The Official 8/17/2012 MCAT Thread

Started by LaurenMarie
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LaurenMarie

LaurenMarie

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Let's all dread this date together! :scared:


How/when are you guys studying? (i.e. SN2ed, Kaplan, TBR)


EDIT: I'm attaching simple charts I made to keep track of my progress for each set of passages for the SN2ed schedule. Its helpful to monitor how you are progressing and will show you what areas to work on. ENJOY 🙂
 

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Imperiex said:
4 and 7, same exact ps/bs/v scores lol

At least I'm consistent? :laugh:
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lol true! How consistent have your verbal scores on aamcs been? Mine fluctuate a lot which scares me. I've gotten 11, 10, and 8 on aamc 3, 4 and 5 respectively. :scared:

EDIT: I guess I should have asked if you've taken other aamcs besides those two. Lol because obviously your VR was the same on those
 
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LaurenMarie said:
lol true! How consistent have your verbal scores on aamcs been? Mine fluctuate a lot which scares me. I've gotten 11, 10, and 8 on aamc 3, 4 and 5 respectively. :scared:

EDIT: I guess I should have asked if you've taken other aamcs besides those two. Lol because obviously your VR was the same on those
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I think verbal consistency has to do with what kind of passages are given, because personally I feel like I'm good at certain kinds of passages (like science or art) and bad at others (law.... UGH). So if I got a bunch of law ones the score might drop 🙁

Taking the next aamc in a couple days, we'll see if the score budges lol. Any tips on increasing the sciences? 😛
 
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Ugh it seems like I'm still stuck at an 11 on bio even though I just devoted an entire week doing the first 1/3 of all the passages in both TBR bio and ochem and re-reading my textbooks.. -_- this is frustrating :scared:
 
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daniwangsta said:
Ugh it seems like I'm still stuck at an 11 on bio even though I just devoted an entire week doing the first 1/3 of all the passages in both TBR bio and ochem and re-reading my textbooks.. -_- this is frustrating :scared:
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Haha...me too! I've taken aamc3, aamc4, and aamc5 and my BS scores have been 12, 11, and 11, respectively...ugh...

VR has improved somewhat...aamc 3 (6) and aamc4 (10) and aamc5 (9)...hopefully things can continue upward.

I can't wait till I can resume real life...haha.

Does anyone here suffer from "MCAT insomnia"? 😴 I can't fall asleep anymore and thus wake up later than I'd like. I don't even drink coffee anymore. My body hates me. Any tips on resetting one's biological clock? I try working out early in the evenings and it still doesn't get me tired enough to fall asleep at a decent time.

Anyway, I'll be taking aamc7 on Sunday and will update progress (hopefully) around them. Only 2 more week!!!! :xf:
 
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Me911 said:
Haha...me too! I've taken aamc3, aamc4, and aamc5 and my BS scores have been 12, 11, and 11, respectively...ugh...

VR has improved somewhat...aamc 3 (9) and aamc4 (10) and aamc5 (9)...hopefully things can continue upward.

I can't wait till I can resume real life...haha.

Does anyone here suffer from "MCAT insomnia"? 😴 I can't fall asleep anymore and thus wake up later than I'd like. I don't even drink coffee anymore. My body hates me. Any tips on resetting one's biological clock? I try working out early in the evenings and it still doesn't get me tired enough to fall asleep at a decent time.

Anyway, I'll be taking aamc7 on Sunday and will update progress (hopefully) around them. Only 2 more week!!!! :xf:
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I've definitely been having this same problem lol try to go to bed relatively early, end up staying up thinking about studying the next day and sleep in. Alas, only 2 more weeks of this torture!
 
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This is so amazing.

evc138.jpg
 
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Just did AAMC 10 and my PS is still stuck at 12 lol. I don't understand how I can study a section so much and see so little improvement. Not that I'd complain if I got a 12 in PS on the real deal, but it's making me a little nervous knowing that I have to do excellent in BS to compensate for even a 1 point drop in either VR or PS if I want to get a 36.

How's everyone else doing? Feeling ready?
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
Just did AAMC 10 and my PS is still stuck at 12 lol. I don't understand how I can study a section so much and see so little improvement. Not that I'd complain if I got a 12 in PS on the real deal, but it's making me a little nervous knowing that I have to do excellent in BS to compensate for even a 1 point drop in either VR or PS if I want to get a 36.

How's everyone else doing? Feeling ready?
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Problem solving bro, once u hit a max like me 12 in PS then its your ability to solve and reason thru problems beyond content knowledge.
 
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Does anybody else not feel like giving a damn anymore? No motivation to go through the books again, always feel like my mistakes on questions come from misreadings/stupidity/random bits of information that got left out, three FLs left, but ugh, I'd rather this just be over.

39 on AAMC 8 and finally cracked 13 on VR; I enjoy.

Anybody know where to find some pure experimental passages for BS?
 
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tyrannitar said:
Anybody know where to find some pure experimental passages for BS?
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The kaplan 1001 bio book has passages, so you could probably nit pick through them to find experimental ones. Those have been the worst for me too.

35 on AAMC 7 on friday after coming from 39 Kaplan 7/ 40 Kaplan 8/ 38 AAMC 5. Lets see what AAMC 8 has for me today.
 
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gyropath said:
I'm so burn out. I'm stuck in the 36-38 range on every practice test, I just can't seem to break through those last few questions to hit 40.
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Don't get yourself worked up over it. Hitting a score above 38 is more about luck and innate intelligence than anything else. Getting a 40 is just psychological anyway; in reality every score 38 and above is 99th percentile so they're effectively the same score.
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
Don't get yourself worked up over it. Hitting a score above 38 is more about luck and innate intelligence than anything else. Getting a 40 is just psychological anyway; in reality every score 38 and above is 99th percentile so they're effectively the same score.
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haha, so because I felt like procrastinating, I did some searching on the interwebz and found this: https://www.aamc.org/download/270906/data/table24-mcatgpagridall0911.pdf and I lol'ed at the one kid who got accepted with a 3.7 to 4.0 GPA and a 5-14 MCAT. dude must have had some killer reqs/ECs/essays
 
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Give me a 28+ and I'm happy. I've studied almost everyday for the past 83 days (probably 7-8 break days thrown in there) from 5-13hours a day. My scores are all over the place which is scaring the hell out of me.
 
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Taking my test on the 17th too! Can't wait to get this over with.

Kaplan tests have been ok so far: 28 --> 37 --> 35
Then AAMCs took some getting used to 32 --> 32 --> 36

Glad to see improvement, but Im shooting for that 40, gotta dream big!
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
Just did AAMC 10 and my PS is still stuck at 12 lol. I don't understand how I can study a section so much and see so little improvement. Not that I'd complain if I got a 12 in PS on the real deal, but it's making me a little nervous knowing that I have to do excellent in BS to compensate for even a 1 point drop in either VR or PS if I want to get a 36.

How's everyone else doing? Feeling ready?
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Same here man cant seem to get past that 12 in PS. Ready to get this over with haha.

Also I feel like verbal is the major wild card. I hate how one question can easily drop you between a 11/10 or 12/11, even more so than PS and BS.

Has anybody heard which AAMC's are the most reflective of your actual MCAT score? Ive heard mixed things but overall it seems as if 8,9,10 are your best bet (which I hope is true).
 
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TexasAg said:
Same here man cant seem to get past that 12 in PS. Ready to get this over with haha.

Also I feel like verbal is the major wild card. I hate how one question can easily drop you between a 11/10 or 12/11, even more so than PS and BS.

Has anybody heard which AAMC's are the most reflective of your actual MCAT score? Ive heard mixed things but overall it seems as if 8,9,10 are your best bet (which I hope is true).
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The AAMC tests that are most predictive are whichever ones you take last. SDN common wisdom is that 10 and 11 are the most representative, but at the same time most SDNers take 10 and 11 last, and the people who take, say, AAMC 3 last end up finding that AAMC 3 was the most predictive test.
 
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Just finished AAMC 9 and got another 35 - only one question away each in physics and bio from a 37 -_- You guys are crazy for getting scores like 38s and stuff though, I feel like at this point I'll be happy with anything over 30 on the real thing because I have a feeling the real thing will be much much harder than the practice tests, and my individual breakdowns aren't consistent at all :scared:
 
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daniwangsta said:
Just finished AAMC 9 and got another 35 - only one question away each in physics and bio from a 37 -_- You guys are crazy for getting scores like 38s and stuff though, I feel like at this point I'll be happy with anything over 30 on the real thing because I have a feeling the real thing will be much much harder than the practice tests, and my individual breakdowns aren't consistent at all :scared:
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Lurking the other test date threads, 8/4 had a brutal BS section and 7/6 had a brutal VR (people who had VR averages of 10s and 12s got 5s). If it's true that AAMC likes to balance out the difficulty of the test over multiple test dates, I'm betting that we're going to get a brutal PS section but reasonable VR and BS.
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
Lurking the other test date threads, 8/4 had a brutal BS section and 7/6 had a brutal VR (people who had VR averages of 10s and 12s got 5s). If it's true that AAMC likes to balance out the difficulty of the test over multiple test dates, I'm betting that we're going to get a brutal PS section but reasonable VR and BS.
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Holy crap, going from 10s and 12s to 5s?! 😱 Ugh that is not comforting in the slightest... lol. But isn't there a 8/10 test before us, and a few in between 7/6 and 8/4 as well? Any idea how those went? 😕 Hopefully ours will turn out really easy 🙄
 
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daniwangsta said:
Holy crap, going from 10s and 12s to 5s?! 😱 Ugh that is not comforting in the slightest... lol. But isn't there a 8/10 test before us, and a few in between 7/6 and 8/4 as well? Any idea how those went? 😕 Hopefully ours will turn out really easy 🙄
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8/3 was about the same as 8/4, except their BS wasn't as bad (but that isn't saying much considering that 8/4's BS was apparently a catastrophe). I don't know what the other July test dates were like.
 
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Holy crap someone got a 3 in VR on the July 7th thread! Jeez it looks like that particular VR section was killer. Hopefully that's not the case for us 😛
 
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nixm01 said:
Did anyone else have their @$$ handed to them by the Buffers and Titration section of TBR (Ch. 5)? I'm just now to the middle of it and no matter how much I think I've gotten down, they throw me under the bus with the next question. I'm not looking forward to these passages coming up later tonight...
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By far, the hardest TBR chapter I've seen.
 
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piggle said:
Holy crap someone got a 3 in VR on the July 7th thread! Jeez it looks like that particular VR section was killer. Hopefully that's not the case for us 😛
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The guy who posted right underneath him claimed he got a 2 on VR. That said, if you read the posts of the guy who got a 3 VR you'll find out that his average VR was 4 so in that context a 3 isn't terribly unexpected.

Far more disturbing are the two guys who had average VR scores of 10 and 12 and both got 5s, and the guy with an average of 9 who got a 4.
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
The guy who posted right underneath him claimed he got a 2 on VR. That said, if you read the posts of the guy who got a 3 VR you'll find out that his average VR was 4 so in that context a 3 isn't terribly unexpected.

Far more disturbing are the two guys who had average VR scores of 10 and 12 and both got 5s, and the guy with an average of 9 who got a 4.
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yeahhhhhhh :wtf:

well, I'm gonna stop stalking that thread because I don't want to psych myself out on test day 😛
 
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Finally showing some improvement in VR! I hope our verbal section passages are easy reads.
Id prefer harder questions with decipherable passages than easy questions with lolwut passages haha
 
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I did AAMC 8 today. Got a 27 (12/5/10). Embarrassing verbal mark... was never good at a verbal... however, I'm happy for the other two scores. I guess I'll have to just sharpen my VR, and just hope for a 9 or 10 at best. Even that's aiming high.
 
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Vertwous said:
I did AAMC 8 today. Got a 27 (12/5/10). Embarrassing verbal mark... was never good at a verbal... however, I'm happy for the other two scores. I guess I'll have to just sharpen my VR, and just hope for a 9 or 10 at best. Even that's aiming high.
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I found AAMC 8/9 verbals to be much, much harder than any of the previous AAMCs/EK 101 ones 🙁 Like I could barely understand half the passages and blindly guessed most of them... man I hope the real thing isn't like those but that's probably just wishful thinking 🙄
 
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daniwangsta said:
I found AAMC 8/9 verbals to be much, much harder than any of the previous AAMCs/EK 101 ones 🙁 Like I could barely understand half the passages and blindly guessed most of them... man I hope the real thing isn't like those but that's probably just wishful thinking 🙄
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I found this to be the case also. Feels bad man
 
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Hey y'all...first, good luck next Friday!! Second, omg what was I thinking when I decided I wanted to take this test?

I was supposed to take it in May, life took a dump, and so I postponed it to the 17th. Then I had ROTC for a month, taking up a majority of my summer before the MCAT. I have now been studying almost nonstop for 3 weeks (sad face) and I have the test next week.

I am consistently making a 7/11/9 and I NEED to bring the PS and BIO up. I am all out of AAMC tests, I have done 8-11 (I have no money to buy more right now), not really sure if doing older ones would help, I'm making time fine on all sections but PS and there I am usually done 3 minutes before time is up. Any tips?

P.S. If I don't take the MCAT now I won't get my education delay and I will have to go active duty for four years before I can get out and try this med school thing again so I can't postpone it again.
 
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are you applying md only or do also? How's your gpa? I understand your situation, but a little over a week is kinda short. I'm taking mine 9/1. on aamc3, I got 11/10/8. aamc4 10/9/9. Then I did GS 1-4 4 days in a row 1:9/9/10 2:11X8 3:10X10 4:11X9
Aside from test taking errors, I obviously still have content weaknesses, so I'm trying to fix those in addition to honing the test taking, all while cramming some at least 2 verbal psgs from 101/tprh/day.

You don't have time to order tbr and its too close to test date. If you're going to take it next week, spend all your time on the mcat. Cover all your weaknesses and do aamc 7 and 6 the last 2-3 days and try not to burnout.

"P.S. If I don't take the MCAT now I won't get my education delay and I will have to go active duty for four years before I can get out and try this med school thing again so I can't postpone it again."
but are you applying now though? have you submitted your app yet?
 
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AnnJ716 said:
Hey y'all...first, good luck next Friday!! Second, omg what was I thinking when I decided I wanted to take this test?

I was supposed to take it in May, life took a dump, and so I postponed it to the 17th. Then I had ROTC for a month, taking up a majority of my summer before the MCAT. I have now been studying almost nonstop for 3 weeks (sad face) and I have the test next week.

I am consistently making a 7/11/9 and I NEED to bring the PS and BIO up. I am all out of AAMC tests, I have done 8-11 (I have no money to buy more right now), not really sure if doing older ones would help, I'm making time fine on all sections but PS and there I am usually done 3 minutes before time is up. Any tips?

P.S. If I don't take the MCAT now I won't get my education delay and I will have to go active duty for four years before I can get out and try this med school thing again so I can't postpone it again.
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Unfortunately there's not much you can do in one week. The best you can do is triage; ignore VR, you're fine on that and it's extremely difficult to raise anyway. BS is probably the easiest section out of all of them to improve on, but I would focus more on PS since even with a good composite score a 7 in a section is going to hurt you. The "good" news is that a 7 indicates content deficiency, which means improving your score there could be as easy as reviewing content (speaking of which, have you finished content review yet? You say you've only been studying for 3 weeks). Focus only on your weaknesses. On the MCAT it's better to be a jack of all trades than a master of few. At this point you want to be more concerned about avoiding a bad score than getting a good one.

With only a week left you should just drop everything else in your life and do nothing but MCAT until the test. Normally I'd say take a day or two off beforehand, but in your case it may be more beneficial to keep studying right up to the day of the test. Your call; if you're susceptible to study fatigue, then take the last day off.

With a superhuman amount of dedication and work, and some luck, you may be able to pull of a 30 by next week.

Also, just so you know, the older AAMC tests are still good. SDN likes to rag on them for being easier or less representative than the newer tests, but I've done all of them save for AAMC 11 and I didn't really notice much of a difference in difficulty or style.
 
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The aamc self assessment might also help. So you have that and aamc 3457. not sure how I would approach them do. You do the problems and review (ie the assessment minus verbal) in 2 days if that's all you're doing. then you could do a targeted approach for weakness and make sure you know the basics. not much you can do...
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
Unfortunately there's not much you can do in one week. The best you can do is triage; ignore VR, you're fine on that and it's extremely difficult to raise anyway. BS is probably the easiest section out of all of them to improve on, but I would focus more on PS since even with a good composite score a 7 in a section is going to hurt you...
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Could you please give some advice on how to improve on BS? For me it's been the hardest and I've tried almost everything... did the TBR passages, read the Kaplan textbook twice and TBR once, did all the Kaplan section/topical tests/quizzes and my BS score has stayed at a steady 10-11 from AAMC 3-10 🙁 I'm feeling hopeless lol :cry:
 
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daniwangsta said:
Could you please give some advice on how to improve on BS? For me it's been the hardest and I've tried almost everything... did the TBR passages, read the Kaplan textbook twice and TBR once, did all the Kaplan section/topical tests/quizzes and my BS score has stayed at a steady 10-11 from AAMC 3-10 🙁 I'm feeling hopeless lol :cry:
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Well, when I said "probably" I meant that on average people find BS the easiest to improve. It makes sense since BS is the section in which memorization has the biggest effect. It's hardly the only factor though, and as your score gets higher, it gets harder to make it even higher. Most people seem to cap out in the sections at around 10-12.

All I can really suggest for you is to do the TBR problems if you haven't already.
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
Well, when I said "probably" I meant that on average people find BS the easiest to improve. It makes sense since BS is the section in which memorization has the biggest effect. It's hardly the only factor though, and as your score gets higher, it gets harder to make it even higher. Most people seem to cap out in the sections at around 10-12.

All I can really suggest for you is to do the TBR problems if you haven't already.
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Ah thanks, yeah I did around half the TBR passages but I feel like AAMC never goes into that much detail and focuses more on critical thinking, which is where I screw up. I'll keep chugging along I guess and hope for the best :scared:
 
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daniwangsta said:
Ah thanks, yeah I did around half the TBR passages but I feel like AAMC never goes into that much detail and focuses more on critical thinking, which is where I screw up. I'll keep chugging along I guess and hope for the best :scared:
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If you have the TPRH Science Workbook it's passages focus much more on critical thinking and less on detail than TBR's. Many people (myself included) actually prefer it over TBR for that reason. I only recommended TBR because I knew you had it and figure it's unlikely you have TPRH SW.
 
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OCDOCDOCD said:
If you have the TPRH Science Workbook it's passages focus much more on critical thinking and less on detail than TBR's. Many people (myself included) actually prefer it over TBR for that reason. I only recommended TBR because I knew you had it and figure it's unlikely you have TPRH SW.
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Thanks for the suggestion! I looked around and there's a TPR set for sale on kijiji for pretty cheap so I'll see if I can get it in time. I've asked about it before and people said TBR was more in depth so I went with it to be safe, but that clearly didn't work out for me 🙄
 
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