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I haven't taken it yet but will be pretty soon. Are the scores received good indicators of your potential success/deficiencies.
So is the AAMC FL practice exam actually on par with what the real mcat is like?
- Thread starter ag9124
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This is probably the most commonly asked question on this forum.
The topics for both the practice and real thing will both be from the official guideline. As per how similar the practice replicates the real exam difficulty; that can(and has) been debated endlessly. Google reddit MCAT compilation of commentary for the new exam. You'll get tons of reviews and thoughts answering this very question. Additionally there is a spread sheet that has a list of hundreds of peoples practice tests scores compared to the real thing. Small sample size and all but still n=300 is alot better than n=0 or n=1.
One sentence cliffnotes answer to your question; a large proportion of people who took the AAMC practice test scored within 2-3 points of their real exam score. Some did better on the real thing. Others worse. Getting 80+% on all the sections is a pretty good sign you are ready to take the test.
The topics for both the practice and real thing will both be from the official guideline. As per how similar the practice replicates the real exam difficulty; that can(and has) been debated endlessly. Google reddit MCAT compilation of commentary for the new exam. You'll get tons of reviews and thoughts answering this very question. Additionally there is a spread sheet that has a list of hundreds of peoples practice tests scores compared to the real thing. Small sample size and all but still n=300 is alot better than n=0 or n=1.
One sentence cliffnotes answer to your question; a large proportion of people who took the AAMC practice test scored within 2-3 points of their real exam score. Some did better on the real thing. Others worse. Getting 80+% on all the sections is a pretty good sign you are ready to take the test.
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No one single test will be definitive, as all MCAT exams have their own content biases (even CARS), but the AAMC practice test is the single best approximation of what your real exam will look like there is, period. Like any single exam, it cannot be entirely predictive on its own, but statistical analysis on self-reported data has shown that the AAMC practice test shows strong predictability for those scoring 70% correct in a section, while it is woefully inaccurate for those scoring 50-70% correct. This is true of most practice tests, regardless of who made them.
The exam's major weakness is that is lacks a score scaling, so there is no way to know the actual raw-to-scaled score conversion. This will be a moot point when the AAMC releases is 1st official scored practice test next month. Then that exam will be your single best predictor and you will have multiple AAMC exams to take which will allow you to have grater overall predictability when going into test day.
Good luck!
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It is necessarily predictive of the specific content, but it is the best representation of the feel/timing/question types/etc. The CARS is spot on (since the content is irrelevant).
