Hey guys
I hope you're studying well. I had a quick question for the actual mcat. The times breaks between sections are they actually enforced? Is the exam start time enforced as well? Ie will the exam start at 8 sharp? I just ask because I like to write out some equations and reminders beforehand thus having more than a 10 minute break to relax, cool off, and clear my mind.
I noticed other threads which say the aamc re administers questions from precious exams. How true is that?
And on another note, ppl are saying that bio is becoming more like verbal. Is that because of the experiment based passages? Do the current aamc practice exams give a good indicator of the difficulty of the exam?
Thanks in advance
R
Great stuff from Gauss44 above. I'll just supplement a few thoughts but he's got it all pretty much covered.
1) In terms of writing out equations and reminders beforehand, this heavily depends on the test center. As a rule, you are supposed to be allowed to.. however, many testing centers don't let you. Clear it up with your test center in advance and adjust accordingly. If you are seen to be taking excessive breaks before or during the test, the testing center staff will warn you. They do have the authority to report your test as abnormal testing conditions if you take too long and I have seen/heard of people being asked to leave because they violated certain testing policies (mostly extremely long breaks and/or using review materials between breaks). Don't plan on taking more than the allotted break time but don't worry if you are stuck waiting in line to get back into the room, the test won't start without you. Just don't push it.
2) Not from practice exams (though similar topics are tested and some topics are AAMC favorites) but from previous MCAT administrations, yes. The way they get the scale, to make every test equal in difficulty, for the MCAT is by putting in experimental questions into each test. These aren't necessarily easy or hard.. or on a new subject.. they are just questions they designed and want to get legitimate data for. They will then take these questions and create an MCAT with them, with perceived similar difficulty to all other MCATs. This has two consequences for the test taker. First, some questions you will face will not count towards your score. You can't tell the difference so you should just forget about this. Second, some questions will be repeated from previous testing administrations. This also has very little impact since the AAMC likely does a good job of creating a MCAT using questions spread across years of experimental questions in MCATs. You'd be very lucky to see a question repeated on a retake, let alone enough that it gives you a significant advantage.
3) I don't like how people are saying Bio is becoming more like Verbal, but there is a point there. Bio is trending more towards critical thinking than content. As in, you don't really need to know everything down pat to get a question right.. you're able to deduce and derive the answer using the passage's text. In this way, its very similar to verbal where all the information you need to get a question right is contained within the passage. There are more experimental passages as well, since this makes it much easier to design critical thinking-based questions (think: given this data, what did the experiment prove type questions). The later AAMCs (7-11) do a better job of simulating this than the earlier AAMCs, which are much more content driven.
Tests aren't really ever more or less difficult (remember, they design the test so a 30 is a 30 no matter the testing date) but for an individual, it can be perceived as such based on your personal strengths and weaknesses. If you get a test with a ton of weaknesses, you're going to think it was crazy hard.. but the guy next to you who has different weaknesses and thus got a test full of strengths will think it was a walk in the park. It's all relative to the test taker.
