Should I take the Old MCAT or new MCAT?

[t0rtillachips]

I am taking the MCAT to matriculate for 2016.

Reasons to take the old MCAT:

1. Less material (unless this is irrelevant because it make it less in depth)
2. More reliable test materials because it's not the first year so there's more reliable resources (unless this is irrelevant because the old prep books made the TPR, Kaplan, etc. were based on the same amount of available resources that AAMCAS released for the MCAT 2015)


Reasons to take the new MCAT:

1. More time to prepare
2. I've taken all the classes for the new MCAT(unless this is irrelevant because everybody else who's taking the new MCAT will have as well)

My main concern is the legitimacy of the new test materials. Could somebody explain if that's valid or not? Like, for example, if MCAT released a new official study guide every year for the previous MCAT with practice tests, then I would imagine that each subsequent year of such a study guide would make old test prep books from TPR, etc. more reliable than a prep book made out of the AAMCAS materials for one year).

Please cure my ignorance.

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[radkat101]

I'll just paste what i said in another thread:

Because there are a lack of study materials, the new MCAT's scaling and percentiles are going to be determined by standardized test taking abilities and raw intelligence significantly more than the current mcat until test prep companies can get some useful prep material published. If you are confident in these areas then you may have a competitive edge taking the new test. If you are like me, working my a** off to get a decent score, then you are better off doing so for the old one.

Remember, your score is not going to be determined by how easy or hard the test is, but by how you do in comparison to everyone else on test day.