I'd expected, and some of the questions required an incredible memory for detail or a search function. Too bad there's no search function on the MCAT.

I'm hoping that with the curve, I'll do just as well (30-32) as I did on the practice tests.

 

[Psychotropic]

The verbal passages were definitely longer than I'd expected, and some of the questions required an incredible memory for detail or a search function. Too bad there's no search function on the MCAT.

My thoughts exactly. I was completely overwhelmed by the robot and honeybees passages. The two passages sucked up my time, but luckily I was able to finish the exam with a couple minutes to spare. I'm really worried about how I did on these two passages.

 

[utahjazz]

hey if you do get a 25 with a 12 in verbal, you always have the schools that take the best in each section, and a 12 in verbal is not shabby by any means!!

And utah jazz. No my caffeine didnt have antibodies, it was about purfication and separation mainly.

Oh okay, thanks for the reply. Good luck with your score!

 

[DrKendrickLamar]

i voided the exam.

PS: i thought that I was doing well, but there was a passage that my numbers were just not equaling the answer choices. i had to quickly go through one passage, which i normally do.

VR: shaky at first, but I agree that they seemed longer than usual. could not really get the last passage done without educated guesses based on quick reading

WR: felt good, but I tried adding a sentence to unify and only got like two words in and half a word in the first passage.

BS: for some reason, i decided to change up my strategy and it cost me when i got to the bacteriophage passage. i spent so much time on it that i could not finish the last two passages with complete accuracy and efficiency. i normally finish this section with time to spare.

oh well, another year to chill and relax before med school

i guarantee at least a score of 33+ when i take it in jan or feb

 

[mohi]

I thought PS was simple, but I relaxed too much causing me to rush at the end. Plus I found it stupid how instead of telling you how many questions you have left it says how many passages you have left. By the 6th passage I thought I only had one more page left, forgot about the non passage related ones, BAH.

VR was not bad at all I thought, but again, thinking you did well on verbal is scary.

Bio- DAM when I hit that stupid micro MRNA passage I got stuck, I had to read over that passage at least three times, and still had trouble, I dont know maybe I was just freaking out. I remember there being a mistype, in one of the passages where they had the word pancreas in it for no reason... maybe I was hallucinating. I thought the bio part was unclear, and I was suprised that they had a question that asked what would the author believe... that should be a verbal question not bio, but it wasnt bad.


This was my first time taking the test, and I was extremely disappointed by how horrible the program is. Seriously, all the money AAMC makes and they cant make a decent program? Its as if they made it in 1995.

I also during the PS section saw that there was 1 page left and thought that was it. When i got to the supposed last page, i paused for a min or so. I wasnt really going to hit next because i was stuck on some questions there. I am so GLAD i did...because what do you know..more questions! damn, i wish they'd tell you how many questons you had left. That passage thing worked for verbal..not the others!
Well somebody asked about ochem. It wasnt too bad really. I think the sep 7th takers had 3 passages and they all said they were hard. But there were only two passages ( caffiene related to extraction, and halogenation, bromination in particular). They werent too bad at all. I suck at orgo, so i decided not to stress myself out about it. I made sure i learned all the basics and EK stressed on how they only ask for the basics. You just have to look thru the mumbo jumbo. They are right for the most part. I can actually look thru the crap in orgo...not so much in physics.
and though i already mentioned it..i second you on the micro mrna crazy pasage. I still cant stop thinking about it.

 

[pezzang]

I thought some of the discretes were quite hard. I usually scored ~13 on biological and I had trouble with that zygote/cytoplasm question. That bacteriaphage passage was pretty tricky and thyroid passage had a couple of tricky questions. VR was hard for me and I don't think I did as well as I should have... PS was easy; I thought that nuclear reaction discrete question had typo because its mass # decreased by one but I got a hint from "nuclear". Anyways overall I don't think I did as well as I expected but score will tell the truth...sigh

 

[mohi]

woooo, mohi did you just say CBT 9 and 10 were easier than the test today???? wow then I am screwed lol,

In regards to the Ek 101 verbal, yeah i think the reading in the 101 passages was easier and shorter, but I felt that EK had a higher percentage of very ambiguous questions than the Verbal section today did though, but im sure the curve will adjust accordingly

No way! CBT 9 & 10 were in no way easy. But they were good preparation because after getting thru the verbal section in those (very disheartening for me..i made a 5 on one!!! Completely freaked me out) i thought the actual test passages were bearable. Maybe i was tired when i took those CBt tests..whatever the case, the real verbal didnt obliterate me so to speak.

 

[DanceGrl8]

I took the test on september 8th...
PS: I didnt think this section was bad (I finished early like I always do) but looking back I'm afraid I fell into traps and made stupid mistakes. PS is usually my best subject so I think I put too much pressure on doing well in this section, who knows...we shall see
VR: Very long...none of the passages were particularly hard, but then the questions seemed kinda hard/tricky because of it. I agree that the honeybees and the robots were sooooo annoying...I hate that, when you read through a passage, go to the questions, and then realize you didn't get out of it what you were supposed to. The robots one was interesting but soooo tricky and confusing! I also felt like AAMC asks for a lot of details which are hard to go back to in such a short time constraint
WS: a nice break from the insanity of the test
BS: I was prepared for the worst with this section and it lived up to my expectations. Bio is always usually my weakest subject but some of the passages/discretes were absolutely ridiculous. I laughed out loud when i read the mRNA one because it was like another language, after going back to it it didn't seem as bad but I don't even know if i was looking at it right haha. I was just very braindead at this point, it was hard to keep the focus but I hope I made some good guesses haha

Hoping I don't have to retake, but you never know with this test! To future test takers...just take a million practice tests (I did kaplan 1-8 and cbt 6-10) because then when you take the real thing it just feels like second nature. Also, it goes by soooooo fast..before you know it you will be done and celebrating 😳. Good luck everyone!

 

[detvar]

I thought some of the discretes were quite hard. I usually scored ~13 on biological and I had trouble with that zygote/cytoplasm question. That bacteriaphage passage was pretty tricky and thyroid passage had a couple of tricky questions. VR was hard for me and I don't think I did as well as I should have... PS was easy; I thought that nuclear reaction discrete question had typo because its mass # decreased by one but I got a hint from "nuclear". Anyways overall I don't think I did as well as I expected but score will tell the truth...sigh

heh, good point. i'd kinda forgotten, but those bio discretes weren't pretty.


so am i right that people generally agree here that BS was HARDER than expected?

 

[cur]

whoa, I didn't have that VR passage 😕 😱

Don't flip out. Every "reactions?" thread people say this. I'm fairly sure than the CBT MCAT draws from a question/passage bank. Not everyone seems to get ALL of the same questions, and not in the same order.

 

[Coffee]

so am i right that people generally agree here that BS was HARDER than expected?

I agree with you. I felt as if I was taking a molecular cell/microbio final. The only thing i would suggest, if future bio passages resemble what i saw, is to read scientific papers. www.cell.com. I think the "analytical" ability that you gain from analyzing scientific papers will help you greatly in BS. Or, just take a bacterial pathogenesis lab. that way you learn how to integrate molecular, immuno, and dna manipulation together, rather than thinking of them as separates.

Physics, i should have worked faster. I'm sure everyone's said this before, but... work fast in physics. I was on question 17 with 55 minutes left and i was like... "i have plenty of time." Next thing i knew, i had 5 minutes left to do a passage and some discrete. Maybe i lost track of time because the clock was at my left corner. I tend not to look in that direction. ::


verbal - who knows, i always feel uneasy with this section.

eep! my feeling overall - unsure of my interpretations of the passages, and unsure of my answers.

 

[Muqabala]

regarding PS and BS. i felt like i had quite a bit of spare time at the end of each section (25 mins extra PS, 10 mins extra BS), but i fear that i shouldn't have clicked "end" so early. i did one quick double-check run-through on each before deciding to end it...i just wonder if i should have kept going through it over and over for the duration of the allotted time in order to catch any overlooked errors...starting to get nervous...

 

[mshheaddoc]

I never have an issue with time and I did on this test. I thought of voiding it but I didn't. I also slept horribly and was NOT in the state of mind that I would have liked (headache didn't help during PS either). Maybe if we all did bad we'll all end up with better scores 😉 If only!

 

[ChubbyChaser]

Hey, we can always hope!!!

Personally im ticked at myself, as soon as the PS ended there were two questions that popped into my head that iknow i put the wrong answre,,, Stupid brain fart moments. O well maybe those are the only two i missed!! lol

 

[mshheaddoc]

Last night I was going through my EK bio book and I missed a few questions that I narrowed down to 2 answers. Of course I picked the wrong ones 🙁 I didnt study bio though so its my fault. I concentrated on my weakness of PS even if BS still isn't as strong as it could be. Oh well. At least this test is like the 12 hr ordeal that it was. After I took the test I went to see my hubby who was on-call and was talking to him and the other resident who were "reminiscing" about how they were screwed in so many ways as all their exams were paper (MCAT/COMLEX). I am GLAD that its only like 5 hrs now. Ugh, still draining though!

 

[sassalicious]

haha yeah a little bit, although i think the hardest passage out of both science sections was the fiber optics one, and some of the biology questions were like wow that seems really detailed, alot more detailed than EK said we had to know them....so does anyone wanna go out on a limb and predict their score???

imma go with some where between 25-37 lol and writing ( i had no idea what one of the words in one prompt really even referred to so...n-p

somewhere between 27-32, but i could be way off. and i'm going to go with n-p for my writing as well . . . i think i nailed one topic and the other one, not so much

 

[UVABranch]

I thought PS was hard, I took the AAMC CBT9 the night before and did well on PS and BS so I'm hoping that carried over. I KNOW I messed up on a few questions because I looked up the answers when I was done :-/ I always have extra time for BS and VR and I had about 7 mins left for BS but NONE left for VR which is crazy. I commented on the excessive length of the VR passages as compared to their practice tests and the lack of consistancy, missleading nature, etc. I got the last question wrong because as I emlinated the other answers I accidentally clicked on the wrong one and time ran out! That sucked, so I spent all of the break getting over that, and trying not to think about how I might have really messed up PS. On my previous MCAT I did fine on PS, but since taking TPR the whole time I was getting low practice PS scores but they started going up again recently and I did my best the night before.

I have no idea how I did I'm just praying it's good enough to get into school for 2008! G'luck to all other 9/8 test takers.

 

[studiddy]

hey if you do get a 25 with a 12 in verbal, you always have the schools that take the best in each section, and a 12 in verbal is not shabby by any means!!

And utah jazz. No my caffeine didnt have antibodies, it was about purfication and separation mainly.

I need to find one of those schools then. Or just decide to go the DO route, buy a new LCD and start playing video games until application season comes around. I could live with that.😀 (No offense DOs, I'm being serious).

As someone else said, the whole thing where it says 'X of X passages' instead of telling you how many questions you have left threw me. I mistakenly equated passages with pages, and thought I was okay on time. Nope. The happiness of finishing what I thought was the last page fled quickly when there were 5 more questions sneaking in at the last second.

 

[eggtart]

i think i'm gonna fail

no...i'm gonna get very low score

 

[Mandy22]

I was tutored ALL summer....I know I knew the info (and my tutors agreed), although I am not a great test taker, and I took every single aamc practice test 1-10, and I thought this test was so difficult. I thought that it was MUCH harder than all of the practice tests.

Usually, even if I find the passages to be hard, I make up points on the free standing questions, but I thought these were practically impossible. DO you think the curve will be really big on thsi exam? Anyone agree or have any thoughts?

 

[Psychotropic]

Most people generally think the test is harder than practice tests. Yes there will be a curve but know one can really predict it ahead of time. Don't worry about it now, it's out of your hands.

 

[Mandy22]

Yes, people may find the real test harder than the practice...but all my practice tests were old mcats. This test shouldnt have been THAT much harder.

 

[detvar]

Yes, people may find the real test harder than the practice...but all my practice tests were old mcats. This test shouldnt have been THAT much harder.

it actually wasn't "THAT much harder." ppl that took it august 20th, for instance, had much worse experiences. i didn't do that well on the sept either, cuz yeah it was trickier and more detailed than the practice tests, but just realize it coulda been worse.

 

[ChubbyChaser]

I think there will probably be a bigger curve than the AAMC's cause the general consensus is that eventhough most of it was manageable, it was def harder than the AAMCs, but you really never know, dont worry about it too much, theres no need in stressing yourself out about something you cant control (i say that, even though im stressing out!! lol), but im trying

 

[Muqabala]

question...i never really bothered to click "save" during the WS. i'm assuming that my response would still be submitted...right? *nervous chuckle*

 

[detvar]

question...i never really bothered to click "save" during the WS. i'm assuming that my response would still be submitted...right? *nervous chuckle*

hm, good question. i think so? i only hit save once in the middle.

i hope it f*ckin saved on its own

 

[theman120]

as a test-taker of the august 20th exam (which I voided), and the sept. 8'th exam, I can honestly say the 8/20 exam was 5 times harder than the 9/8 exam. Physical sciences was a joke on the 9/8 exam. I thought the verbal was tough, passages were super long. Bio not too terrible on the 9/8 exam. Score predictions: PS-12, VR-8, BS-11 Total 31, I'd be happy w/ that , crossing my fingers.

 

[ChubbyChaser]

a joke?

 

[pezzang]

For other retakers (which date?), what sections did you find harder/easier?

 

[detvar]

soo....you didn't have to save before submitting the essays, right? thanks

 

[chad5871]

soo....you didn't have to save before submitting the essays, right? thanks

Yeah, they save automatically. Don't worry.

 

[hisincognito]

the real exam is almost always harder than the aamc practices. just search the old sdn threads from like several years ago on past administrations.

 

[detvar]

Yeah, they save automatically. Don't worry.

thanks chad

 

[pezzang]

Does anybody know the official date that the scores will be released?

 

[ChubbyChaser]

October 10th

 

[chad5871]

October 10th

Yeah, good luck with that. 🙄

 

[detvar]

looks like comparatively fewer ppl took this test

 

[Mandy22]

"looks like comparatively fewer ppl took this test"


So what does that mean? Anything about the curve?

 

[pezzang]

It probably means that the curve will be steeper or inaccurate as the sample space is smaller. Since more people are better prepared (proportionally), if anything, the curve should work against those who took on Sep 8th.

 

[Muqabala]

i'm actually a bit surprised...i expected that sept 8th would have been the most popular date, since it was (originally) the last date offered in 2007 and allowed more time for preparation

 

[hisincognito]

are you sure less people took the regular September exams? I mean didn't they open up more test dates b/c the regular dates were full? Say there were less people taking it on sept 7 and 8th (the last regular test dates), wouldn't it only be logical to activate more seats for sept 7,8th then open up more test dates with limited seating? I think only less SDN people took the test then b/c my test center I think was full to capacity.

In any case, I heard the curve isn't based off of how you did compared to others who took it with you but to a predetermined curve (like how the SAT was or at least the old one)

 

[pezzang]

Yea, you are right. I am just expecting the worst possible senario so I don't feel too depressed when I get my score back.... my bad 🙁

 

[mshheaddoc]

Yea, you are right. I am just expecting the worst possible senario so I don't feel too depressed when I get my score back.... my bad 🙁

It probably means that the curve will be steeper or inaccurate as the sample space is smaller. Since more people are better prepared (proportionally), if anything, the curve should work against those who took on Sep 8th.

😱 DON'T SAY THAT! I want a better curve 😉

I think alot of people probably dropped Sept 8th but also remember, not everyone is on SDN. I had about 8 people taking the MCAT with me on the 8th.

 

[pezzang]

How does everyone feel about the MCAT now?

 

[ChubbyChaser]

Getting more nervous as time goes on. Counting down the days till october 10th