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Just started studying today. Anyone else with me?
The Official August 9, 2013 MCAT Thread
- Thread starter IL Pre Med
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Ya I'm thinking about signing up for sept 12. PM test on Friday didn't feel right. Felt like I was guessing too much on P section. V seemed easier than normal. B was about average. AAMC practice test average was P11/V12/B11. Other than money, not sure what the downside would be to registering for sept 12? How far below my average would be a good justification for retake?
I'd just look at SI units and abbreviations. There were quite a few calculations on my test version that required you to know abbreviations/prefixes. I could kick myself for not having spent like 5 seconds to look at an SI table before my test because they're simple to remember but my mind slipped under pressure and I hadn't seen some of those particular base units on any AAMC. My fault though.
You may just want to glance at one of these tables:
http://chemed.chem.wisc.edu/chempaths/GenChem-Textbook/SI-Prefixes-759.html
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i feel exactly the same way. i keep running through all the questions i can actually remember in my head and what i answered. i felt okay afterwards but now im planning to register for sept 12. 🙁 youre not alone!
All of guys talking about getting scores 30 and above, you are all beasts. I retook the MCAT after my dismal first one. I will be more than happy to even get a 25. I was happy with verbal this time as I managed to do six passages and kinda guessed on the last one ( English is my second language). I am not sure how I did on the Sciences. I think Physics was ok but Biology was hard. Anyways, I hope for the best. And I don't understand why we have to wait a month to get our scores back? I heard you get your scores instantly when you take the GRE except for the writing section. So why not for the MCAT too?
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Jokes aside, I think it'd be pretty reasonable to assume that if I've got an AAMC average of 38, I wouldn't be saying I found PS to be difficult - I've mentioned my practice tests scores in this thread a couple times before anyways and I've been averaging about 14. Guess I'll be more specific next time but lol, so many immature posts in this thread .
the more i think the worse i feel. and the fact that ya'll found the 8 am EST verbal easy is killing me. i did half decent in vr across the 8 aamc's i did, but i got eaten by the verbal on the real thing, the clock ate me for the last 2 passages.
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Thank you. I had faith in your response. Others clearly are skeptical about people and need evidence written on a golden plate to make small assumptions 🙄
Anyways, what exactly did you find difficult about PS? Was it just time? Lots of calculations? Did it require a more conceptual understanding coupled with information presented in the passages?
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Bro ,or sis, I think that we have the background. English is my second language. I can agree with that the Friday's exam was very hard. I ran out of time with VR but BS and PS were a little OK. I am wonderinf if anybody knows how AAMC curve works.
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Nope, I am never writing again. Never ever ever ever ever.
Yo guys...I am taking the August 22nd MCAT. What materials do you think helped you the most, or rather in hindsight would have helped you the most, to prepare for this specific test? It seems like a trend that the PS section is getting more brutal. Thank you 🙂
my only advice? take the practice aamc's under the rule that time is out with 5 minutes left on the clock.
whether the passages are longer or shorter or the same doesnt matter, the real thing goes by much faster and theres nothing worse than being pressed for time.
whether the passages are longer or shorter or the same doesnt matter, the real thing goes by much faster and theres nothing worse than being pressed for time.
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I posted about what materials I thought were best on a separate thread started by me, but just to share on timing: PS and VR was about equally to when I did practice tests, while BS was about 6-7 minutes longer. I usually finish with about 18 minutes on the clock. I think I had 11 something at the end of that section.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. With an AAMC average of 38, you have to be scoring at least 10s on PS unless you were consistently scoring 14 and 15, 15 and 14, or 15 and 15 on VR and BS. 15s and 14s are very rare scores to get.
So it's good to know someone scoring consistently very high on the PS sections of their practice AAMCs found Friday's PS section difficult.
If it makes you feel any better, you're not alone. Granted, VR was the reason for my retake to begin with, so it's not particularly one of my stronger suits; however, I worked a lot on VR this summer and got my score to a comfortable place on practice tests.
Despite my best attempt to calm myself down during the break after PS, I had trouble mentally recovering from that first section and wound up wasting a lot of time on VR unable to concentrate as a result. I, too, ran extremely short on time, with 6.5 minutes left to complete the last two passages. I spent 5 of those minutes on the sixth one, and then the last 1.5 minutes on the seventh passage, on which I just read the questions and chose the best looking answer based on the tidbits of info I could infer about the passage from the question stems. Yeah, not such a good feeling.
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Oops I was pretty groggy this morning and realized my last post was written poorly but glad you guys figured it out - I'm also glad I wasn't alone in finding it challenging! The gchem material was really straightforward I felt but some of the physics passages were trickier than I would have expected.
Not sure if it was screen size or just my test day mentality but the VR passages felt longer than ones I'd seen on AAMC practice tests.
Not sure if it was screen size or just my test day mentality but the VR passages felt longer than ones I'd seen on AAMC practice tests.
I definitely agree about how tricky PS was! Especially physics as you stated.
But I found VR much shorter than everyone is saying. It might be that I was reading quickly because of nerves, but whatever it was I felt that it was easier than normal despite the huge font and bad resolution
D
deleted393595
Then again it could just be test day anxiety causing you to think that you did worse than you actually did. I've had the same feeling before on practice tests where I think I did terrible and I find out that I got a 14 or a 15.
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Yeah, that could be it. My timing was fine but I just remember scrolling through a passage and thinking it looked a little long.
@65dos, how are you checking questions? Just googling them?
worst part is sitting here at work with all the research staff, residents and all of em coming by and asking me how it went, and i'm just sitting here like a ***** twitching at the thought of having to write it again.
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Well who knows? I see so many people saying they come out feeling like they got crushed.
Honestly, this morning, I almost did some passages. Like actually. Someone needs to slap me.
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Anybody know what kind of curve you usually get for a relatively difficult section (approximate raw score for a 10)? I think I'm going to lose my mind over the next month. PS has always been a strength of mine (I tutor physics and chemistry at my school) but that PS section was by far the most difficult I've seen. Starting to regret not voiding. The only reason I didn't was because I managed to focus all the way through verbal... which never happens. I usually score around 12-13 on the AAMCs and would honestly be ecstatic with a 10. Any chance that a 30/52 gets me a 10? 
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I know how you feel. After the test I loaded up one of the practice AAMCs and proceeded to blind guess on half the questions on purpose in an attempt to recreate my performance on the 9th. I was hoping it would get me something above a 10 so I could bask in the knowledge that a non-horrific score was at least possible... .... ... it didn't...
hahaha i like your idea, as neurotic as it is.
i honestly don't even remember writing it now, i repressed it within 10 minutes of leaving my testing site. the 28 beers over the next 2 nights also helped.
if this scale isn't forgiving i may end up with a score 1/2 my aamc avg hahaha.
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Anybody know what kind of curve you usually get for a relatively difficult section (approximate raw score for a 10)? I think I'm going to lose my mind over the next month. PS has always been a strength of mine (I tutor physics and chemistry at my school) but that PS section was by far the most difficult I've seen. Starting to regret not voiding. The only reason I didn't was because I managed to focus all the way through verbal... which never happens. I usually score around 12-13 on the AAMCs and would honestly be ecstatic with a 10. Any chance that a 30/52 gets me a 10?
Bro, I feel you. I'm in a similar situation.. PS was the one section I consistently scored 10+.
Regarding the actual test, I felt like PS was much harder than I was expecting; it was harder than any PR practice FL I took. I thought maybe it was just test anxiety or something, but Verbal and BS were pretty straight forward.
IDK about chances, just understand that it's very likely that some of the questions/passages on our MCAT were experimental, so it's unlikely that all of your answers will count towards your actual raw score. With that in mind, you may have bombed a passage or something, but it could've been experimental.
Just try and keep your mind off of it. I think a lot of people felt that PS for 2pm was difficult, so it wasn't only you. Just wait until 9/13 for your score. There is no point in trying to figure this out, when it's unlikely that you will be able to. Furthermore, probably not a good idea to get our hopes up, just in case we're in for a big let down when scores come out.
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Yeah I thought the August 9th test was definitely harder than any of the CBT's from AAMC that I took except for the verbal section. I felt like the first 3 passages were a lot easier than normal especially since there weren't any of those I,II, II questions. I felt like the BS's section was way harder than any of the online practice tests. Absolutely hell with one passage on a million different enzymes and their effeciency in treating some type of cellular disorder (Can't even remember the actual thing haha).
I'm really debating on retaking it on Sept. 12th since this was my first attempt and I don't feel good about it all (a lot of educated guessing).
Good idea? Bad idea? Worth the extra month of studying?
I just submitted my initial AMCAS today.
I'm really debating on retaking it on Sept. 12th since this was my first attempt and I don't feel good about it all (a lot of educated guessing).
Good idea? Bad idea? Worth the extra month of studying?
I just submitted my initial AMCAS today.
I submitted my primary July 5th. There would be no point in retaking on september 12th, since your primary will likely be verified by then. So the MCAT score that will be going to all the schools is the one from August 9th. They won't be waiting an extra month for your next MCAT score to make their decision, so why waste the time/money? At least that's my opinion...
I figure if I somehow bombed it*knock on wood* that I'll just retake next year sometime. No way I'm putting myself through another month of torture/studying when I may have done well enough to get an acceptance somewhere. Here's to hoping we get a nice curve!
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Yeah, I had the 2pm test as well. It seems like people normally associate a difficult PS section with lots of calculations. This section wasn't very calculation heavy but conceptually, it was just so damn weird. Some of those passages seemed awfully long for PS too. Also, as the poster above mentioned, there was one passage in particular on BS that was very difficult to synthesize as well.
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Yeah, I remember the passage you are talking about. I took one look at it and left it for the end. When I came back to it I only had a couple minutes left. There were 2 or 3 questions which didn't require direct knowledge from the passage that I think I did alright on. The other ones though I just picked an answer that looked nice. I feel like it would have taken me too long to sort all that information out. Gotta pick your battles I guess. Here's to hoping it was an experimental passage.
So if I did take it September 12th, they would not even see that score for this application cycle? I'm confused.
It's just a tough decision because I believe I can definitely raise my score but if it wouldn't even matter for this application cycle then I don't see any point in doing it. Did not do enough practice problems the first and too much content review.
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Heck, it's guaranteed that some of the questions on the test were experimental.
D
deleted393595
I think you can be reassured that most people's actual MCAT scores are +/- 2 of their AAMC practice test average. If you did well on your practice tests you shouldn't (hopefully) be too worried about your real score.
That's the impression I'm under, yes. By October 12th I'd imagine most of the schools you've applied to would have already made their decision about you, using your August 9th score. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm in the exact same boat as you, though. I did WAY too much content review, and not any practice FL's. What a mistake that was. As mentioned earlier, I used about 10-15% of my content review knowledge on this exam. The rest was the kind of, "what the hell, this answer looks good based off of the passage" questions. If I re-wrote on September 12th I'd have no doubt I'd score 4 or more points higher, but I'm not going to waste my money on it when most, if not all, the schools I've applied to will have already decided if they wanted to interview me or not based on my August 9th score.
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Ok, I'll say a few things. This was a re-write I decided to do about three weeks before (I found out my score july 23rd and was a bit shocked, decided to re-write RIGHT then and there). Put in a solid amount of work every day. Talking 10-12 hours a day. Like I hadn't left my house in three weeks. My main problem area was physics. So I spent two weeks going over every concept, loads of questions, memorized stuff. The way I prepared for my june 20th mcat was to read all the TBRs and do the practice tests and my friend taught me physics. It wasn't enough. This time I knew I needed to go through and teach myself the physics, and princeton was great for that.
I think physics went decently, I never feel confident about that section. I managed to swing an 11 on AAMC 7 for physics and I was exceedingly proud of myself (physics is REALLY a problem area for me.. never took it in high school, had to teach it to myself for the mcat so a lot of the physics stuff that y'all intuitively know from years of studying it? I don't have that). I'm expecting an 8-9. I know that's not good but I'd be happy with that at this point.
I will say that I wrote june 20th and felt like it went fine, looking back on it I feel like I guessed more times then than I did now. Hopefully that improvement will be noticeable.
Verbal went well for me. I don't remember struggling on anything. I didn't practice verbal for this mcat, as my goal was to improve my physics score. And I had always done well on verbal. As simple as this sounds, highlighting as I read things actually helped me to remember and not have to check the passage. I didn't find any of the passages impenetrable (maybe the colonial one was a bit verbose for my taste)
As for bio: So glad I went over AAMC's list of mcat topics. Esp redox titr. For those reading this- definitely go over their topic list and ask yourself if you know everything on the list.
There was one thing on bio that I had forgotten yesterday but I was so glad I didn't get tripped out on an entire passage like I did on the 20th (there was a passage in particular that I spent way too long on when i wrote in june and it knocked me down by 2 points probably)...
I had a non-functioning mouse and I had to keep banging it against the table... I had someone from the test centre come up to me and tell me to pause the exam when I said the mouse wasn't working. I gave her one of these 😱😕😡faces and said there's no pause button and I'd just deal with it.
I don't need to re-write because I'm applying to med schools mainly in ireland, and most of the schools that do report mcat scores say their "averages are as high as 28 or 29" so I'm really not threatened considering they seem to emphasis ECs and LORs.
I swung a 31 on AAMC 10. And a 30 on AAMC 7.
hopeful prediction: PS: 8 VR: 10-11 BS: 10-11
I tend to be really hard on myself so maybe I did better. Or maybe I did worse. No way of knowing until a few weeks from now. I think I did better than last time. When people ask me about it my heart starts racing.
I noticed people were saying this thread was dead so I thought I'd spice it up with my gratuitous recount of what yesterday was like.
I just wanted to say that my situation is similar to yours. After a shocking score I studied my butt off and was getting around the same practice scores as you.
I also felt uncomfortable on the physics section but I'm hoping those weird questions were experimental and weren't difficult for only me. I'm getting anxious about my scores now too and feeling like everything hinges on this score while writing secondaries ruins everything.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for both of us
because we did our best. Not much else we can ask for 😀somebody asked about this earlier but i dont think it got answered... what is the approximate score for a 10 when people are referring to a favorable curve 33/52? or more?
also, are there experimental passages on every MCAT? i have never heard of this before?
also, are there experimental passages on every MCAT? i have never heard of this before?
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https://www.aamc.org/students/download/63060/data
Page5 said:
Page30 said:
If you do a quick google search (or even on SDN), you'll be able to find a lot more information.
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I'm not sure if this question is answerable. This "favorable" curve you speak of would not be out of 52 questions because there are experimental items on the exam. It would be some number less than 52, however, I'm not quite sure how many experimental items are on each exams, so I couldn't give you a definite number.
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I agree with most of the people that PS was more difficult to manage than on the AAMC Fls, mostly because of timing and the conceptual questions and PS is my strongest section. The BS wasn't much like the practice AAMC's. I was getting constant 9s and 10s on BS with their practices but I'll feel lucky if I even get an 8. Less on outside knowledge and more passage based and it threw me off a bit. I didn't get much straightforward discretes. I feel like the way I studied for the BS was a little off even though it was based on their practice exams, in my opinion anyway.
The e-mcat has a Understanding Scores section that has the scales of each practice test. The lowest 10 for PS is 38/52. Might have already seen this but if not its helpful. I thought test 11 was the hardest PS section but more calculation heavy than concept hard. The 2pm on aug 9 seemed more concept hard to me. The link probably won't work cause it's past the login page.
https://www.e-mcat.com/starttest.aspx?cmd=loadfile&file=score
