September 2015 MCAT Thread

Started by DAF16
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DAF16

DAF16

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7+ Year Member
Registration for the September MCAT opens up soon, so I thought I would make the thread.
Who else will be taking the test in September?
 
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How many practice tests do you guys think are best to do at this point in time? I have two planned up to my test date, 9/3, but I'm wondering if an extra TPR or two may be a good idea. I have otherwise been using passages that I "sectioned" off old exams with challenging topics-Biochem stuff mostly, though those are not the full 6-7 hr run through. Should I grab the extra exams?
 
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Re:Gibbward

I have a heck of a time with the experimental passages too! It's like I'm magically transported to the first time I ever set foot in a lab and everything is named weird, processed weird, and even smells weird! It must be that olfactory bulb-memory theory thing.

Anyway, I occasionally just go to the NIH website and find a recent article with free text on a Biochem based topic that interests me and looks like it's way over my head, and read it, analyze it, and try to at least understand the method and relationship between variables.

Just go to the NIH site and search for papers by someone you've done research with, or a topic from a passage you had trouble with (I had trouble with that macrocycle passage in the AAMC guide book for example),or any topic like "genetics and kidney disease" or just play around. It makes the AAMC stuff seem a little less intimidating and strengthens the speed of your reading and some things even start to look familiar!

And of course let us all know if you come across a really cool research article! 🙂
 
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@Dolly96 - FL 1 sucks - just use it for figuring out weaknesses and move on... don't let that score bring you down (whatever it was)... unless, of course, you got a 130 on it 🙂
 
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Doctor Dream said:
I think hyperventilating would make the blood more basic actually 😛 not to be the dbag that has to correct everyone :bag: More CO2=More acidic, Less CO2 = less acidic hehe
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You are correct, but when you're hyperventilating, it's because you want to release all the accumulated CO2 in your body, which at that point hydrogen ions increase and pH lowers
 
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I think we both got it. When I read your post in my head I thought you were saying hyperventilating would cause acidosis. Being a neurotic pre-med studying for the MCAT, a red light went off in my head saying I must correct this lol *puts bag back over head*
 
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Doctor Dream said:
I think we both got it. When I read your post in my head I thought you were saying hyperventilating would cause acidosis. Being a neurotic pre-med studying for the MCAT, a red light went off in my head saying I must correct this lol *puts bag back over head*
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Haha trust me I'm the same! I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing MCAT.
 
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Wow the positive vibes are overwhelming!

After crying it out I'm ready to report my horrid kaplan FL 1 score. Ready?

492. I dropped two points from the diagnostic I took last week. Psych is ridiculous as I'm not familiar with the terminology yet. This is very discouraging but I have to keep going.
 
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It will only go up from here. I believe in you guys! 🙂

When you guys are reviewing your FLs, what exactly do you guys do? And how much time do you guys spend reviewing the FL? I want to be as efficient as possible because it took way too long for me last time to look through an FL.
 
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Jennzilla said:
It will only go up from here. I believe in you guys! 🙂

When you guys are reviewing your FLs, what exactly do you guys do? And how much time do you guys spend reviewing the FL? I want to be as efficient as possible because it took way too long for me last time to look through an FL.
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Curious about this too! I'm going to start a full-time job soon and finding time for thorough FL reviews while also doing practice passages and minor content review sounds pretty challenging and time consuming.
 
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I usually spend anywhere from 6 to 10ish hours reviewing my FL's, but I'm pretty meticulous. I basically take the exam again by re-reading every passage, and look at every question and figure out why my answer was either right or wrong. As I go through I also make flashcards of any question that I got wrong or got right but wasn't 100% sure on. The worse I do, the longer it takes 😛
 
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Jennzilla said:
It will only go up from here. I believe in you guys! 🙂

When you guys are reviewing your FLs, what exactly do you guys do? And how much time do you guys spend reviewing the FL? I want to be as efficient as possible because it took way too long for me last time to look through an FL.
Click to expand...

It usually takes me longer to review each FL than to take it because I think it's important to go over how I got a question correct as well (of course in addition to those I got wrong).

Reviewing FL's generally takes a shorter time for me when I do it right after, the day after I take them, because that way I don't have to reread the passages to refresh my memory; I can jump right to the questions.

Hope this helps!
 
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Every day I oscillate between mild calm and confidence, and sheer terror! : O

Anyway, I have a notebook where I keep questions I have bombed and an explanation about what went wrong. I do go through every question.

If you have limited time, you could do a statistical analysis: review the passages you missed the most on; and if there are consistent topics you do less well on and therefore need review.

Good luck everyone! Oh 9/3 is approaching fast!
 
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Ohh gotcha. Thanks guys! I basically do the same as you guys but at a 100x slower pace. Haha. I guess I just gotta learn to review them quicker. I "retake" the test too and rewrite every problem that I got wrong in this one notebook that I have. For the ones that I got correct, I just skim through and make sure that I was confident on them; if not, then I wrote down notes for the questions that I wasn't confident on.

I'm gonna need to do this in a public/busy place with good WiFi because of social facilitation reasons. 😛

I took the day off yesterday and went to a fair, and the MCAT was plaguing my mind. I can't wait for all of this to be over so we can all enjoy our lives again. 🙂
 
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Looks like I've been a little overconfident in my studying process this summer, and 9/3 is coming way too fast.

Ooooohh this is not good. Would anyone like to shed some light on whether I should postpone my test to another date?

I started off this summer by taking the "Free Practice MCAT" by Kaplan and scored 34/45 (without studying), and then took the "Free Practice MCAT 2015" by Kaplan and scored a 513 after a bit of content review (with a 132 in Bio)

However, these have been less-than-full length tests, and on the first full length Kaplan, my score went down to a 506 (Using the 7-book set for full lengths), and recently took a TPR Demo Test and scored (127/NA/126/129) -- the test glitched out on my CARS section and gave me 5 minutes as opposed to 90 minutes to complete it.

At this point it's a little disheartening to see these figures drop significantly from how I was doing earlier. And with the test coming up in 3 weeks (and 1 day) I feel like postponing it would give me more time to study... but then there's the problem of school.

My dream score is 520+, and at this point I'm not sure what to think haha
 
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Dolly96 said:
Taking my break after Kaplan's FL 1 P/C section. What in the world was that???? I'm scared for the rest of the sections....
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Just finished this section and omg I agree, so much math, I had to straight out guess on a few questions because I had no idea what formula manipulations to make. :annoyed:
 
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Jennzilla said:
It will only go up from here. I believe in you guys! 🙂

When you guys are reviewing your FLs, what exactly do you guys do? And how much time do you guys spend reviewing the FL? I want to be as efficient as possible because it took way too long for me last time to look through an FL.
Click to expand...

Gibbward said:
Curious about this too! I'm going to start a full-time job soon and finding time for thorough FL reviews while also doing practice passages and minor content review sounds pretty challenging and time consuming.
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@Gibbward I also work with studying so taking the extensive time to review the tests like some of the posters here isn't really an option for me (sadly!), like you eluded to it would give me little to no time for passages and content review. Usually I start a new word document for each exam and post notes, theories etc that I got wrong and need to improve on. For CARs I only look at the questions I get wrong essentially, I find looking at the whole thing doesn't make a huge difference to me. Mainly I pay attention to the type of question I got wrong and why (i.e. am I using outside knowledge). For psy/soc I go through every problem and jot down definitions, theories that I got wrong and ones I wasn't 100% confident on when I picked my answer. Also, if theres a term as one of the answer choices that I wasn't familiar with I write that down too regardless if it had to do with the question at hand or not.

For CARS & B/B I generally do the same as psych. This is where the notebook comes out if I need to draw anything out or work through a mathematical problem. I try to treat these sections in more of an essentially "retaking" them type of way since they're the ones I struggle with. I take a small break after the exam then review CARs and P/C. The next day I do B/B and P/S.

@Jennzilla I'm slow too 😛 I need to get faster because I spend so much time reviewing sometimes that I don't have time for passages and making flashcards but at the same time I feel like my P/C review isn't thorough enough.

Anyone else feel like there is never enough time in the day?!
 
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jimmypod said:
Looks like I've been a little overconfident in my studying process this summer, and 9/3 is coming way too fast.

Ooooohh this is not good. Would anyone like to shed some light on whether I should postpone my test to another date?

I started off this summer by taking the "Free Practice MCAT" by Kaplan and scored 34/45 (without studying), and then took the "Free Practice MCAT 2015" by Kaplan and scored a 513 after a bit of content review (with a 132 in Bio)

However, these have been less-than-full length tests, and on the first full length Kaplan, my score went down to a 506 (Using the 7-book set for full lengths), and recently took a TPR Demo Test and scored (127/NA/126/129) -- the test glitched out on my CARS section and gave me 5 minutes as opposed to 90 minutes to complete it.

At this point it's a little disheartening to see these figures drop significantly from how I was doing earlier. And with the test coming up in 3 weeks (and 1 day) I feel like postponing it would give me more time to study... but then there's the problem of school.

My dream score is 520+, and at this point I'm not sure what to think haha
Click to expand...
You'll more than likely do exceptionally well if you're scoring 506 on Kaplan (Kaplan exams are tough!!!). Hard to say if you'll get 520+ though, once you get to scores that high luck can become a pretty big factor.
 
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Potential spoilers for Kaplan Fl2: DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT DONE IT!

I'll post what I do in a bit, but has anyone noticed that the BS section of Kaplan Fl2 introduced terms that were NEVER discussed in their own book?? (Ex: Lamarkian inheritance #57)

Also #59 regarding the most accurate generalization, I put B and crossed out A and C. The answer D doesn't really make sense to me in the context and direction of the passage.
 
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Doctor Dream said:
You'll more than likely do exceptionally well if you're scoring 506 on Kaplan (Kaplan exams are tough!!!). Hard to say if you'll get 520+ though, once you get to scores that high luck can become a pretty big factor.
Click to expand...

After perusing the forums some more and checking out a score spreadsheet, I was aware of Kaplan's difficulty, but not the extent of their difficulty. However, would it be wise to just postpone the test a week? I feel like that extra week will really help. Anyone with a similar experience (postponing tests due to anxiety) would help greatly as well :pompous:
 
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EDIT:
My Fl review strategy:

My plan is to devote 6 days following a Fl (take the rest of the day off) to reviewing and practicing material. I am only on my second week of doing this and saw a jump of 492 (fl1)-> 496 (fl2). Take that with a large spoon of salt because this strategy needs at least another fl which I plan on doing Friday before giving anymore credit to this plan and I took fl2 after finishing content.

Anyway, 2 days per mcat section (minus cars because I do cars passages every morning and review them before doing anything else). 1 day to reviewing the section in depth, and if I finish early I begin practice on my areas where I believe I can improve. The second day should be devoted as much as possible review of weak points and practice!
 
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How many Fls do you guys do a week?

I'm trying to do 2 but it is proving to be overly time consuming I feel like I have no time to do anything other than quickly go over the exams so I'm not seeing huge score improvements since I don't have much time to do passages or throughly review weak content between. But I'm afraid that doing 1fl a week isn't enough preparation.

@FutureD.O keep us posted after your next exam! What is your strategy for reviewing exactly? are you spending one day retaking the section and the next day doing passages and review on all those weak areas then repeating?
 
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jimmypod said:
After perusing the forums some more and checking out a score spreadsheet, I was aware of Kaplan's difficulty, but not the extent of their difficulty. However, would it be wise to just postpone the test a week? I feel like that extra week will really help. Anyone with a similar experience (postponing tests due to anxiety) would help greatly as well :pompous:
Click to expand...

If you feel that an extra week WILL really help, then by all means postpone the test. Personally, I think I'll never be completely ready/confident to take the MCAT, so one week wouldn't do me any good.
 
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I got a 505 on NS FL 3. On the KP FL 1 I got a 501. And that was a good day. I need consistency!!! I can't just go in and hope that I go beast mode that one day lol. My problem I notice is consistency. Like I can go super hot one day and cold the next! Today must be one of my hot days. I did 3 verbal passages from the question packs and did perfectly on all of them! And to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I did some from the NS strategy and practice and did perfectly on that too. I'm not sure what on earth is with me! My problem with Verbal is consistency and I just need to improve the Physical sciences in general. To me that is my key to a good score. Just hope I can improve significantly in a month. It seems improbable though.
 
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No you guys! Don't leave me alone on 9/3 lol! Seriously though, 1) has it been easy for you guys to postpone within a week? My test center does not have seen to have much flexibility, 2) Personally, I am just trying to consider whether or not I'm doing everything I can do to prepare among other life things (like we all have). At the moment, I believe I am, but if you don't think you are because of other obligations or health reasons or whatever, I would postpone it. 🙂
 
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geronimo11 said:
How many Fls do you guys do a week?

I'm trying to do 2 but it is proving to be overly time consuming I feel like I have no time to do anything other than quickly go over the exams so I'm not seeing huge score improvements since I don't have much time to do passages or throughly review weak content between. But I'm afraid that doing 1fl a week isn't enough preparation.

@FutureD.O keep us posted after your next exam! What is your strategy for reviewing exactly? are you spending one day retaking the section and the next day doing passages and review on all those weak areas then repeating?
Click to expand...

I'm doing one a week. I'll be sure to let you know. I'm on a study break and feel a little burned out for the day but hopefully after this break and some food I'll be good for another 3 hours!

For review I basically go through the exam again and categorize the topics in a list. I then prioritize what I felt I didn't know well or what topics I did poorly on. This usually takes most of a day if not the whole day. The reason it does is because I refer back to my book on those prioritized topics to recement my foundation for a particular topic (and in some cases actually learn more due to it being the second or third read over). The second day is practice based primarily on the priority topics.
 
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thanks! i still think it helps to do you own notes, cause i already took the april test, i am familiar with the terms, so i just copy and paste from kaplan and EK, and TPR and that doc will be helpful too thanks
 
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postponed my 8/22 test date to 9/12 to buy myself a few more weeks! going to be doing about 2 FL's a week. I've done Kaplan FL's 1-5, hoping to start doing some EK soon as well.
 
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