A little late to the party but I took it 6/16.
Previous MCAT scores:
2/3/16: 504 127/123/128/126
3/3/18: 505 126/124/126/128
Practice AAMC FL:
FL 1 (6/1) 511 130/126/128/127
FL 2 (6/5) 515 130/127/130/128
Sample (6/8) 80.43% 75%/77%/85%/85%
FL 3 (6/11) 508 127/125/128/128
I had previously seen FL1, FL2, and the sample but it had been longer than 15 months since I saw them last. So they might have been inflated a point or two. But the science sections felt new and I didn't remember any of the passages or discrete questions besides maybe 1-2. My target score was/is a 512.
Actual test day:
C/P: Calculation heavy and there were two questions that I couldn't easily derive the right answer and had to skip in the interest of timing.
CARs: This has always been my weak area and spent the last few days heavily reviewing this section. I felt the passages on test day were actually pretty easy but I'm not confident that it was a result of my preparation and legitimately arrived at the right answers or fell into traps that seemed blatantly obvious. I did catch about 3-4 questions where they were trying to mislead you to select an obvious answer but wasn't the actual correct answer (or what I thought was the correct answer).
B/B: Fairly straight forward
P/S: Brutal. Its not that I didn't know the terms well, albeit there were a few terms/experiments that I had not heard of before (which always seems to be the case on actual test day with this section unfortunately), but more that the answer choices were so similar that it was hard to differentiate what viewpoint they were actually trying to represent. Extremely inference heavy, just knowing the definitions well for this section won't cut it. You have to know exactly how each viewpoint can be applied in a wide variety of scenarios. I feel like there was about 4-6 questions where I could not simply "poke holes" in other answer choices to arrive at the correct one and was subsequently left with a 50/50 or even 33/33/33. This has been my strongest section since my last MCAT but felt the worst about this section. I'm still hoping for a 127-128 in this section.
If you're struggling with timing/nerves, especially starting off on the first section, try completing the last three discrete questions first. These questions, at least for me, are easier and fairly straight forward and tend to boost confidence early on and help you get into that rhythm without messing with your timing. Get extremely comfortable with doing the calculations while feeling the pressure. Having every single equation memorized on the KAPLAN quick sheets plus a few others is essential to feel like you at least have the knowledge and capability of arriving at correct answer if given enough time. Use dimensional analysis if for whatever reason you can't remember an equation, most of the time you can at least narrow it down to a 50/50. Timing is key, don't waste 3-4 minutes trying to work the numbers to get a right answer -- the reality is you're most likely going to miss that question anyway and there are questions later in the section that you won't be able to give enough time to that would have otherwise been a gimmy. This goes for any of the sections, if you're spending 2-3 minutes having that inner debate of A vs. B, you're shooting yourself in the foot for the rest of the section. This was a hard habit of mine to break, I always felt like I was so close to getting the right answer that I would keep trying to manipulate the numbers, but performance on the latter half of the section noticeably suffered when I began to feel the time crunch. I highly recommend EK 101 Verbal Reasoning if you are struggling with CARs. Just my thoughts and feelings, feel free to message me if you have any questions.
