The 4/4/09 MCAT Club

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DMSbound

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So, we've got the 3/28 and the 4/18, but no 4/4/08 yet. Anyone else taking it on this date?

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My favorite part of the whole MCAT preparation proccess was tonight...

Going to the groccery store and buying a lot of junk food and snacks for tomorrow :D
 
I'm starting to see the light in the midst of this agony!!! Can't wait to finish! Spent the afternoon watching Fast and the Furious and then went to the driving range. Whether or not I do as well as I hope, I can't wait to be DONE!

Good luck everyone!
 
good luck everyone! I'm sure we've all spent a better part of our lives over the past few months worrying about this thing, so make it happen.

btw, anyone think that it would be a good idea to do a verbal passage or two before the test to warm up?
 
I don't know if i'll be able to sleep tonight, but i went for a nice hike in the mountains to take my mind off of everything...

in any case, good luck everyone

*I like my MCAT how I like my women: not too difficult, and massive curves*
 
Nothing like what was described by the 3/28 guys, this required a lot of outside knowledge especially in BS. I don't think I did too hot, but then again who knows I had to guess on quite a few in PS and BS. It was like one of the harder practice AAMC's but surprisingly the the easiest section in my opinion was the VR which is my worst section on practices.

BS>PS>VR

Hoping for at least a 30 so I don't have to retake....
 
I'm glad to see that the verbal has been better on the past few real exams than on some of my AAMC ones and EK practices. Hopefully that continues on May 2nd!
 
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Not sure how I feel yet. PS had tons of physics with lots of math, so I got caught up a little bit. I still finished on time and only had to full out guess on two or three, which is fine. I'm thinking (hoping) a 10 or 11
VR i thought was ok, nothing too difficult. The passages seemed longer, and a few of them (esp the first two) were tricky, but overall im hoping for a 10.
WS i didn't do so hot on the first one, but smoked the second one. I think Q-S.
BS was really tricky. The crab passage was brutal I thought, as you needed to infer soooo much information. I disagree that you needed a lot of outside information, I think it was like a second verbal, with tons of anaylsis of experiments etc. I think/hope I got a 10-11.

Overal, I would guess around a 30, hopefully a 32. It depends on how my guessing was. I took the one on 1/31 and got a 28R, I def think I did better than that. I'm anxious to see what you all think.
 
Yeah. The physics was pretty hard.. and i felt like my brain might not have at full force at that point. i thought the verbal wasn't too bad.. and the bio was on par with the practice tests... but it definitely did not require a lot of outside knowledge.. most of the answers had to be inferred from the passage. i'm a bit pissed at myself though. i stupidly answered an easy gimme question.. it was an organic chem discrete question.. near the end.. i know its only one question.. but i should have gotten that one right. :(
 
Did you guys feel like you marked/educated guessed a lot? I think i marked like 7 or 8 per section, and educated guessed on a bunch per section. Educated guess meaning i had it between two and went with the one I was leaning towards as opposed to eliminating all the other answer choices / flat out knowing the answer.
 
I got really lucky with this test. I actually found BS quite easy because I was really comfortable with the topics. Orgo is my weakest and luckily, there was only one passage. PS was difficult with lots of calc intensive problems. VR was on par with prac tests. Overall, happy with this test.
 
I agree that PS was harder than the AAMCs

Not ridculously harder or completely unrepresentative, but like you guys said pretty calculation intensive.

I am sure the fact that we were nervous too had something to do with it

Verbal wasn't bad actually. The verbal was maybe 1 or 2 paragraphs on average longer than the AAMCs. A lot of the questions were straight forward though.

Bio is pretty much what I expected to. A little bit of outside knowledge and a lot of comprehension based on the passage. My genetics and molecular biology classes definitely helped. Taking this bio section with only Bio I and II would have been pretty intimidating I think.

I hate crabs now too, did anyone else notice a theme about parsite, symbiotic relationships throughout the whole bio section?? There was definitely more than question about that topic

There was only one organic passage :D that was pretty nice
 
PS seemed to be the easiest section for me. Of course, I'm a math major so that would be expected. I don't really know what to think of VR and BS. I wish there had been another organic chemistry passage though. Overall, I felt like the test didn't require a whole lot of outside knowledge.
 
Hey everyone, I'm going to finally register and post after lurking for some time.

I'd like to first say, good luck to you all and hopefully we did well.

I don't think this test was all that bad, I'm a bit disappointed in how I performed but maybe that's common...we're all nervous and we don't get the gratification of seeing how we did right away as we wait in limbo for the next month. With that in mind, I didn't think PS was too bad, the topics weren't really out of the blue or over the top and seemed kind of similar to last few AAMC practice exams, with the exception that the passages were a lot longer. Personally, I'm kicking myself because I went too slow through the section since I was making sure I didn't make any dumb mistakes since that's normally where I am at fault with PS and thus I had to straight up guess the last passage. That and for some dumb reason I didn't complete the last set of discretes ahead of time, when I thought I did so gussed on those, so I'm not at all feeling confident on the overall score for PS even though the questions I actually did I felt were fairly straight forward.

VR the passages seemed longer, and it took me longer to do. Normally I finish with a 2-3 minutes to spare on the practice tests, this time I had guess the last two questions. The first two passages were pretty rough, and after that it was a fair examination.

BS, I normally go near perfect on that section for the practice exams so I felt pretty good. Only one orgo passage, not bad at all, and only a few orgo discretes. That passage on the capillaries, I just had a physio exam on that last week so hopefully that payed off.. although the terminology was a bit different, and the wording on the questions/answers were a little tricky. Bio was pretty straight forward, lot of understanding the passage, but the wording of the questions seemed a bit tricky. The crab one wasn't the end of the world, I was only annoyed with one question on there. A lot of it seemed like you had to be critical of the passage.

Best of luck everyone! Hopefully we killed it! I know I sat there for almost the full five minutes contemplating voiding it because of PS, but who knows. I've waited so long for this after first taking it in undergrad, so I'm hoping this is it. I was doing 32-36 on the practice exams and averaging 34.. but I'm hoping I break 30 honestly because I'm pretty scared about how PS will turn out.
 
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I was kind of bummed about the PS section because I felt that how I performed did not reflect my total knowledge of the subject. It wasn't that I thought it was hard... it was just long and I didn't get to review my answers. Also I was too focused on if I wanted my sound preventing headphones on or off. So... I am a little nervous about that section.

I felt that the VS section was pretty similar to the AAMC practice tests. There were some easy passages, some hard. Writing section topics were expected... similar to AAMC as well

I am a bio major and felt the bio was fairly easy. The lack of Orgo was great. I agree that it was a lot of passage analysis though.

Hopefully everything will be okay!! I really don't want to have to take it again!
 
PS---very passage based I thought with a lot of calculations. I ran out of time and I think I made flat-out guesses on 4 or 5 which sucks. I wish that I moved through it faster, and I also wish I looked through the entire section to get an idea of how long it would take me. I guess you can't assume that the real test will be exactly like the AAMCs in terms of length.

VR---Not too difficult, but the passages were a little longer than I expected.

BS---I thought BS was okay since it emphasized mostly bio and little orgo. Time was not an issue either and I don't think I even used my scratch paper.

So overall in terms of difficulty, I'd say PS>VR>BS
 
I did pretty bad with the timing. Concepts were not too difficult, but the length of each passage definitely threw me off (when compared to aamc practice exams). I guessed on multiple questions due to the fact that I either spent too much time on one passage or the length of all the passages limited the amount of time I had to answer questions.

PS- Guessed on multiple questions cause I didn't have time to actually sit and calculate the answer.

VR- Didn't do too hot. Felt like I guessed on every question... But that's how I felt after every sample exam LOL.

WS- Didn't practice this section so I have no idea what to expect.

BS- Had to keep going back to the passages to look at graphs/trends. Nothing like the last few aamc sample exams where I could get the answer from outside knowledge. Ended up having to barely skim the last two passages and guessed on many questions.

Overall: Glad to be done... not taking it a second time... realistically, I have no idea how I did... Not pissed off nor happy with my performance.
 
realistically, I have no idea how I did... Not pissed off nor happy with my performance.

I think it's impossible to tell how you did on these things.

If we are this worried about it though, it means we put in a lot of time for preparation, so hopefully we all did pretty well.
 
PS was a little rough. Ran a little short of time and guessed on 3 questions which I realized during the break that I gotten wrong so that was a little irksome. PS is normally by best section so I didn't like feeling crappy about that.

VR wasn't too bad and it seemed very similar to practice stuff maybe even a touch easier.

WS whatever..

BS was a lot of passage based stuff but nothing excessively tricky. I had a few 50:50 guesses here and there but nothing out of the ordinary. Not very much Ochem stuff though.

Overall: PS(most difficult)>VR=BS Glad it's over!! A little disappointed but nothing some beer won't fix.
 
I'm feeling a little strange because I feel pretty confident about PS and BS, but I thought VR was absolutely brutal. I flat out guessed on every question from the first person dinosaur passage. I never got the main idea and I really didn't know what was going on in that one. There were another 5 or 6 that I didn't feel comfortable with my final answer.

On practice tests I'm very consistent, scoring 10 or 11 every time, but I don't know about this one especially now that everyone is saying how easy it was.
 
My thoughts on the exam:

PS: Definitely heavy on calculations but the concepts were easy to grasp. No doubt it was harder than the AAMC's. Got a 12 on this section in my previous MCAT and hoping for a similar score.

VR: Surprisingly easy. The passages were about the same size as the AAMC ones. But who knows, English is my second Language and I may have screwed on some of the questions. But all in all, I felt comfortable after this section.

BS: Heavy on graphs and interpretation. Only one orgo passage (Thank God). The only passage that I had troubled with was the amphibian amputation one.

WS: Easy prompts, could have written a whole book on them.

I am a retaker and hope this will be the last time I take this beast. I just want to break the 30 mark.
 
Oh man that was certainly an interesting exam.
This is a retake for me so I was hoping to improve upon my 29 from last August but I've gotta say I'm not all that sure I improved.
The test was definitely harder the AAMC practice exams (I've taken 4 over the past month and I averaged a 33).
The PS was sooooo time-consuming and that tripped me up so that by the time I got to the last passage I only had about 4 minutes. I'm upset because I improved my physics so much over the past few months (I went through the entire Physics NOVA book which helped a lot) but I feel like I got shafted by this section.
The verbal was reasonable and I agree it was on par with AAMC practice tests
I thought BS was ok and was happy with the lack of OChem (except for one passage) but some of the deductive reasoning questions were quite tricky and required quite a bit of inference
Overall I'm disappointed and will try my best to just put it behind me
 
I'm feeling a little strange because I feel pretty confident about PS and BS, but I thought VR was absolutely brutal. I flat out guessed on every question from the first person dinosaur passage. I never got the main idea and I really didn't know what was going on in that one. There were another 5 or 6 that I didn't feel comfortable with my final answer.

On practice tests I'm very consistent, scoring 10 or 11 every time, but I don't know about this one especially now that everyone is saying how easy it was.

Don't worry, it happens. If you scored 10's and 11's in your practice AAMC's you should expect a score of +2/-2 from your average in this section.
 
Ok.... I was expecting a little worse from reading the previous weeks forum. Overall, it was pretty managable, and very conceptual.

PS-Not that bad, time was definitely an issue. I apparently missed a couple discretes because my scroll didnt work, but got them at the very end (rushed). I finished with a couple minutes left but I got a few passages I very comfortable with (Engineering major)

VR- Ugh, First two were killer. All downhill from there but its hard to get back into. Little longer that AAMC but not much more difficult.

WR-Easy, like always. (English is my first language)

BS-This was the section I was worried about. I thought I did ok though. There were some passages that were obscure, but overall they were managable. If I were to study again I would say don't bother too much with specific details. Its all about test taking abilities (Deriving information).

It seems that everyone thought it wasn't that bad. Curve won't be too helpful :( Good luck everyone
 
PS - i didn't think it was too terrible. the timing obviously the hardest part.

VR - not too bad either. a couple of crappy questions that i had to take 50:50 guesses on, but nothing too bad.

WS - my best part (sigh). alas, doesn't matter too much.

BS - i thought this was the hardest part. the crab section and the amputee amphibian sections sucked. also, the vascular pressure one wasn't too easy either. i think i scored terribly on the BS.

overall, i thought it was much more difficult than the AAMC practice exams. I was getting 32-35 on those, but i'm now hoping for a 30 on this one. oh well!

good luck, all!
 
Hey all...

PS- I felt this section was really hard for me. I don't know if it was because this was the first section or what, but I felt that it was more abstract and calculation based when compared to the AAMC practice tests. I just feel like I did horrible in this section because I had to guess on way too many questions. From the posts it seems that everyone felt that this section was a bit tougher. Hopefully there will be a condsiderable curve..

VS- I thought that this section was on level with the practice VR (AAMC). The first two were difficult, but the others seemed to be straight forward. Although the objective/subjective one threw me off a bit. I feel that this was my best section overall.

BS- This seemed like it was on pace with the AAMC BS. But, the passages relied more on inferring things based off on the passages rather than previous knowledge. O-chem was fairly straightforward. I feel like i did pretty average on this section though..

I starting thinking about retaking right after P.S.... P.S. was so hard for me...
 
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Just gonna warn you Knights, you can't ask information pertaining to the specifics of a question. I would recommend you delete your post.
 
PS - i didn't think it was too terrible. the timing obviously the hardest part.

VR - not too bad either. a couple of crappy questions that i had to take 50:50 guesses on, but nothing too bad.

WS - my best part (sigh). alas, doesn't matter too much.

BS - i thought this was the hardest part. the crab section and the amputee amphibian sections sucked. also, the vascular pressure one wasn't too easy either. i think i scored terribly on the BS.

overall, i thought it was much more difficult than the AAMC practice exams. I was getting 32-35 on those, but i'm now hoping for a 30 on this one. oh well!

good luck, all!

Exactly. That Amputation passage knocked me out but apparently, most people seemed to have a passage on melanin instead of this.
 
NP Knights. BTW, i didn't think the amputation passage was bad at all, but that damn crabs one was so annoying. The passage was very cut and dry, but the inferences needed for the questions weren't obvious ones and required a lot of extrapolation.
 
NP Knights. BTW, i didn't think the amputation passage was bad at all, but that damn crabs one was so annoying. The passage was very cut and dry, but the inferences needed for the questions weren't obvious ones and required a lot of extrapolation.

Totally agree with you. It seemed like you had to extrapolate knowledge on a couple of the BS passages.
 
Hey all...

I starting thinking about retaking right after P.S.... P.S. was so hard for me...

I was thinking about voiding after PS lol. I didn't think PS was hard, I feel fairly confident I got the questions I did right, I just ran out of time and had to guess completely on the last passage because I was so concerned of making dumb mistakes, because that was my problem in the AAMC practice tests, making errors from missing somethign rather than lack of knowing.

Don't sweat it. We all did fine I bet. I think PS messed with me mentally for VR, in that I was like I should just void this, hopefully that didn't happen to you.
 
did people have a melanin passage or melatonin? i did have a melatonin section, and it was the pits!
 
I didn't have a melanin passage.

PS- a lot harder than AAMC's. I was able to hit 13 on 5 of the AAMC's in this section with time to spare, but today I was just scrambling for time. I don't think the AAMC's helped me practice too much time management, as evident today when I had to randomly guess on at least quite a few questions.

VR- this section has always been bad for me, and I felt it was probably on par with the AAMC's.

WR- easy

BS- most of it was okay, lots of graph interpretation

Did anybody else think PS was brutal? Usually it's my best section, but today it just didn't click.
 
I didn't have a melanin passage.

PS- a lot harder than AAMC's. I was able to hit 13 on 5 of the AAMC's in this section with time to spare, but today I was just scrambling for time.

Did anybody else think PS was brutal? Usually it's my best section, but today it just didn't click.


I got a 13 on my last AAMC which was AAMC 10

The way I felt after this PS, I would be happy and relieved to get a 10
 
It's funny how it usually turns out. I bet many of you will get good scores on PS and maybe lower than expected on VR ( since so many thought it was easy---well, it means it was easy for all and the curve maybe harsh)
 
I didn't have a melanin passage.

PS- a lot harder than AAMC's. I was able to hit 13 on 5 of the AAMC's in this section with time to spare, but today I was just scrambling for time. I don't think the AAMC's helped me practice too much time management, as evident today when I had to randomly guess on at least quite a few questions.

VR- this section has always been bad for me, and I felt it was probably on par with the AAMC's.

WR- easy

BS- most of it was okay, lots of graph interpretation

Did anybody else think PS was brutal? Usually it's my best section, but today it just didn't click.

Yeah, PS was brutal for me. I normally average a 10-11 on the AAMC's, but I felt that I had to guess on more of the questions than I normally do. I felt that it wasn't as straighforward as the AAMCs, and that it was really theoretical.
 
It's funny how it usually turns out. I bet many of you will get good scores on PS and maybe lower than expected on VR ( since so many thought it was easy---well, it means it was easy for all and the curve maybe harsh)

Yeah, I have heard this from one of my TPR instructors. If a section is really easy then the curve will be harsh and you will end up with a lower score than you expected.

But, if the section is really hard (most on here agree that the PS was a lot harder than anticipated) then the curve really helps and you won't do as bad as you think...
 
I'm pretty much in line with the rest of the replies. I thought the verbal was fair. Maybe even more simple than the practice exams. I thought the dinosaur was kinda cool. I actually enjoyed it.

PS was terrible. The intense physics questions were not bad, but I spent so much time doing calculations, that i couldn't finish the entire thing. Down to 3 minutes and I had to guess on 8-10 questions. I didnt even have time to go back to my marked questions :-( . So it doesn't look good for me.

BS- hmmm I dont know how to feel about it. I was really happy that there was not alot of o-chem. But, there was way too much re-reading of the passage. and I was fortunate enough to have Melatonin, amputees, and crabs. how lucky am I?

I will be the first to say it. I'm about to register for the June 18th test. I hope you all did better than I feel. Who knows, maybe the MCAT gods will be in my favor.
 
wait....there was a dinasour passage?? i don't remember having one...unless i was reaaaaallly out of it!
 
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