The 08/07/2008 MCAT club

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Josh L.Ac.

MSA/LAc & BSN/RN --> AA-S
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Took it for the first time on June 13th and I felt they should have bought me dinner first. Needless to say, I registered for a retake. While at first I was going to take it on July 10th, I moved for several reasons, including the realization that my first scores might not be back in time



So August it is. I on reading two books on ketogenic diets [to get totally ripped this summer] this week then start my content review next week. While it would probably be futile to use specific deficiencies from my first test to prep for the second, I will be going over areas that I had problems with, starting with a complete review of physics.



Anyone else?

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One of the problems I had with the AAMC tests was that I started to remember the questions by the second time I took the test, which made my later scores somewhat irrelevant. Plus, while getting an immediate response to an answer in a practice test might be good for a content review, it really seemed to make my score artificially higher.
 
One of the problems I had with the AAMC tests was that I started to remember the questions by the second time I took the test, which made my later scores somewhat irrelevant. Plus, while getting an immediate response to an answer in a practice test might be good for a content review, it really seemed to make my score artificially higher.

The last time I looked at it was almost 50 weeks ago.

And, I printed out the test so I could not see the solutions.

Seriously, I did not remember nothing.


I am still taking it with a grain of salt. I just had a hard time getting my sciences on AAMCs above a 12 last year. I have been battling BR and Kaplan and was amazed at the simplicity of the AAMCs in terms of the material. But, it does require a different reading ability on the BS. The biology passages are trickier than BR and Kaplan. Similar to verbal wording.


I do think I need to do more work on the computer because I have become accustomed to doing the old paper versions because I got them for free.

I need to get better at reading off the computer. That also could have something to do with my scores.
 
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you J DUB you, reading your posts makes me so scared since I am barely hitting 10 on the PS section lol. And if it is actually harder on the real thing like everyone says it is, well I am screwed. But on the lighter note, I guess not many peeps are taking it on the 7th, as seeing that the 6/13 thread has become truly epic. But maybe its a good thing lol
 
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Haha it's only epic b/c they've already gone through the test experience AND gotten their scores back...so yeah, it's gonna have a lot of responses in that thread ;)
 
Just took my first TPR diag...not so good.

PS 7 (had to rush the last couple of passages...plus, some of the passage material was difficult)
VR 9 (my usual average)
BS 8 (i did the last passage and stand alone set in 5 minutes :()

Any words of encouragement // helpful advice??
 
Just took my first TPR diag...not so good.

PS 7 (had to rush the last couple of passages...plus, some of the passage material was difficult)
VR 9 (my usual average)
BS 8 (i did the last passage and stand alone set in 5 minutes :()

Any words of encouragement // helpful advice??


It seems to be that TPR scores are lower for most people. I hear the verbal is insane. Just keep working and take more practice tests!! Be sure to get in some AAMCs too.

No where to go but up!!
 
Ya I have access to the online TPRs but I am trying to stay away from those if I can, since I think they will destroy my self confidence, and at this point the little self confidence I have is prob. whats keeping me from going insane. :(
 
7/14
AAMC CBT #3: PS 9 VR 9 BS 8
Today
AAMC CBT #4: PS 10 VR 10 BS 11

Any words of encouragement // helpful advice??
What was the problem?
You did not know the content to a few questions?
Learn it!
Combine with getting suckered into a few wrong answer pathologies or misinterpreting some question stems or data presented and you have yourself a mean score.

Of course I don't know what the cause is, but if you remain pessimistic instead of being encouraged by the fact you are able to correct what the problem is by test day, then the best advice is to take note of July 24th, 11:59 PM.

We all can do extraordinarily well on this exam.
The question is who will?

Purge the weakness within you!

Press forward!
 
Just took my first TPR diag...not so good.

PS 7 (had to rush the last couple of passages...plus, some of the passage material was difficult)
VR 9 (my usual average)
BS 8 (i did the last passage and stand alone set in 5 minutes :()

Any words of encouragement // helpful advice??
I've taken 4-5 TPR and 4-5 AAMC practice tests. My TPR scores are about 1-2 points lower in each section than the AAMC tests. I think TPR is good practice as long as you don't let it hurt your confidence.
 
Hey, do you guys think there is any truth to the curve being harder for our 08/07 MCAT?
 
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Took it for the first time on June 13th and I felt they should have bought me dinner first. Needless to say, I registered for a retake.

I hear that! 200 bucks wasted!

Taking mine again on August 5th, hoping I can get my pathetic little PS score up. If med schools want to keep me out because I can't do physics then.. well.. maybe I shouldn't be a doctor. :p
 
My thoughts are with you guys...as I play COD4 multiplayer while sipping on:


threephilosophers_750_glasssmall.jpg
 
Lol, Josh I hate you :). Wish I was doing the same haha. Well anyone's got good advice about curing burn out? And just general carelessness on exam problems?
 
Lol, Josh I hate you :). Wish I was doing the same haha. Well anyone's got good advice about curing burn out? And just general carelessness on exam problems?

I just take a few days off or do a "short" day.

To stop those stupid mistakes, I am trying to not think about the time and not rush. I tend to go too fast.

Also, I try to be alert and get into it.
 
Okay, I wanted to see how much better I could do now than last year so I printed out AAMC 10 and completed the sciences. I did this so I could not see my answers from last year. I honestly do not remember any of the passages. I have the out of sight, out of mind brain.

The AAMCs seem so easy content wise. They are trickier though.

I got a 13PS and 12BS. I looked over the stuff I missed last time and was amazed at how stupid I was.

I think BR did help me after all. I did not even have to ponder over questions except a couple.

Thought I would post this to help someone that may be trying to compare things.


Good job on getting those science scores up there. BR helped me tremendously as well. If I were you I would just keep looking at those BR PS practice passages/ answers. I felt stupid doing passages over at first, but I'm convinced it helped me a lot. Those few hundred physics/gen chem passages are more than enough material imo.

You've been working hard at this thing for a while now from what I've seen....I'm rooting for you.:thumbup:
 
You've been working hard at this thing for a while now from what I've seen....I'm rooting for you.:thumbup:

Thanks for the good wishes!!

I honestly have never performed what I should on a standardized test based on my GPA. I get nervous and blow up :mad:

I just need a 30 to be competitive at my state school.


BTW, I have been reviewing my PS BR books and going over the passages.

I am also working on Kaplan PS.

My motto is I might not beat it this time, but I might in Sep, Jan, Apr, May.

Eventually, I will get one that suits me and it will fall!!
 
I also consider myself a professional student, and my decade+ of schooling has taught me to only study if it is productive. If I keep needing to read the same sentence over a few times, I usually take a ten minute break.


Or I might use this:



Keurig-b50_detail_intro.jpg
 
this is sort of random but,
i think facebook is going to ruin my life.
im not gonna lie-being a facebook addict doesn't go very well with studying for the mcat...
is anyone facing similar problems -_-
 
I know that people say TPR test scores are usually lower than the real thing, but does this apply to all of the sections? Like, would a 9 or 10 in bio translate to a point or 2 higher on the real thing?
 
For the people who've taken the AAMC tests, what were your thoughts on the difficulty of them? I've only taken AAMC 3-5 with the intention of splitting up 6-10 over the next 2.5 weeks. I thought AAMC 4's Physical Sciences was ridiculously easy but struggled somewhat on the Biological Sciences. AAMC 5 pretty much kicked my ass while I thought AAMC 3 was pretty much in the middle for both Biological and Physical in terms of difficulty. Only 17 more days! :(
 
I know that people say TPR test scores are usually lower than the real thing, but does this apply to all of the sections? Like, would a 9 or 10 in bio translate to a point or 2 higher on the real thing?

That's what people told me about Kaplan too. I would take that with a grain of salt. The first time I took the test, I was scoring 9's for the Sciences on Kaplan tests and 10 & 11's with AAMC practice tests. On the real test day, I got bitch slapped with 9's. In my opinion, the real thing is harder than the practice AAMC's while easier than the Kaplan/TPR tests.
 
In my opinion, the real thing is harder than the practice AAMC's while easier than the Kaplan/TPR tests.

I think that is what many would say.

I think the PS passages are more like Kaplan in terms of difficulty but the questions I saw were almost all conceptual.

The BS passages are more from the passage and sort of tricky like the AAMCs but the passages are more dense and harder to get the answers out of.

Verbal, there seems to be one or two hard passages and some say the length is longer. Personally, I did not notice that, but I read fast.
 
In my opinion, the real thing is harder than the practice AAMC's while easier than the Kaplan/TPR tests.

JDUB and tmntdonjuan-- so if we do practice AAMCs and then Kaplan or TPR FL tests, we should be getting good preparation for the real MCAT (whose difficulty is in between those two)?

If you guys took Kaplan FLs how did AAMCs & Kaplan FL exam their scores compare to your real MCAT scores?
 
I was scoring 27 on average for the Kaplan FL and 29-31 on the AAMC practice tests. On the real deal, I ended up with a 27. One thing I can attribute to scoring lower on the actual test was lack of knowledge in key content areas. The physical sciences portion had an entire passage devoted to lenses, something I didn't know very well. The biological sciences had a lot of stuff on genetics, another concept I didn't cover quite thoroughly. In conclusion Kaplan FL tests, while providing good practice, are not as important as the AAMC tests. The structure of Kaplan questions is different from real AAMC questions. Do both if you can, but if I had to choose between the two, I would take AAMC.

Edit: I should probably explain what I mean by AAMC practice tests<AAMC real test< Kaplan FL tests. Kaplan FL tests are harder than both the AAMC practice tests because their questions focus more on details. The AAMC real test is harder than the AAMC practice tests because, although it's the same style of questions, there's more difficult questions included. Hope that helps.

JDUB and tmntdonjuan-- so if we do practice AAMCs and then Kaplan or TPR FL tests, we should be getting good preparation for the real MCAT (whose difficulty is in between those two)?

If you guys took Kaplan FLs how did AAMCs & Kaplan FL exam their scores compare to your real MCAT scores?
 
Edit: I should probably explain what I mean by AAMC practice tests<AAMC real test< Kaplan FL tests. Kaplan FL tests are harder than both the AAMC practice tests because their questions focus more on details. The AAMC real test is harder than the AAMC practice tests because, although it's the same style of questions, there's more difficult questions included. Hope that helps.

Thanks for this post- definitely helps to clarify. Very specific and thereby helpful. So I guess you felt your real MCAT was more like AAMC practice tests plus a little more difficulty? (And Kaplan FLs are too detail-oriented, thereby harder than the real deal)
 
Thanks for this post- definitely helps to clarify. Very specific and thereby helpful. So I guess you felt your real MCAT was more like AAMC practice tests plus a little more difficulty? (And Kaplan FLs are too detail-oriented, thereby harder than the real deal)

I think you got it!
 
10/2007 - Kaplan Diagnostic - 18 - PS 5 / VR 7 / BS 6 (lol)
2/17/08 - Kaplan FL #1 - - 23 - PS 5 / VR 9 / BS 9
3/30/08 - Kaplan FL #2 - - 31 - PS 9 / VR 12 / BS 10
then I actually began studying, other than just taking tests...
5/23/08 - Kaplan FL #3 - - 34 - PS 11 / VR 12 / BS 10
5/29/08 - Kaplan FL #4 - - 36 - PS 11 / VR 11 / BS 14
6/3/08 - AAMC FL #3- - 33 - PS 11 / VR 11 / BS 11
6/5/08 - AAMC FL #4- - 31 - PS 9 / VR 11 / BS 11
6/7/08 - AAMC Test #6 - Only took PS... got a 10. :)
6/13/08 - Felt ready, relaxed, focused. I usually test well, so I felt pretty good.
Then, I took the June 13th beast.... and got a 28!!! PS 8 VR 10 BS 10
So since I of course only found out about that on July 14th, I had to sign up again for another test date, Aug 5th, and get cracking with only 3 weeks to go before the test! I figured I'd focus on content more than strategy, since I was testing well before... so I studied content furiously for a week so far, and last night I took AAMC # 5, which is supposed to be hard (right?) and even though it felt difficult, I got a nicely balanced 10/11/11 for a 32! That means I'm doin' well so far... hopefully I can keep it up and cover all the content before 8/5... it REALLY helped to have that content fresh.
Just some words of encouragement for anyone else who's doing a big crunch for 8/5 after getting rocked in June!! Keep it up, you can do it!:thumbup:
 
We have 2 weeks left and I am still seriously struggling with verbal. Suggestions??? Do every passage in the q-bank?
 
We have 2 weeks left and I am still seriously struggling with verbal. Suggestions??? Do every passage in the q-bank?

You might want to try taking the later AAMC tests and afterward, reviewing each question, the reason why the wrong answers are wrong and the right ones aren't. I mean every question. Get into it... see if that helps.
 
You might want to try taking the later AAMC tests and afterward, reviewing each question, the reason why the wrong answers are wrong and the right ones aren't. I mean every question. Get into it... see if that helps.

12six - what about for earlier AAMC tests? Or would that not be as useful to do?

I am really trying to work on Verbal also and am not sure what I can do (besides "more practice" - I plan to do more practice, but in addition to "more practice" I guess!). thanks
 
Well, I just knocked out #9 full length. Got a 33 (12PS, 9VR, 12BS). I just cant seem to get that verbal score up. I just get killed on one or two passages and it screws it all up. It usually happens on the literature/art analysis or mythology-type passages. It is getting very frustrating.
 
i'm taggin' this beast on the 7th as well.

Is anybody doing ek 1001 biology questions? if so i had a question about #408. why is vasodilation linked with sympathetic? The explanation says that norepinep. release causes blood to shunt away from the skin, which would seem like vasoconstriction?

am i missing something? o_O
 
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Tell me about it! When I started my MCAT prep and I saw these "verbal=hard, what can i do to improve" posts I never expected that would be the section I'd have trouble with. Now it is, and I am really going to try to buckle down and pull it up!
 
Well I wish I had something different to suggest, but since I kind of just "get" verbal, and always have "gotten" this kind of thing (I did pretty well on the SAT verbal section) the only thing I personally can suggest is practice, because it seems to help some of my friends. Maybe there's another thread where someone found the "secret" so to speak, but from what I hear, it's either practice practice practice or EK 101 - which I have not tried.

As far as earlier AAMC's, they will ALL help. I think getting in the test's head is the best way to beat it, and the best way to get in its head is to read every single answer explanation they make available. The earlier ones, though they're said to be easier, will still follow similar patterns, usually. And even if they ARE easier, you can use their distinctions of which questions are easy/medium/hard, I find those pretty accurate.

But again, there's still lots of time left for practice. You just have to maximize the days left before the exam.
 
Is there any benefit to doing a few science sections untimed on the AAMC exams, for getting a feel of how aamc asks their questions ?

Maybe for confidence?
 
Tell me about it! When I started my MCAT prep and I saw these "verbal=hard, what can i do to improve" posts I never expected that would be the section I'd have trouble with. Now it is, and I am really going to try to buckle down and pull it up!

Hi, I'm in the same situation too. In the beginning, I thought the sciences were going to be the most difficult sections to improve upon but I am actually having the most trouble with verbal..I underestimated it, I never imagined the verbal would give me so much grief. I would be so happy to get an 8 or 9 in verbal on the actual Mcat, I know this sounds pathetic but that's how bad it is for me.
 
Thanks JDUB. I heard that Kaplan FL9 is one of the most accurate in terms of reflecting the new MCAT, and some people thought it was even more accurate than AAMC CBT10 (excluding Verbal).

I'll be taking it soon :)
 
Well, I just took the PS section of Kaplan FL#9 instead of AAMC #6 which I was going to do today, on your advice. And let me just say that my brain is sore... I hadn't taken a Kaplan test in a while, I forgot what it feels like. Thanks for reminding me hehe
 
Well, I just took the PS section of Kaplan FL#9 instead of AAMC #6 which I was going to do today, on your advice. And let me just say that my brain is sore... I hadn't taken a Kaplan test in a while, I forgot what it feels like. Thanks for reminding me hehe


To me, the real PS is more like Kaplan except for all the calculations.

BS, is somewhere in the middle.
 
I am really not happy right now. I should be happy, though, since I just got a 34 on the test that everyone says is now reflecting the current MCAT the best, i.e. Kaplan FL #9... but I'm really more annoyed. The entire time through the test I felt like I was getting rocked, which is fine, that happens, but what really bothered me was that I caught at LEAST 4 or 5 awful typos, really terrible, and one that was incredibly misleading and totally convoluted the meaning of a chart. It's really unacceptable when I'm paying so much for this course to find these kinds of errors. The saddest part of it all, though, is that if this was a real MCAT, I might've voided it, and Kaplan tells me I got a 34. Great. But now I don't know if that means that on Test Day, the curve will be just as friendly. How will I know to void? For scoring so high, and paying so much money, I feel woefully underprepared right now. Not to mention the countless topics I now feel like I don't know at all because I was cold-guessing on too many questions... as you can tell I ain't happy.
 
I am really not happy right now. I should be happy, though, since I just got a 34 on the test that everyone says is now reflecting the current MCAT the best, i.e. Kaplan FL #9... but I'm really more annoyed. The entire time through the test I felt like I was getting rocked, which is fine, that happens, but what really bothered me was that I caught at LEAST 4 or 5 awful typos, really terrible, and one that was incredibly misleading and totally convoluted the meaning of a chart. It's really unacceptable when I'm paying so much for this course to find these kinds of errors. The saddest part of it all, though, is that if this was a real MCAT, I might've voided it, and Kaplan tells me I got a 34. Great. But now I don't know if that means that on Test Day, the curve will be just as friendly. How will I know to void? For scoring so high, and paying so much money, I feel woefully underprepared right now. Not to mention the countless topics I now feel like I don't know at all because I was cold-guessing on too many questions... as you can tell I ain't happy.

Great score!! I feel your pain. I got some of those errors too!!

Just take it for what it is worth!!
 
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