The Official August 2015 MCAT Thread

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Pusheen said:
yeah, I got crappy scores specifically on those two sections. Glad I'm not the only one
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I went from EK 1 to EK 4. Went up in C/P and P/S but those sections were terrible. Like other people have been saying, I don't think we should take percentages into account.
 
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Aakash Trivedi said:
I went from EK 1 to EK 4. Went up in C/P and P/S but those sections were terrible. Like other people have been saying, I don't think we should take percentages into account.
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Ok good. I got 65% in CARS and 55% in Bio😱 The solutions really pissed me off for both of those sections. Maybe I'm just dense, but their logic just could not get through to me
c/p and p/s were 76/80 %
 
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FutureMrDr said:
Lol no one is butthurt. I'm just saying when they say something like that, they aren't accomplishing anything but validating their intellect. They want us to tell them that they are smart. The fact is people come here for advice on how to approach something, how to tackle a section, what to be vigilant of, how to tailor their studies etc. Instead these people soapbox about how they finished a section in 3omins then reviewed for an hour but are still uneasy about their performance (lmao).

None of that is constructive. It just makes other people more nervous! Which helps no one with their preparation. Personally, it doesn't help me that you had an hour to review a section.

People can and have given post-MCAT reviews that do not give off a vibe of superiority but rather constructive and helpful advice that benefit everyone on the thread.
Anyways congrats to those who finished each section in under 4ominutes i guess.
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Wasn't my intention to make people feel bad, I'm just talking about my experience with the test and it's all relative anyway, isn't it? There's literally no point in giving constructive advice in a post-MCAT reaction message because we all have different academic and personal backgrounds, will have different experiences with tests, and approach the MCAT from different perspectives. I might have found a section hard that a person found easy and vice versa. So I don't really see the point in potentially misleading people like many have with posts like "Oh don't study orgo/physics/X topic, it's not covered in detail on the new exam!" and then for people to be slammed with topics they didn't review because they went off supposedly constructive MCAT feedback on this forum.
 
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oh lol no no there are alot of chill reviews. there is just always those one or two people who over exaggerate the easiness of the exam.
 
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centillion said:
Wasn't my intention to make people feel bad, I'm just talking about my experience with the test and it's all relative anyway, isn't it? There's literally no point in giving constructive advice in a post-MCAT reaction message because we all have different academic and personal backgrounds, will have different experiences with tests, and approach the MCAT from different perspectives. I might have found a section hard that a person found easy and vice versa. So I don't really see the point in potentially misleading people like many have with posts like "Oh don't study orgo/physics/X topic, it's not covered in detail on the new exam!" and then for people to be slammed with topics they didn't review because they went off supposedly constructive MCAT feedback on this forum.
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You're right. I take it back, my bad. It's true we're all different. You might just have had a better start than a lot of us or maybe I'm part of the minority that even with heavy review and testing tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time on a passage.

I took the test and I thought it went well. I defintiely didn't have as much time as you did to review my sections (esp. not CARS) but I can understand why you might have been able to. I hope you get the score you want! 😀

Also, I've never recommended to not study a topic. I always say study everything and be comfortable with the material. Look at my past posts.
 
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Question...if you cleave a plasmid, would you get 1 DNA fragment or 2?
I thought 1 because plasmids are circular, but I think I was wrong.
 
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I did the official guide questions today and got 19/30 on BB, 21/30 CP, 23/30 PS, and 25/30 on CARS. I test on 8/22 and havent taken the aamc FL yet...should I be worried??🙁
 
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LakridsA said:
I did the official guide questions today and got 19/30 on BB, 21/30 CP, 23/30 PS, and 25/30 on CARS. I test on 8/22 and havent taken the aamc FL yet...should I be worried??🙁
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Nah we did about the same on the OG. Except you might have done better than me on Bio. I think I scored 15/30 on OG bio lol.
The AAMC FL for me went better: 66% C/P, 87% CARS, 80% B/B, and 78% P/S

The actual exam was definitely more like the FL: Cars was slightly tougher but the other sections were on par. Take a shot at the FL soon and see how you feel. Otherwise I think you're looking good given your scores now and the weeks you have in between now and your exam day!
 
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FutureMrDr said:
Nah we did about the same on the OG. Except you might have done better than me on Bio. I think I scored 15/30 on OG bio lol.
The AAMC FL for me went better: 66% C/P, 87% CARS, 80% B/B, and 78% P/S

The actual exam was definitely more like the FL: Cars was slightly tougher but the other sections were on par. Take a shot at the FL soon and see how you feel. Otherwise I think you're looking good given your scores now and the weeks you have in between now and your exam day!
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Thank's for the response! my heart sunk when I saw my OG scores..so would you say the aamc fl is easier?
 
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LakridsA said:
Thank's for the response! my heart sunk when I saw my OG scores
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Half length tests are also just not as reliable because a couple mistakes can knock your score way down. See how you do on the FL. I'm taking it this weekend because I can't handle the suspense 😉
 
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Pusheen said:
Half length tests are also just not as reliable because a couple mistakes can knock your score way down. See how you do on the FL. I'm taking it this weekend because I can't handle the suspense 😉
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Haha I feel that...I'm debating between taking it Monday or this weekend because of the suspense as well lol
 
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I still don't understand how cleaving a circular piece of DNA in one place makes 2 separate pieces like they're saying
 
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justlisten234 said:
I believe it's once you insert a gene into the plasmid, then you have two cut sites in that recombinant vector.
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I was thinking about that, but they keep emphasizing n the solution that the DNA was in fact cleaved in only one place.
Maybe the plasmid wasn't circular anymore....?
 
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Nah nvm. Hard question.

Maybe you're to expect that your digested piece would contaminate the PCR reaction? So you'd have PCR product + digested plasmid?
 
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Charri22 said:
Also, it felt SO INCREDIBLY AMAZING to close all the windows and tabs on my laptop that were all MCAT study related! And to stack up all my TPR books and notebooks and flashcards into the corner! No more Princeton Dashboard or Khan Academy or random Wikipedia pages!! NO MORE MCAT STUDYING!!!... Or in the very worst case, no more studying for at least 5 months hahaha! Crossing my fingers though!
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Exactly how I feel. I unsubscribed from my email MCAT question of the day and just thought "aww yissss"

I certainly didn't feel like the chem/phys was easier than the FL, and I thought B/B was way hard. Looks like you'll get a better score than I did! I agree that CARS was a bit tougher though - manageable passages but tougher questions.
 
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StudyLater said:
Nah nvm. Hard question.

Maybe you're to expect that your digested piece would contaminate the PCR reaction? So you'd have PCR product + digested plasmid?
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eh, who knows. I think I did my share to get that question right. Let's hope for less ambiguity on the real thing.
 
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Pusheen said:
well the practice companies are making me feel like **** about myself, so I'm hoping for some encouragement from the AAMC fl, lol
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Don't worry. I got slaughtered by Kaplan and got 88% on the AAMC FL. It should leave you feeling better about yourself, just give it your best like its the real thing! When are you taking the test?

To address the bickering about inferiority complexes - as someone for whom a high GPA and what not has come naturally I generally try to be sensitive in how I talk about tests and such as I understand that sometimes what's easy for one person is very hard for another. For example, it's a bit discouraging for me when people say the B/B section from yesterday's test was ok/not hard, because I found it damn difficult and am sure it'll be my lowest score, despite the fact that I'm a bio major and have been in research for two years now, the way they write those questions just doesn't agree with me. So people saying it wasn't hard makes me lose hope that the equating of scores AAMC does won't benefit me all that much. Other people were saying CARS was way hard, but I didn't find it that difficult (CARS has always been my highest score on literally every practice test I've taken since I started studying, so I guess it comes more naturally for me).

We all have different strengths. We should try to be congratulatory if other people found something easier than we did, but we should also be aware that being too extreme in our downplaying of the difficulty of the test can really hurt others' optimism. Mutual respect is a good thing here.
 
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UNMedGa said:
Don't worry. I got slaughtered by Kaplan and got 88% on the AAMC FL. It should leave you feeling better about yourself, just give it your best like its the real thing! When are you taking the test?

To address the bickering about inferiority complexes - as someone for whom a high GPA and what not has come naturally I generally try to be sensitive in how I talk about tests and such as I understand that sometimes what's easy for one person is very hard for another. For example, it's a bit discouraging for me when people say the B/B section from yesterday's test was ok/not hard, because I found it damn difficult and am sure it'll be my lowest score, despite the fact that I'm a bio major and have been in research for two years now, the way they write those questions just doesn't agree with me. So people saying it wasn't hard makes me lose hope that the equating of scores AAMC does won't benefit me all that much. Other people were saying CARS was way hard, but I didn't find it that difficult (CARS has always been my highest score on literally every practice test I've taken since I started studying, so I guess it comes more naturally for me).

We all have different strengths. We should try to be congratulatory if other people found something easier than we did, but we should also be aware that being too extreme in our downplaying of the difficulty of the test can really hurt others' optimism. Mutual respect is a good thing here.
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my thoughts exactly
 
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UNMedGa said:
Don't worry. I got slaughtered by Kaplan and got 88% on the AAMC FL. It should leave you feeling better about yourself, just give it your best like its the real thing! When are you taking the test?.
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Thank you! FL probably tomorrow, real thing on Aug 22
 
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Profound said:
Were there a lot of killer questions in CARS or were they the most difficult questions? People are saying the questions seemed ambiguous but were there a lot of questions where you could narrow down to 2 or just a few here or there?
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There was a mix of ambiguous questions in there for sure. There was one passage in particular where I felt like this was the case. However, for the most part I felt like the questions were just long, as in they took time to go back to the passages multiple times. There were a very small amount of the questions that I couldn't get it down to at least 2 options. The passages truly weren't that bad, and I think that's half the battle sometimes in CARS. Yeah, I'm trying to remember, but I think for the most part the questions just felt long more than anything. Of course with the MCAT there are always some questions that you just got "what?..." but it could have been much worse! I hope that answers your questions a little! Sorry I can't go into more detail!
 
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UNMedGa said:
Exactly how I feel. I unsubscribed from my email MCAT question of the day and just thought "aww yissss"

I certainly didn't feel like the chem/phys was easier than the FL, and I thought B/B was way hard. Looks like you'll get a better score than I did! I agree that CARS was a bit tougher though - manageable passages but tougher questions.
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Hey, you never know!! Maybe I was just in shock or something from taking the test that I just feel way better than I should! Haha or you were probably in shock and you did waaay better than you think you did!

I feel like the real thing is so hard to gauge because you can't separate out objective thoughts from hopes and fears haha. It will be a long 5 weeks as we all wait!!
 
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Charri22 said:
Hey, you never know!! Maybe I was just in shock or something from taking the test that I just feel way better than I should! Haha or you were probably in shock and you did waaay better than you think you did!

I feel like the real thing is so hard to gauge because you can't separate out objective thoughts from hopes and fears haha. It will be a long 5 weeks as we all wait!!
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Hopefully I'm being harder on myself than necessary. I marked at least 11 questions I was unsure of on each section so hopefully that was being overly concerned. After looking up several of the questions I was unsure about, I know for sure that I missed at least 4 questions on that section. Time for a months worth of torture while we wait!
 
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centillion said:
Wasn't my intention to make people feel bad, I'm just talking about my experience with the test and it's all relative anyway, isn't it?
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I really appreciate you posting your thoughts and perspective, but seriously 🙂 - from someone who struggles with time - do you have any tips for how you get through sections so quickly? How long did you take (weeks? months?) to do practice passages and FLs?
 
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UNMedGa said:
Don't worry. I got slaughtered by Kaplan and got 88% on the AAMC FL. It should leave you feeling better about yourself, just give it your best like its the real thing! When are you taking the test?

To address the bickering about inferiority complexes - as someone for whom a high GPA and what not has come naturally I generally try to be sensitive in how I talk about tests and such as I understand that sometimes what's easy for one person is very hard for another. For example, it's a bit discouraging for me when people say the B/B section from yesterday's test was ok/not hard, because I found it damn difficult and am sure it'll be my lowest score, despite the fact that I'm a bio major and have been in research for two years now, the way they write those questions just doesn't agree with me. So people saying it wasn't hard makes me lose hope that the equating of scores AAMC does won't benefit me all that much. Other people were saying CARS was way hard, but I didn't find it that difficult (CARS has always been my highest score on literally every practice test I've taken since I started studying, so I guess it comes more naturally for me).

We all have different strengths. We should try to be congratulatory if other people found something easier than we did, but we should also be aware that being too extreme in our downplaying of the difficulty of the test can really hurt others' optimism. Mutual respect is a good thing here.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more with this. I got an 86 on the AAMC FL and I think that B/B and C/P was tough. So maybe it'll turn alright for us!
 
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UNMedGa said:
Just got done - one more monkey off my back!!

B/B: This is the beast everyone says it is. I get especially confused when the research passages start talking about long chains of mechanisms with all these molecules with names that are just made of consonants and numbers.
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Dude, you are not alone. My mind just starts swimming when the passage just goes on and on about HJLHDI7 SUHFDSJK8 and DHOFSD1-2. It just never stops, they keep introducing more and more new ones!!! :laugh: I was just doing a passage like this and I thought of this post.
 
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Just finished NS 2
P/C: 126 CARS: 124 B/B: 126 P/S: 125 Overall: 501
I know NS changed their scales, but do you guys think the scores are still deflated? Im aiming for a 510, and this was discouraging 🙁.
 
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Scumione said:
Just finished NS 2
P/C: 126 CARS: 124 B/B: 126 P/S: 125 Overall: 501
I know NS changed their scales, but do you guys think the scores are still deflated? Im aiming for a 510, and this was discouraging 🙁.
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I took the 5 NS exams and I personally thought NS 2 was the hardest. It was also my lowest score, I got a 502. My other scores are 507, and 504 three times
 
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