I will more posts about the Biological section from other test days ASAP:
Most informative quotes from the June 18th MCAT thread:
"That was really brutal. Based on the length of passages/difficulty of questions I had no time to spare in any section. What was up with the super long questions in bio? So many questions seemed like mini-paragraphs!"
"BS - Not too much orgo (1-2 passages at most, and they were really straight forward), LOTS of indepth Bio passages with experiments where you had to analyze a million graphs and tables."
"BS: **** organic. Idiot reactions. Still the easiest section...would have got 10-11."
"bs-- 3 MONSTER orgo passages in a row. multiple mechanisms and reactions per passage. the bio part wasn't terrible though."
"BS - OMG! usually my best subject and I don't freak out. I'm more likely to get bored. I agree the question stems were really long and pretty ambiguous!"
"BS was going fine until i realized i had 7 minutes to go for the last 2 passages, had to guess on 4-5 questions. Are you kidding me with those 2 superlong orgo passages?? it was like reading the textbook"
"BS - ran out of time. Mechanism diagrams, seriously?"
"BS - I personally found bio to be pretty doable. The orgo passages were long, so I just read the questions first and went back to the passages as needed."
"BS was dumb, so much organic chem, boo. The biology didn't seem awful, a couple of tough questions, but so so much organic, I kept telling myself, 'OK this has to be the last organic question/passage' then BOOM here comes another organic passage to help your score, haha. I finished each section with about 3-5 minutes to go, but that really wasn't enough time to review many questions."
"BS....I thought this was by far the hardest bio exam i have every came across. discrts were aright but damn...3 orgo passages!!! damn my friends to hell for telling me not to spend so much time on orgo DAMN THEM! But even the bio passages did not feel right..."
"BS: had more orgo but the orgo part was easy....the bio passages that were hard were very HARD and lenghty...I found it harder than any bio passages I encountered in my practice test..nth like the AAMC bio passages."
"BS: Def the hard part for me. I felt like the genetics passages were really convoluted. Still not much orgo, which was nice. overall a little harder than AAMC"
"BS: Skipped 3 questions...that should give you clue about timing...I only had 1 (yes, one) orgo passage and it was fairly easy...the other bio passages were just brutal...they were so in depth, so long, too many graphs which were all really confusing and difficult to read (there were 4 lines on 1 graph and they all intersected with different shapes...my eyes hurt after this)...I hated everything about bio, way too many inferences to be made in such a short time...."
"BS: Holy mother...WTF?????? This section was ridiculous. I always had 20 minutes left over in the section with Kaplan and AAMC, but I barely finished in time with this test. There were two passages that I thought were just ridiculous...I don't know if that was because I had a massive headache by then or what. One was on some experimental thing with carbohydrates or something like that and another was on some experimental thing with the immune system. First of all, who the hell knows anything about an in depth immune system process? I took Physiology this past semester and we barely even covered the subject then, let alone in Introductory Biology. I wish we could have had 3 orgo passages instead of those two. That is EASILY my best subject. The most I ever missed on practice tests was 2 orgo questions, and that was rarely. Hell, I had over 100% going into both orgo finals. This was definitely the hardest BS section I have taken."
"BS: thought i did ok on this.. pretty much had to guess on the 2 hard as hell biology passages.. i thought the ochem was pretty easy. I'm kicking myself in the butt right now cause i missed a stupid question about fungi."
"BIO- HARD AS ***. This is usually my best section and I was expecting to find easy topics and definitely not so many experimental passages. WTF was up with that immune antibody and that bacteria passage. It was WAY more reasoning/critical thinking than I was expecting. They tried to even it out by making the questions a bit easier especially the discrete, but I was not expecting to have to knack away at my brain trying to figure out all the extra information in the passage. I don't even know how it would be possible to expect that after taking the easy AAMC bio sections. It's ridiculous..I hope the curve reflects this. There was more OCHEM than I was expecting also. I didn't think it was fair to give us those outdated AAMC tests and tell us it would be similar to that. Needless to say, I feel braindead. I hope I lucked out and don't have to retake it...ugh."
"BS- OMG!!!!!!! I was getting 13 on aamc tests and I dont think I even got a 10 on this one. Some realy long passages with confusing graphs and nucleotide sequences. Not very knowledge based, lots of pulling answers out of passages that were very long and confusing."
"BS:
Mitochondrial Inheritance
Wittig Reaction
Neuronal Action Potential
Hb/O2 Saturation
Lac Operon (Bacteria that has dynamic surface protein)"
BS: This wasn't terrible. I got lucky in that I took micro so one of the passages was fairly easy for me. I loooved that it was more critical thinking than memorization, because then I could just go back to the passages and think it through instead of fishing through my head for minutiae. The orgo, not a big fan, but it wasn't too, too bad. It was definitely difficult, but I felt prepared.
"The BS, wow! Harder than i expected! this was something beyond the Kaplan and AAMC. No Hormones, No Circulation, No Digestive, No Nothing!! All the stuff was the most random combination of items that I ever encountered. The Orgo was alright. I was happy that only one passage was there. However, there were more orgo questions without passage than bio. which is okay, not that bad."
"Like an AAMC but more genetics based. Memorize physio and understand cellular and molecular biology (cell organelles, enzymes) and moleculer genetics(histone acetylation....) I got some methylation questions, easy cell bio questions..........EK was great in review, aamc was great in showing me how they would test it. Though I don't know my score, I have a subconcious inkling that this may have went well. I had 2 ochem passages. One you can do the questions w/o passage (if you know alkene rxns) and the other questions could all be derived from the passage ( easy points like nmr of an element in the passage l)....AAMC really helped me figure out what types of ochem would be asked and how they'd be asked."
" The BS section was probably the roughest for me. I'm usually pretty good at this section but it seemed like the Bio passages were long and the questions took a lot of time to answer. I finished the section on time, but I think that's only thanks to a pretty lite Orgo load (only one passage that I can remember but it was an alkene passage"
"BS- hmmm. well, i can see why everyone thought it was so hard. i think i did ok, but here's why. i am a bio-med grad student. i've taken histo, anatomy, physiology, cell bio, biochem, IMMUNOLOGY . . . i was drawing almost 100 percent from things i learned in my grad school classes. i don't know how anyone could answer those questions based on 2 semesters of bio and a prep class. wow. those questions reminded me of ones from tests i've taken @ graduate level. jeez. so im sorry all of you got so supremely f*cked, and i hope the tens of thousands of dollars i've sunk into grad school have paid off in my BS score. hope orgo didn't drag me down too much."
"BS...I had mostly experimental passages!!! Which are not my favorite. Pretty straightforward bio though except the last passage. Did anyone have the last passage I had about mice and experimenting with basal metabolic rate, etc (I hope I'm not saying too much!)?!?! Ridiculous ridiculous graphs, not knowledge-based at all. Required really going throught the passage to pull out answers. I was running out of time and didn't have the time to go through the convolute passage to get them. I'm shocked at how much I studied wasn't on here...nothing about kidneys, digestion, endocrine, reprod, development, nervous system...everything I went through one last time last night. Also it was raining organic all over the bio, which I didn't appreciate. Wish I would've went through carboxy acid derivatives a little better. But the SN1/SN2, stereochem, spec reading parts I felt were easy. Feel like I could've gotten 11-12. All depends on that last passage which I mostly guessed on"
"Now biological on the other hand... I don't know if it was my brain being dead or what, but I thought it was just so convoluted. It seemed like it was all experiments and we had to think about the outcomes.
I can remember passages on:
Fungi toxin
Sickle cell anemia
Virus infection
High fat/low fat/some weird enzyme-- AHHHh
One o chem
And maybe another ochem??
It sucks, because right now I feel like I could have gotten anywhere from a 10-45. How is this possible?? Anybody else with those same biology sections"
"BS- Well was bull ****. Last time I checked the MCAT was not supposed to be research briefs about stuff that we have never heard of. I have never seen so many experiment passages ever feel like we were MCAT guinea pigs. At least the organic and the first passage was easy."
"BS - by far my strongest section. Never had to guess on more than 5 on any practice test. Always scored between 12-14. On this test, all there was only one organic passage which is my strongest subject and was really easy. Not to mention there was only one orgo passage. The biology portion, on the other hand, was rediculous! More microbiology and molecular bio than I can fathom on a single test. All I can say is...I wish I had taken microbiology, I wish I had taken microbiology, and maybe I had been alright!"
"BS: This was what I really liked about my MCAT. 2 simple orgo passages (didn't study this section much) + few discretes, and lots of genetics stuff, but not the molecular kind. (translations/transcription) Also very little physiology. I am kicking myself for messing up one problem though. I for some reason thought erythrocyte = white blood cells because of the the first question... -_- gg me. Hopefully, I did okay in the passage. Some fungus stuff that I guessed on but seemed easy? o_0 Like others have mentioned lots of graph/data reading so I guess more of a verbal biology? Anyone remember the amino acids for the one discrete? (2xhistidine as a hint)"
"BS: Usually my best section. Average was a 12 on practice tests. Very little outside knowledge required on this one. MAjor critical thinking stuff. The anxiety hit me about half way through like a brick wall. STarted with the chest pain. I really almost got up half way through. I had that mouse metabolism passage, the NET bacteria thing, etc, only 2 orgo, some other tough bio... orgo not so bad although I'm sure I missed some questions anyway."
Biological: Too much experimental, which I do not mind. I have been doing research for a while, but the questions were ridiculuos. I had to go back to the passage a thousand times on the mouse DA2 knockout passage. Very time consuming, the NETs one was stupid, compare values from the table that would match. I kept thinking, both of these answers would work.
1. Mouse Knockout
2. NETs
3. VACV
4. Orgo passage (They used symbolism, portrayed us premeds as the electrophile, but the message was clear. AAMC did a backside attack by SN2 mechanism on us, June 18th takers)
5. Fungus Toxin
6. mold Aggregate
*Armadillo discrete was a big WTF, same with the orgo discretes.
The questions had a subjective element to them (most in biological), nothing where you can say: "oh I know that, this is what happened, so it must be this".
BS:
Mitochondrial Inheritance
Wittig Reaction
Neuronal Action Potential
Hb/O2 Saturation
Lac Operon
The synthesis reaction with the 2 benzenes
Esters
BS: Freakin harder than the AAMC's and Kaplan's! Two crazy passages that required more reading and interpreting crazy graphs and symbols than any application of knowledge. I usually finished BS early but I ran out of time on test day while I still had 22 mins left for 2 passges!
The BS section with the experiments is classic! Drug treatment vs no drug. Introduction of a mutation, then see if drug still works. That is how most researchers go about testing the efficacy of their drug or to see which genes are responsible for drug targeting. I think if you had difficulties interpreting the graphs, try to get your hands on a couple primary articles and familarize yourself with interpreting it, I think it would be great practice (its tough especially if you havent had much exposure). Now all primary articles are not equal, some will be ridiculously hard to interpret then others, but you have seen what the difficulty of the mcat ones are (to be honest and im sure im going to get a lot of grief about this, but they are not really that bad). I think once you get the hang of this, the passages should be a breeze.
Bio: Seemed a lot harder but I think I did alright. A lot of critical thinking...