The Official August 16, 2013 MCAT Thread

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gettheleadout

gettheleadout

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Welcome everyone! For those following the SN2ed or a similar 3-month study schedule, prep should begin in the next few weeks.

Hope to see some ambitious and optimistic people here with me, and shout out to the 3/23'ers from before I bailed on that test date.

Let's go!
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tennisalex said:
One topic pretty much did span the entire section yesterday now that I think about it. From my experience that topic was what was covered pretty heavily in our lab and lecture from school and so maybe I just got lucky and saw what was familiar. I could definitely see how most people would struggle with it though since it wasn't necessarily high yield. You are also right about not seeing a lot of gen. chem topics. I was hoping there would be more though because that's more of my forte.



Honestly, I think it's pretty expected of people (more so for first time takers) to go in there with the mindset that the heavily covered topics from the AAMC full-lengths should be expected on the exam. I mean it makes sense because that is actual AAMC produced material and if you're exposed to so much of it then you'll no doubt get the idea that you need to study those the most. I do agree with your comment though about going in there with the mindset that anything and everything should be expected fair game, regardless of what was represented in the practice materials, but the fact that most everything covered only one topic made it a somewhat uneven section. It's like going to a series of lectures from your prof. and she covers one topic for 4 classes and then another for only 1 and then on the exam about 90% of it was from topics and materials covered in that 1 day. Maybe it's fair game to expect anything, but it's typically a better study habit to evenly space out studying to cover everything just about the same. Especially when time is limited.
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At least I know some people agree with me and I'm not completely deluded.
 
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HotHamH2O said:
At least I know some people agree with me and I'm not completely deluded.
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I agree with you too. I'm upset that they asked such "low yield" topics. But I'm not surprised or irrationally angered. Just a little flustered. I still think I did fine. I averaged around 13ish on PS, and I think I got 13ish again.
 
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I cannot believe that I haven't mentioned this yet, but was anyone uneasy with how much orgo was asked? I was going in expecting like 13 questions... BS is my best section, but orgo makes me feel the most uneasy for some reason. It wasn't too hard, but still made me uneasy haha. I guess the entire test made me feel uneasy.
 
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sakabato93 said:
I cannot believe that I haven't mentioned this yet, but was anyone uneasy with how much orgo was asked? I was going in expecting like 13 questions... BS is my best section, but orgo makes me feel the most uneasy for some reason. It wasn't too hard, but still made me uneasy haha. I guess the entire test made me feel uneasy.
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I've mentioned this and I believe a few others have as well, but yeah orgo was surprising mainly by how much of it there was on the exam. Usually it's 2 passages and like 3-4 discretes at most, but I think on yesterday's exam there was like 3 passages and 4 discretes or so. I thought the passages weren't too bad themselves, but some of the questions that went with them really made me scratch my head and just take an educated guess.
 
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Gigantron said:
Seriously, I'm going to do this as well. Too much ego stroking and "lol PS was sooo hard but im expecting a 13 nbd". It's raising my blood pressure reading garbage like that.
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Dude, chill. I forgot it was illegal to think a test was hard and still expect a high score from it.

As for egos, pre-med students are smart and some pre-meds are smarter than others. Being good at something creates an ego, and the anonymity of this forum facilitates ego expression... Its to be expected. Getting pissy because other people are smart and don't mind conveying it in a non-threatening way is really immature. :mad:
 
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tennisalex said:
I've mentioned this and I believe a few others have as well, but yeah orgo was surprising mainly by how much of it there was on the exam. Usually it's 2 passages and like 3-4 discretes at most, but I think on yesterday's exam there was like 3 passages and 4 discretes or so. I thought the passages weren't too bad themselves, but some of the questions that went with them really made me scratch my head and just take an educated guess.
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Exactly. Passages were good, some questions got me though.
 
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I am usually awful with verbal, but i feel good about this tests verbal. Of course with my luck though, the two other sections which im usually great at (PS and BS) were just plain stupid....
 
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sakabato93 said:
Dude, chill. I forgot it was illegal to think a test was hard and still expect a high score from it.

As for egos, pre-med students are smart and some pre-meds are smarter than others. Being good at something creates an ego, and the anonymity of this forum facilitates ego expression... Its to be expected. Getting pissy because other people are smart and don't mind conveying it in a non-threatening way is really immature. :mad:
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Yes. We should all stay rational. The Internet is not serious business. I have to say though, there are quite a lot of people on here who need a hard lesson in humility. Being smart and good at something can breed pride but it doesn't have to.
 
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yankees527 said:
I am usually awful with verbal, but i feel good about this tests verbal. Of course with my luck though, the two other sections which im usually great at (PS and BS) were just plain stupid....
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I feel you, although I have no opinion on the verbal... haha. I never have opinions about verbal.
 
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hahahha i know with verbal its so hard to tell. usually if you feel good about it you do bad, then if you feel neutral you do good. interesting passages though yesterday I have to say, didnt mind them being longer, as long as it wasnt about philosphy and Hellenistic stuff!
 
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HotHamH2O said:
Yes. We should all stay rational. The Internet is not serious business. I have to say though, there are quite a lot of people on here who need a hard lesson in humility. Being smart and good at something can breed pride but it doesn't have to.
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See, I think pride is a great thing to have... But shoving your pride in someone else's face is a no-no.

I apologize if anyone feels like I did this (although I'm sure I didn't).
 
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yankees527 said:
hahahha i know with verbal its so hard to tell. usually if you feel good about it you do bad, then if you feel neutral you do good. interesting passages though yesterday I have to say, didnt mind them being longer, as long as it wasnt about philosphy and Hellenistic stuff!
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My bane is passages about law. Government passages are literally hit or miss for me -- either I get all of the questions right or I only get 1 or 2 right, haha.
 
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I'm an MCAT retaker due to my horrific VR 6 score last attempt. Overall I thought the test was pretty fair. On both the PS and BS sections I changed answers at the last second, both of which were the wrong answer :( Oh well, not much I can do about that now. Anyways

PS: I thought this section was pretty straight forward. It was extremely physics heavy. The Gen chemistry that was asked was pretty simple though. One of the passages asked the same question in two different ways. There was one question on this section that I thought had poor answer explanations but overall it was a fair section.

VR: This is the reason I was retaking this test. This section surprisingly went extremely well for me. I think I did great on six of the sections and I kinda had to guess on one (passage five) due to low time. I knew the grasp of the passage so I just found all the answers that included the main idea and picked them. Hopefully this worked out but I am doubting it. Either way I am feeling an increase in my near illiterate 6.

BR: The biological reasoning section was the toughest section for me. There were three orgo sections (my strongest subject) which was nice, but I still wouldn't say this test was orgo heavy. I would guess that it was 65:35 Bio to Orgo content. There were a couple passages on here that really got me. One of them was all words and no tables or figures. The first question in this passage I was lost. The bio discretes I thought were sort of tough but as we've learned they aren't going to put too easy of questions on the test.

I am just hoping I get a score I can roll with. My AMCAS is verified and I've already turned in some secondaries. Now I just have to wait for this deal breaker to be scored.

good luck to all who took the test
 
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there was much much much more orgo than other tests. On top of that it wasnt extremely simple orgo all through
 
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btw, for those who did the trial section, do we get our score for the trial section back? and when?
 
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First post...figured I'd give my input about the test, considering I've been reading this for a couple weeks and not contributing.

PS: I started off really nervous, but I have to admit I lucked out. I'm finishing up a PhD in physics, and it just so happens that it's in the area that was seemingly weighted a bit more heavily in this sitting. Overall, I thought it was much less calculation heavy, which I think was to my advantage.

VR: As per usual, who knows? The passages were much longer than anticipated, and although I had to pick up my pace near the end, I luckily (unknowingly) saved the easiest two passages for last. I would say the difficulty was equivalent to that of the practice tests.

BS: Once I got through the first two sections, I felt pretty great. I was expecting the test to be much harder than the practices, and I had heard that usually one section is much harder than the rest (PS seemed to be fairly challenging). This section really rocked me hard. I took my time for the first 16 questions, made sure I got them all right, but after that...I ran into a couple orgo passages and felt my stomach curl into a ball. I skipped to the end and worked backward, which I think was smart, but I really had to take some semi-educated guesses at the questions in those two hard orgo sections and about 4 or 5 discrete problems.

All in all, I thought it was rather fair, but that BS was really weird. I barely studied orgo because it seemed quite easy on the practice tests, and these questions just seemed much harder. Even for the bio questions, there were one or two that were definitely not in any of my study material. I was averaging about a 12 in the BS on practice tests, but I would not be surprised if I get anywhere in the 8-11 range.

I'm considering taking another sitting in early September, just to hopefully get a test where I don't feel like I completely failed the BS section. At the same time, I'm not sure if that's dumb or not.
 
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ok guys, important question after taking this test....is it really THAT bad to take it again (from an admission standpoint)
 
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To answer the ppl asking about august 15th exam... it was definitely difficult and PS had so many calculations with other weird questions it sucked... and bio was ehhh weird and kinda difficult to me. Now august 17th can't come soon enough lol
 
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All I can say after taking the mcat yesterday is: I wish I'd done better in physics 2 as an undergrad... I wish I'd enjoyed political science in high school... I wish I'd studied orgo more. But that's just me and I typically feel that way after every mcat practice, or real thing. It just sucks that it had to be the real thing this time. Oh well... :oops:
 
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gettheleadout said:
Why would anyone go into the exam expecting a particular topic to appear? "High-yield" may make sense in the context of understanding material A being useful in understanding materials B and C (e.g. understanding electrostatics makes chemistry easier to understand), but there's no reason to expect a particular topic to be "high-yield" in the sense that focusing on it over another will likely benefit you on the exam via prediction of what you'll be asked. Frequency of the appearance of a topic on the AAMC FL's is no reason to infer frequency on the actual exam.

"My exam will consist solely of the topics with which I am least comfortable."

That's the attitude everyone should have.
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best advice
 
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so lets say alot of test takers get much more wrong than compared to other tests on BS


Does that mean then that say 15 wrong is now a 10? etc..

:idea:
 
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yankees527 said:
Oh no, now begins the drama...

anyway, what were we talking about? oh the MCAT thats right
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No drama. I'm 27 with two kids. I get enough crying over spilt milk. We are just having a discussion. Disagreement or opinion stating doesn't have to lead to knotted panties. It's allllll good.
 
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Late in posting, but here it is!

Impressions: Not sure.... I think I did well. But my judgement is off pretty often.

AAMC Scores (4-11):

PS: 13-15 (Average: 14.5ish)
VR: 10-13 (Average: 11.0)
BS: 14-15 (Average: 14.5ish)

Average: 40-ish

Expected: 38-42. Hopefully???
 
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ElCapone said:
Late in posting, but here it is!

Impressions: Not sure.... I think I did well. But my judgement is off pretty often.

AAMC Scores (4-11):

PS: 13-15 (Average: 14.5ish)
VR: 10-13 (Average: 11.0)
BS: 14-15 (Average: 14.5ish)

Average: 40-ish

Expected: 38-42. Hopefully???
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I love how we have the same exact section score ranges on the AAMC's haha.
 
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sakabato93 said:
Dude, chill. I forgot it was illegal to think a test was hard and still expect a high score from it.

As for egos, pre-med students are smart and some pre-meds are smarter than others. Being good at something creates an ego, and the anonymity of this forum facilitates ego expression... Its to be expected. Getting pissy because other people are smart and don't mind conveying it in a non-threatening way is really immature. :mad:
Click to expand...

There, there. No reason for the ":mad:" face when I merely took a small jab at the massive circle jerk that many users of this forum love to engage in.
 
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Its not bad if your score improves. They want to see that you improved. Going down in your score can possibly be a bad thing but I know some who retook it with a very good score and went down 4 or 5 points and he got into UF med. It may have helped that we went he for undergrad and were alumnis but I think he got into multiple schools. Really depends on your whole app. This exam matters but its not the only thing and I think people get hung up on that, but i know plenty of ppl in medical school with ehh scores. So work hard to your whole app. Make yourself different from everyone. Stand out because being a doctor is about the whole picture and the admissions people definitely know that :laugh:
chishon said:
I have the same question, but I guess it's really hard to know without already having your score... :/
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member1717 said:
Its not bad if your score improves. They want to see that you improved. Going down in your score can possibly be a bad thing but I know some who retook it with a very good score and went down 4 or 5 points and he got into UF med. It may have helped that we went he for undergrad and were alumnis but I think he got into multiple schools. Really depends on your whole app. This exam matters but its not the only thing and I think people get hung up on that, but i know plenty of ppl in medical school with ehh scores. So work hard to your whole app. Make yourself different from everyone. Stand out because being a doctor is about the whole picture and the admissions people definitely know that :laugh:
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More cookie cutter premeds matriculate every year than any other type (e.g., meh MCAT, amazing ECs, etc.).
 
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