The Official May 22, 2015 MCAT Thread

MCAT is Hard? Not with BeMo's 515 Score Guarantee.
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fenderboi930

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I think many of you will agree that today is a great day to officially prepare for the May 22nd MCAT!!!

I was against the April 2015 MCAT because a typical 3 month schedule doesn't seem to work for
students and/or working test takers. With a little over 4 months of preparation we can go in with confidence!
It's all new and really scary--so let's kick MCAT butt together!!

I was also wondering, wouldn't many professional MCAT test takers and tutors want to take the MCAT 2015 as soon
as possible (April MCAT) so they can better they're material or teaching? Wouldn't that just destroy the curve?
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I really reallu hope so. In all honesty, the psych passages seem to be all over the place. I have taken plente of psych classes and i am still at a loss for words when i qm taking these Kaplan FLs.

I am yet to take the AAMC FL. I plan on taking i on saturday and go from there. I am just afraid i am about to et blindsided by a semitruck doing 100mph
 
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Are you guys memorizing all these pathways..There was no need for the sample test but idk about the actual one..I don't want to waste my time if it's not worth it
 
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Glazedonutlove said:
Are you guys memorizing all these pathways..There was no need for the sample test but idk about the actual one..I don't want to waste my time if it's not worth it
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Boichem pathways? If so then yes, not every piece but pretty much all the stuff it gives you on khan academy
 
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Glazedonutlove said:
Are you guys memorizing all these pathways..There was no need for the sample test but idk about the actual one..I don't want to waste my time if it's not worth it
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But if you mean the hearing and vidual pathways then in my case i havent, as of yet. They are complicated and im not quite sure how high yield they will be
 
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How does a big prep company like EK happen to completely ignore almost all of the sociology topics on the aamc outline?
 
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somedudehere said:
How does a big prep company like EK happen to completely ignore almost all of the sociology topics on the aamc outline?
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I think what happened is that AAMC released an updated outline in the fall, after EK's books were already in print production. EK has since put out pdfs of all the new terms that will be included in their next edition... but yeah, end result is they missed a lot of info. :/
 
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Memorizing these pathways + physics are the worst part of the outline. Then again medical classes include memorizing pathways as well. Have to get used to it. Few more weeks for us.
 
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Glazedonutlove said:
do the videos help with memorizing then? Wish I took my biochem class this semester..hate relearning it all
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They definitely helped me. They take a more broad view and only cover the details you really need to know so it won't drudge through "hexokinase makes G6P which is transformed into F6P by an isomerase, etc" but gives a more overall functional view.
 
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mcatjelly said:
I think what happened is that AAMC released an updated outline in the fall, after EK's books were already in print production. EK has since put out pdfs of all the new terms that will be included in their next edition... but yeah, end result is they missed a lot of info. :/
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How does one acquire these PDFs if we already have their 9th edition?
 
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Eh I know most of the important parts of the krebs/glycolysis. I don't think I'm going to memorize the whole pathway for sake of time
 
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trimethylpurine said:
How does one acquire these PDFs if we already have their 9th edition?
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Oh no, you don't know about it?! Here's the link to the errata: https://www.examkrackers.com/mcat/Forum/Forum.aspx?f=155

They've made (and continue to make) quite a few corrections as well, so you might want to set aside an hour or so to go through the books and implement those changes. There's a handful of wrong answers that you definitely want to know about (always a relief to find out you actually got that question right).

I check it about once a week.
 
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I should have gone through the official outline from the beginning...I relied way too much on EK not realizing they left out pretty much 1/3 of the psych/soc content.
 
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Just took the TPR demo MCAT. First FL for me

Got a 504. 124/127/124/129 for phys + chem / critical / bio / psych

I finished psych with 37 minutes left but couldn't even fathom reviewing anything. My thoughts? It was LOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG

Mathematically, I got 89% on the psych section. For TPR, I'll take it.

Apparently I am bad at biochemistry in one section but good at it in another :cigar:
 
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Glazedonutlove said:
Are you guys memorizing all these pathways..There was no need for the sample test but idk about the actual one..I don't want to waste my time if it's not worth it
Click to expand...

I highly...highly suggest doing so...I even suggest memorizing the intermediates themselves of the ETC ;)

Please. Can. I. Keep. Selling. Sex. For. Money. Officer?
 
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So this is probably a stupid question, but I just want to make sure! Since we don't have momentum on the exam, does that mean we don't need to study collisions, angular momentum or stuff like impulse-momentum theorem??
 
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700003 said:
So this is probably a stupid question, but I just want to make sure! Since we don't have momentum on the exam, does that mean we don't need to study collisions, angular momentum or stuff like impulse-momentum theorem??
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It means I won't study it.

"Need"? Who even knows
 
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Ulgarmoose said:
Just took the TPR demo MCAT. First FL for me

Got a 504. 124/127/124/129 for phys + chem / critical / bio / psych

I finished psych with 37 minutes left but couldn't even fathom reviewing anything. My thoughts? It was LOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG

Mathematically, I got 89% on the psych section. For TPR, I'll take it.

Apparently I am bad at biochemistry in one section but good at it in another :cigar:
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Well damn
 
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I thought this test is not about memorizing... I thought its about understanding concepts and the ablitiy to apply them elsewhere?
 
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I say this... If you can memorize them.. More power to you! But if you cant.. Just make sure you understand them really good... That you can extrapolate info out of what they give you in the passage to be able to answer the questions
 
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GEToutLADYits6AM said:
Without going into specifics, how much detail and prior knowledge is needed for this test?
If you could take the test again, what resource would you use for psy and sociology passages?
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There were some questions I don't know where you would have gotten info from except if you read a Introductory level Psy book..But otherwise I think Kaplan supplemented with Khan is pretty solid

An honestly, you can't overstudy for this beast. Just keep plugging and long. Memorization AND application are both necessary
 
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I heard TPR was fairly good for psych as well, stay away from EK they left a bunch of stuff out from what people have said
 
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What about
XxThaDoggxX said:
There were some questions I don't know where you would have gotten info from except if you read a Introductory level Psy book..But otherwise I think Kaplan supplemented with Khan is pretty solid

An honestly, you can't overstudy for this beast. Just keep plugging and long. Memorization AND application are both necessary
Click to expand...
what about ps and bio sections? Lots of equation memorizing and other random crap or no?
 
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Studied psych/soc with Kaplan but using Khan to supplement it seems likes Kaplan missed a good amount of terms. Or either Khan is too detailed.
 
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somedudehere said:
I wish I could take 40 mins from my psych section and add 30 to chem/phys and 10 to bio.
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I'd like the freedom of being told I can take 3 breaks whenever I want and that I have 375 minutes (or whatever) of testing time to finish everything

Would definitely do ps and bio sections before lunch

Alternatively the exam could just not be 7 and a half hours
 
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Ulgarmoose said:
I'd like the freedom of being told I can take 3 breaks whenever I want and that I have 375 minutes (or whatever) of testing time to finish everything

Would definitely do ps and bio sections before lunch

Alternatively the exam could just not be 7 and a half hours
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I think that's how step 1 is..they need to change it for the MCAT too! And agreed, psych doesn't take that long at all
 
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Glazedonutlove said:
What about

what about ps and bio sections? Lots of equation memorizing and other random crap or no?
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Really can't get into specifics...Know your biochem cold (TBR is great for this), it shows up in some shape or form in nearly every passage...PS and bio sections are much more like you're reading clinical journals and extrapolating data and answers from that...Much less cold hard calculations and more interpreting and understanding. But there were a few questions I was absolutely shocked by how specific and nit-picky they were. Raw physics questions were few and far in-between

If you can get your hands on TBR sections for Bio I highllyyy suggest doing so, their practices problems are by far the best I have seen (with the exception of AAMC material)
 
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Anyone else feel like the explanations on the official practice test are half-assed? Especially compared to the old aamc practice tests which IMO went into a lot more detail explaining why the answer is correct/incorrect. Now it seems like half the explanation is them telling you what foundational concept, content category, which reasoning skill it's a part of...
 
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somedudehere said:
Anyone else feel like the explanations on the official practice test are half-assed? Especially compared to the old aamc practice tests which IMO went into a lot more detail explaining why the answer is correct/incorrect. Now it seems like half the explanation is them telling you what foundational concept, content category, which reasoning skill it's a part of...
Click to expand...

I don't know, they seem sufficient to me. :/
 
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Yu
somedudehere said:
Anyone else feel like the explanations on the official practice test are half-assed? Especially compared to the old aamc practice tests which IMO went into a lot more detail explaining why the answer is correct/incorrect. Now it seems like half the explanation is them telling you what foundational concept, content category, which reasoning skill it's a part of...
Click to expand...
yup I definitely agree. How did you do?
 
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somedudehere said:
Anyone else feel like the explanations on the official practice test are half-assed? Especially compared to the old aamc practice tests which IMO went into a lot more detail explaining why the answer is correct/incorrect. Now it seems like half the explanation is them telling you what foundational concept, content category, which reasoning skill it's a part of...
Click to expand...

I totally agree. Some questions give you explanations that make sense and other's are just like Choice A is correct because the information is in the passage. Choices B, C, and D are wrong because it's not there. Like gee thanks that's helpful. If I didn't get it the first time clearly telling me it's in the passage is not going to further my understanding.
 
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