The 04/19/08 MCAT Club

[SDN2013]

38

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[premd]

..........................................................

 

[bluebellwander]

yes; i felt that there was not enough info (but there was some extraneous info)

I agree, L word, but wasn't the right thing

 

[rhlsg]

Man, I'm kind of walking funny. I'm so glad it's over!!!! Though, it's a little anti-climactic.

Overall, I thought the Physics, Verbal, and Bio were similar to the later AAMCs. I didn't walk out of there feeling like I did that well, but I never felt good after any of the practice tests. I did feel like I spent too much time on verbal and felt rushed. Here's to hoping that we all did better than we feel.

 

[nomis]

Man, I'm kind of walking funny. I'm so glad it's over!!!! Though, it's a little anti-climactic.

Overall, I thought the Physics, Verbal, and Bio were similar to the later AAMCs. I didn't walk out of there feeling like I did that well, but I never felt good after any of the practice tests. I did feel like I spent too much time on verbal and felt rushed. Here's to hoping that we all did better than we feel.

I feel the same way. Don't feel so good about it, just feel fuzzy fuzzy fuzzy. I feel like they could give you the raw score at least so we'd have some idea how we did. Overall, it wasn't too bad but I felt somewhat detached during the whole thing like I was on autopilot. Did anyone else feel that way? Well, I hope everyone did well.

p.s.
Only one orgo passage! I'm disappointed

 

[bluebellwander]

I feel the same way. Don't feel so good about it, just feel fuzzy fuzzy fuzzy. I feel like they could give you the raw score at least so we'd have some idea how we did. Overall, it wasn't too bad but I felt somewhat detached during the whole thing like I was on autopilot. Did anyone else feel that way? Well, I hope everyone did well.

p.s.
Only one orgo passage! I'm disappointed

Disappointed!!! You freak of nature I think you're the minority...so happy, happy joy joy that there was only 1 orgo But, I guess I'm not as smart as you....orgo makes me

In any case, don't worry, I think everyone is still dizzy. At least you didn't have to christmas tree an entire verbal passage!!!! I fee like such a dumb@ss!!!!!!

Oh well, here's a little tip of the wine glass to ya!!!!!!!

Hopefully, we'll all be like those lame-o people that come on here freaking out after the exam, but in a month all start bragging about their 33's and 34's...blah, blah....I'm happy if I don't have to take it again!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[utahjazz]

I got rocked.

PS, the wording of a couple of the questions confused me... I wasn't sure if they were trying to trick people or if I was overanalyzing it. Discretes took me longer than usual. I hate questions with graphs as answers... and there were 3 or 4 of those.

VR is usually my best subject by far, but a couple of the passages were positively brutal. I had to rush my last passage.

I ran out of gas for BS. Only 1 orgo passage and it was incredibly easy. The bio was much tougher... I had it narrowed down to 2 answers choice a whole bunch more times than usual. I hate it when that happens.

I think I'm gonna cash in on my Higher Score Guarantee, lol.

 

[DrLuv]

My impression of today's test is that it was more difficult, and different in style than practice tests. The BS section seemed almost entirely experimental, which leaves more room for uncertainty. I was NOT feeling the verbal section, but that has always been a weakness for me. I've already blotted out the physics section...

All in all, I feel like I bombed, and would guesstimate a score in the 27-30 range. But right now I don't care bcuz I'm way to happy to be done with it.

I want to say I hope everyone did well, but that would just lower my score now, wouldn't it.

 

[yaba]

Im dissapointed about only having one orgo passage too, but anyways I felt the ps wasnt similar to the aamc practice exams in that it was alot of passage based inferences you had to make. Usually I could just skim the passage, get the gist and attack the questions but this time I found myself having to refer back alot. This was extremly time consuming but I am in no way saying it wasnt fair, it just wasnt represenative of any thing I have taken before. By the way for those of you complaining about the shot gun passage I am completly with you on that. Where the hek did they pull that out of ? The Verbal was on the easier side and was a nice change from the PS. I must have had 4 main idea questions which was sweet. The Bio section was ehhhhh. The hawai five o passage sucked but so did the respitory one. Overall the BS section wasnt the hardest ive seen but its up there. I felt used and abused when I got up and wanted to hurry up and get home so I could sign up for the next MCAT.

 

[wes431]

Im dissapointed about only having one orgo passage too, but anyways I felt the ps wasnt similar to the aamc practice exams in that it was alot of passage based inferences you had to make. Usually I could just skim the passage, get the gist and attack the questions but this time I found myself having to refer back alot. This was extremly time consuming but I am in no way saying it wasnt fair, it just wasnt represenative of any thing I have taken before. By the way for those of you complaining about the shot gun passage I am completly with you on that. Where the hek did they pull that out of ? The Verbal was on the easier side and was a nice change from the PS. I must have had 4 main idea questions which was sweet. The Bio section was ehhhhh. The hawai five o passage sucked but so did the respitory one. Overall the BS section wasnt the hardest ive seen but its up there. I felt used and abused when I got up and wanted to hurry up and get home so I could sign up for the next MCAT.

The shotgun passage had so many numbers in it. It made my head hurt. Definitely took up too much time and I didn't finish PS section eventhough its always been my strength.

 

[random11]

OK, I'm having a small panic attack because I don't remember a shotgun passage at all. Can anyone give more details, just so I know I didn't somehow skip it? Not that I can do anything about it now, but perhaps it will ease the shock of seeing that PS score.

Otherwise, I thought the PS was difficult. I did actually run out of time. But I thought the verbal was on par with most practice tests I've taken, and the BS was easier...although I did have to guess on a one or two of those Hawaii spider questions.

 

[premd]

.............................................................................

 

[utahjazz]

OK, I'm having a small panic attack because I don't remember a shotgun passage at all. Can anyone give more details, just so I know I didn't somehow skip it? Not that I can do anything about it now, but perhaps it will ease the shock of seeing that PS score.

Otherwise, I thought the PS was difficult. I did actually run out of time. But I thought the verbal was on par with most practice tests I've taken, and the BS was easier...although I did have to guess on a one or two of those Hawaii spider questions.

There are different versions of the exam. I didn't have the shotgun passage either.

 

[random11]

Oh thank god. Thanks utahjazz!

 

[utahjazz]

Oh thank god. Thanks utahjazz!

No problem. Seems like we kind of lucked out.

 

[DrLuv]

I didn't have a shotgun passage either.....

 

[premd]

No problem. Seems like we kind of lucked out.

That just means that we'll have a harder curve though..

 

[mterp45]

well this test was exactly what I expected it to be, the hours I spent analyzing the reasoning patterns paid off more than I could imagine, especially for the Bio section.

PS- It was very fair. I didn't get bogged down with calculations, that is what they wanted us to do. I was able to finish it with about 25 minutes left, so I got the chance to triple check the ones I wasn't sure about and carry out the calculations for a couple so I could rest assured that my reasoning methods were legitimate.

VR- I hate verbal. Time wasn't an issue for me, but you simply never know with this section, detecting the patterns on this section yields a little less rewards since the detection will only take you as far as your reading comprehension abilities will allow it to. This section will determine my score on this test.

BS- The reasoning patterns analysis paid off big time. This section seemed to be heavy on syllogistic, and set-based reasoning and I also encountered some Abduction and of course, the MCATs favorite, simple deductive reasoning. The evolution passage was a disguised IQ test haha.

Overall, I think I was very well prepared for this test. I need to get my target of 35 and up, or I will definitly be retaking, no questions asked. I am confident in the sciences but I am not too confident about verbal, anything less than a 10 in this section will probably force me to retake it also.

 

[utahjazz]

That just means that we'll have a harder curve though..

I still had a couple pretty tough passages. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

 

[comoseshama]

I dont know about you guys but I thought today's exam was waayyy harder than any of the practice tests. I did all of them for prep and PS was amazingly difficult

I had trouble finishing PS and rushed through that sucker like a mad man guessed on a lot on it too.

VR was pretty standard as were the essays.

All in all, waiting for may 20 5pm eastern!!!
Glad it's over and now looking to ace finals, after this anything is possible!! haha

 

[Vanguard23]

The rifle passage(it wasn't a shotgun) was weird. Why the **** would a gun be set up like that? That made NO sense with the pendulum, slide and block. That took like 10 minutes out of my time.
And I found the physics section to be VERY much like Nova's Physics. Like, almost as if the questions came right out of it.

 

[neutronick]

Glad it's over!

PS: Felt this section was pretty fair; rocket passage ate up some time and I already realized I missed one dumb question in that passage =(

VR: Most of the passages seemed fair; there was a 'certain' passage that was all over the place, and maybe one other difficult passage. I'm not too hopeful (< 10) for a great score in this section though.

WS: I had a tough time coming up with some spot on examples and strong arguments, so this is a toss up.

BS: Seemed okay; the OChem stuff seemed reasonable. Genetics was average, evolution caught me off guard; I figured, cool passage! I'm from Hawaii! and then was blanked for a few minutes figuring out what's going on with these spiders...

I just want a 30+

 

[wes431]

The rifle passage(it wasn't a shotgun) was weird. Why the **** would a gun be set up like that? That made NO sense with the pendulum, slide and block. That took like 10 minutes out of my time.
And I found the physics section to be VERY much like Nova's Physics. Like, almost as if the questions came right out of it.

Did you finish the physics section? I had to take educated guesses on that passage just so I have enough time for the rest. Yah it basically used a bunch of physics topics all in one passage. Definitely one of the hardest passages I've come across.

 

[premed08]

I got rocked.

PS, the wording of a couple of the questions confused me... I wasn't sure if they were trying to trick people or if I was overanalyzing it. Discretes took me longer than usual. I hate questions with graphs as answers... and there were 3 or 4 of those.

VR is usually my best subject by far, but a couple of the passages were positively brutal. I had to rush my last passage.

I ran out of gas for BS. Only 1 orgo passage and it was incredibly easy. The bio was much tougher... I had it narrowed down to 2 answers choice a whole bunch more times than usual. I hate it when that happens.

I think I'm gonna cash in on my Higher Score Guarantee, lol.

when you say that the a few verbal passages were brutally hard, do you mean in terms of comprehending the passage or were the questions detailed and tricky? if u plz elaborate a liitle on the topic since I suck at verbal, was it similar to TPR passages or Kaplan?
you r done, go relax and party and celebrate until u get ur score back

 

[premed08]

seems like everybody though it was fairly ez test

 

[Particleinabox]

That was unexpected. It seemed much more difficult than AAMC practice tests, a lot of vague passages and questions.

I'm not saying that since I felt like I did bad then everyone must have done bad, but if people on average do poorly compared to other tests, are the raw scores scaled?

 

[utahjazz]

when you say that the a few verbal passages were brutally hard, do you mean in terms of comprehending the passage or were the questions detailed and tricky? if u plz elaborate a liitle on the topic since I suck at verbal, was it similar to TPR passages or Kaplan?
you r done, go relax and party and celebrate until u get ur score back

There was a dense passage on astronomy and then most of the questions were very detail oriented... there was no way you could answer them without heavily referring back to the passage (without paragraph cites). I spent about 13 minutes on that passage. The other passage I struggled with was about literature... there was a part of it that made no sense to me, and then there were a couple inference type questions I didn't like. The rest of the passages were at a Kaplan level, maybe a couple of them were a little longer.

I had 2 economics passage, 2 literature passages, 1 philosophy passage, 1 planet passage, and 1 sciency passage. The econ/philosophy passages aren't my favorite at all.

 

[fashafosho]

please tell me there were different version of the test today.
i DO not recall seeing any gun-related passages but i did get the x ray and the CD ROM ( which i absolutely hated!) and the hawaii on the bs. aarrrgh. also anybody think the osmosis one was tricky??? i was barely finishing on time and felt extremely rushed...everything was wayyyyy too long, esp verbal...and i practically went in circles on my essays...i mean, you can only argue point x that many times...after a while you have to just keep reinforcing it. okay i dont make sense right now but thats okay

Did anyone have problems with the shotgun projectile passage? Way too many calculations and time consuming.

 

[fashafosho]

There was a dense passage on astronomy and then most of the questions were very detail oriented... there was no way you could answer them without heavily referring back to the passage (without paragraph cites). I spent about 13 minutes on that passage. The other passage I struggled with was about literature... there was a part of it that made no sense to me, and then there were a couple inference type questions I didn't like. The rest of the passages were at a Kaplan level, maybe a couple of them were a little longer.

I had 2 economics passage, 2 literature passages, 1 philosophy passage, 1 planet passage, and 1 sciency passage. The econ/philosophy passages aren't my favorite at all.

i had the same verbal

omg the planet + economics + that stupid author from stupid texas! aaaah. why didnt we get any psych/ social theory passages, i would've enjoyed that. don't remember the philosophy passage though...hmm...you know what's weird; i keep thinking that i might have skipped passages/ questions and that my review sheet may have just said "completed" by default or something.....

 

[premd]

please tell me there were different version of the test today.
i DO not recall seeing any gun-related passages but i did get the x ray and the CD ROM ( which i absolutely hated!) and the hawaii on the bs. aarrrgh. also anybody think the osmosis one was tricky??? i was barely finishing on time and felt extremely rushed...everything was wayyyyy too long, esp verbal...and i practically went in circles on my essays...i mean, you can only argue point x that many times...after a while you have to just keep reinforcing it. okay i dont make sense right now but thats okay

Yeah, I was really confused by the X-ray passage and the osmosis passage. There were questions on each one that I had to guess on.

 

[treehopper69]

well this test was exactly what I expected it to be, the hours I spent analyzing the reasoning patterns paid off more than I could imagine, especially for the Bio section.

PS- It was very fair. I didn't get bogged down with calculations, that is what they wanted us to do. I was able to finish it with about 25 minutes left, so I got the chance to triple check the ones I wasn't sure about and carry out the calculations for a couple so I could rest assured that my reasoning methods were legitimate.

VR- I hate verbal. Time wasn't an issue for me, but you simply never know with this section, detecting the patterns on this section yields a little less rewards since the detection will only take you as far as your reading comprehension abilities will allow it to. This section will determine my score on this test.

BS- The reasoning patterns analysis paid off big time. This section seemed to be heavy on syllogistic, and set-based reasoning and I also encountered some Abduction and of course, the MCATs favorite, simple deductive reasoning. The evolution passage was a disguised IQ test haha.

Overall, I think I was very well prepared for this test. I need to get my target of 35 and up, or I will definitly be retaking, no questions asked. I am confident in the sciences but I am not too confident about verbal, anything less than a 10 in this section will probably force me to retake it also.

HAHAHA you had 25 minutes left on the PS?? HAHAHA sorry bro but no you won't be doing very well on that section. finish it 25 minutes early and doing so by claiming you owned it is complete bs. there's no way. the only way you could do that is if you didn't read ANY of the passages, which is a must for most of the test. so you're full of **** or will be getting a bad score. sorry bro!

 

[disorder]

okay, despite having my appendix out and feeling nauseous due to the flagyl and the cipro...

i thought the test was hard. definitely harder than the AAMC practice tests. VR and BS were harder for sure, PS was about spot on.

also, the second writing prompt was a load of crap.

 

[mterp45]

HAHAHA you had 25 minutes left on the PS?? HAHAHA sorry bro but no you won't be doing very well on that section. finish it 25 minutes early and doing so by claiming you owned it is complete bs. there's no way. the only way you could do that is if you didn't read ANY of the passages, which is a must for most of the test. so you're full of **** or will be getting a bad score. sorry bro!

WOW, Thanks a lot buddy I guess my confidence is alarming enough for you to go out of your way to question my integrity. I have never claimed to have owned the PS, although I do maintain the fact that I feel confident. I think being a physicist may have helped me out a lot. To answer your question, YES I HAD 25 min and 59 sec left exactly when I clicked in on the last question but I used the rest of the time to check my work, and I had 10 minutes left on the BS. The PS was set up so the seemingly calculations heavy questions could also be answered through reasoning and through an understanding and application of the concepts. The calculations route may have been laborious and time consuming for you so I symphatize with you, but I had no need to take such a route. I hope you did amazingly well on your test.

 

[neuroneato]

well, i think that's very good for you mterp45 that you were able to maneuver the PS with time to spare. I can sort of sympathize--i had a pretty easy time with VR (although that one about the irreproducibility of meaning experience vs. meaning...man, they really pushed the envelope with that one...and took a good chunk of my time blast it!!), but this is my strong point and I thought the passages were ok (minus the one about the stupid 'astrals' or something about planets...I felt like I needed to have a brain transplant to pay attention to this one). Anyway, overall analysis:

PS: hard, hard, technical, geez why? I related my misery to my mom after the test and she was like, "what are they training you guys for, so you can build lawnmowers?"

VR: reasonable, some passages were too long. The economics and planet one were like a slap in the already bruised face from the PS. writing was ok--i feel sorry for that poor person who pushed next b/f anything was written! you'll be ok, don't worry.

BS: ewwww, again too much technicality..i think there was only 1 physiology question and like 1 genetics question. BOO! Oh and I WAS overjoyed that there was only 1 o-chem passage, but I agree with that guy earlier who said it was the "ring of death" cycle. Seriously! I did not have time to count all of those Cs or to discern between these huge compounds. The spider one was weird, reminded me of a cartoon kind of, hehe. Ah, could have been better.

anyways, this exam was way harder than i expected. i took the aamc 3R and I agree, it was much easier and more straightforward...I forgot what i got, but it was around a 30 I think...this test today was too convoluted with overly-technical references. I found it very hard to do any kind of comparisons, my mind was jumbly toward the end, I was also on autopilot and fuzzy. I hope that i don't have to take it again!! GRR.

but, don't worry everyone!! you tried, and that was all you could do.

 

[Vanguard23]

What pisses me off is that I selected "green spider" for the one that was the original spider. And JUST as I had 2 seconds left, I read through the relevant part of the passage that it was the large brown one(by inferrence) and ALMOST clicked that but the timer ran out. DAMN.

 

[smeagol]

HAHAHA you had 25 minutes left on the PS?? HAHAHA sorry bro but no you won't be doing very well on that section. finish it 25 minutes early and doing so by claiming you owned it is complete bs. there's no way. the only way you could do that is if you didn't read ANY of the passages, which is a must for most of the test. so you're full of **** or will be getting a bad score. sorry bro!

Ouch.

Before you made sweeping conclusions about how he performed, you should have realized from previous posts that mterp45 has scored over 40s on some practice exams :\

 

[Particleinabox]

I'm confused. I didn't feel like I was prepared for that kind of test at all. I usually get 38-39 on all PTs, but I don't feel very confident about yesterday's exam. Is it typical that the "real" mcat is much harder than all the AAMC practice tests or was it this test specifically?

 

[Bacchus]

I'm glad everyone feels like I feel. I had the VR with the planet formation/stars along with the art passage and I don't remembere all the others. Overall, I was not expecting this exam to deliver what it did. I struggled through PS. BS was tricky/monotonous at times. My saving grace: the BS discretes and the writing sample which is not much.

 

[pingouin]

I recognize anxiety is running high for everyone right now, but please do yourselves a favor for me- if you see a post which is obviously meant to inflame, please report it (

) and ignore it, and one of the mods will look into it and take care of things. Whatever you do, don't feed the troll.

To illustrate:

What we want you guys to do:

What we will do when someone's being naughty:

 

[scarterinscrubs]

I'm glad everyone feels like I feel. I had the VR with the planet formation/stars along with the art passage and I don't remembere all the others. Overall, I was not expecting this exam to deliver what it did. I struggled through PS. BS was tricky/monotonous at times. My saving grace: the BS discretes and the writing sample which is not much.

e

Did you think the art/artist one was hard? (i guess we are talking about the same one). I thought it was alright, saw a couple of answer choices per question that may have worked though. The planet/stars one was rediculous. It almost put me to . The passages were too long.

 

[Nikki2002]

okay, despite having my appendix out and feeling nauseous due to the flagyl and the cipro...

i thought the test was hard. definitely harder than the AAMC practice tests. VR and BS were harder for sure, PS was about spot on.

also, the second writing prompt was a load of crap.

wow. that had to be rough. it's ok that you felt VR and BS were harder--the last time i took the mcat, i felt that the bio was ridiculously hard--way harder than any practice materials i had ever seen. I honestly believed I was going to get a 6 or lower--that's how horrible it was. but i still ended up doing really well and actually scoring a little higher than i normally had been during practice.

 

[Bacchus]

e

Did you think the art/artist one was hard? (i guess we are talking about the same one). I thought it was alright, saw a couple of answer choices per question that may have worked though. The planet/stars one was rediculous. It almost put me to . The passages were too long.

I didn't mind the artist (Georgia O'Keefe) one too much. The pulsar passage was monotonous. The democracy one I did not like.

 

[jknolls]

I was like a deer in the headlights. Level of difficulty was much higher than the practice AAMCs, especially Bio where, as someone else mentioned it, it seemed more like a straight up IQ exam in some passages and really not much about anything you learnt in your undergrad. I've been scoring 34's in practice and I don't believe I'll break a 30 on this one.

 

[Vanguard23]

Oh, I HATED the democracy one.

 

[rhlsg]

Man, anyone else got the case of the MCAT blues? I woke up this morning and felt really ****ty. Part of it I'm sure was from those shots I took last night, but the happiness of being done has worn off.

Like many of you, I don't think I did as well as I did on any of my practice exams either.

 

[DrLuv]

.

 

[nomis]

I get the feeling that everyone had a tough time with the test. I thought it was harder than the AAMC practice also. But it could be due to post mcat trauma. Haha, at least it's over...now it's just a waiting game!! If anyone has an access to a time machine, I'll pay top dollars for it.

 

[nomis]

totally hung over....and totally depressed. i'm mentally rescheduling my whole summer around a possible retake.

BUT if the majority of people thought it was hard, it's possible the curve works to our advantage right?? there is some hope.

I feel the same way about retake. I was going to sell all my mcat prep materials but decided to hold on to it until I get my result. O me dio!! I have to put up with the evil mcat reminders in my room for another month and possibly more.

 

[yaba]

I went out last night as well but couldnt really party because I was thinkin about how I might have to retake in a couple months. I just cant get over how hard the PS was, that was just brutal. I remember half through the section while reading the cd rom passage I was thinking when the best time to retake is going to be (i know its sad). Maybe it was just nerves too, I was really freaked out the first 30 minutes. I honestly dont know what to think but I feel everyones pain.
In retrospect, as for the other sections I dont think they were god awful as PS. The funny thing is before the test I kept telling people I didnt study evolution because it was never really on any practice exams. I was almost bragging about it, I mean I knew the hardy weinberg formula but that was about it. Then low and behold a frickin evolution passage about frickin spiders no less. Green, Brown, Maroone who really gives a s***. Luckily you could just reason your way through it for the most part, I saved it for last. I usually score in the low 30's on practice test but i'll be lucky to get a 26.

 

[w1ll]

I also had the PS with CD-rom, X-ray, and rocket. That Rocket passage REALLY killed me. I hated myself for letting it bog me down (I even consciously realized it during the problem). I spent too much time on calculations that I barely had time for the CD-rom passage and then completely guessed the X-ray passage except for one question. Can anybody tell me about how many questions were in that passage? UGh nevermind I don't even wanna know!

VR was pretty fair EXCEPT that planets passage. On the Texas artist passage I could narrow it down to 2 answers on some of the harder questions. That Planets passage KILLED ME. It seems to have been put there for the same reason the rocket passage in PS was, to slow you down and take up LOTS of precious time. There was literally no way to answer that passage besides heavy referral. There was nothing like that on AAMC's. I had to skim the democracy passage and just guess.

Bio was very fair, I'm glad there was only one orgo passage, and it wasn't too bad either. The rest of the exam covered a lot of topics but stressed a lot of evolution, and genetics. I thought it was on point.

I wish my testing center had AC... we were in a small closed room with a fan only and it hit 81 degrees yesterday. The fany didn't help either since were in cubicles with the PC. It was pretty terrible, everyone was complaining of the heat.

Thanks for all the help SDN but I need to get away from here for a month (more like a week) while I sulk over my 6 on PS...

 

[neutronick]

The post-mcat uncertainty is starting to hit me too...
Remembering a few questions and now I can't recall if I put down the answer I meant to put down, because I missed an inverse relationship somewhere...were we trying to put more information on the disc or not?
In any case, I still need a miracle