The Real MCAT Was So...Different, Unlike Any Practice Exam I Have Seen

[ManimalJax]

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I just took the MCAT on August 26th and suffice it to say that it was very different than any of the practice exams I have seen, even the practice AAMC ones. It seemed as if nothing I thought would show up actually showed up on the real MCAT that I took. Has anyone else felt this way?

All of the practice exams I took were simple in one way in that I was able to relate what I found in passages to what I have studied. If I did well on a practice passage, it was because I knew the material cold. If I didn't do too well, I knew what chapter I had to look up in order to find the information. However, with the real MCAT, I just felt as if nothing I studied brought me any benefit.

Has the MCAT changed ever since it became computer-based? Several students from my post-bac program have aired similar concerns about how the real MCAT is just...different. Has it become more passage-based? How am I supposed to prepare for the real one? I plan on taking it again in January.

 

[Lukkie]

a trend i've noticed going from AAMC 3-9 in order is that, yes, it is becoming more passage based. in the sense that, a lot of the questions feel more like VR than actual BS or PS. i remember on AAMC 3 there was a PS passage on harmonics and simple waves, you could get 4/5 with just plugging in formulas. now on AAMC 7 or 8 there was some lizard passage where it felt like you only needed BS knowledge for 2/6 and the rest were VR type questions.

 

[Ariadne]

a trend i've noticed going from AAMC 3-9 in order is that, yes, it is becoming more passage based. in the sense that, a lot of the questions feel more like VR than actual BS or PS. i remember on AAMC 3 there was a PS passage on harmonics and simple waves, you could get 4/5 with just plugging in formulas. now on AAMC 7 or 8 there was some lizard passage where it felt like you only needed BS knowledge for 2/6 and the rest were VR type questions.

Yeah, I completely agree with this.

ManimalJax, did you take AAMC 10, and if so, do you remember the particle accelerator passage in the PS section (I think it was passage VII)? That passage seemed heavily reasoning based to me. Would you consider it similar to/representative of what you saw on your test date?

 

[polarizer]

All of the practice exams I took were simple in one way in that I was able to relate what I found in passages to what I have studied. If I did well on a practice passage, it was because I knew the material cold.

Well, MCAT is meant to be largely a reasoning test. Yes, ample content review will help you with roughly 30% of questions. However, to be a successful doctor, you need to be able to chew through situations you never saw before. MCAT tries to emulate this by combining unlikely situations together in sciences, and seeing how well can you get out of your box and reason on the spot. VR is even more explicit in its aims. They know there is no way you have experience in both literary criticism of pastural development and microprocessor design. MCAT is definitely passage based, because how else can you create novel scenarios to test student's ability to reason, without writing long question stems?

 

[ManimalJax]

Yes Ariadne, that passage you mentioned from AAMC 10 is about the closest thing I have seen to what I have encountered on Test Day.

Polarizer, I understand what you are saying and I have come to terms with the fact that the real exam is more reason-based as opposed to knowledge-based. However, the question that I want to pose to all of you is: What is the best way to go about practicing the reasoning skills required to do well on this exam?

 

[cloosh]

yeah it's always harder on the real thing. they're tricky like that.

 

[DrDre2001]

I took the august 26th test too. And yes, i felt it was harder than basically any of the practice AAMC tests i took (i took all of them except for 9 and 10).

The physical science section involved much more calculation and paper work than any of the practice AAMC tests and these calculations took up a lot of time and left me straining for time. The Bio section was descent, but there were two really detailed passage that were pretty hard to comprehend quickly enough.

Go to the thread "August 26th MCAT Club!" and you'll see many others who were somewhat shocked at the difficulty of the test. So perhaps the curve will be real nice and you wont have to retake it in the first place. 👍

 

[foolz0r]

It was harder than the aamc practice tests for sure, but easier than most of the kaplan practice tests.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

I just took the MCAT on August 26th and suffice it to say that it was very different than any of the practice exams I have seen, even the practice AAMC ones. It seemed as if nothing I thought would show up actually showed up on the real MCAT that I took. Has anyone else felt this way?

Has the MCAT changed ever since it became computer-based? Several students from my post-bac program have aired similar concerns about how the real MCAT is just...different. Has it become more passage-based? How am I supposed to prepare for the real one? I plan on taking it again in January.

By any chance did you take any of the TBR exams (paper or CBT)?

 

[ManimalJax]

No, I haven't. However, I was planning on buying some of the TBR books some time this week (Physics, Chem, and Orgo). Why do you ask? Would they prepare me for the style of the real MCAT?

 

[futuredoctor10]

now on AAMC 7 or 8 there was some lizard passage where it felt like you only needed BS knowledge for 2/6 and the rest were VR type questions.

Yep- lizards and microfilaments passages from AAMC 8 I think are two relatively representative examples of what the real MCAT passages are like. The real BS was a little different (more complex in graphs/diagrams in parts) but similar.

Yes Ariadne, that passage you mentioned from AAMC 10 is about the closest thing I have seen to what I have encountered on Test Day.

Speaking for my MCAT test (on 8/22), I would say there was maybe 1 passage similar in style/nature to the particle accelerator from AAMC10. The PS section was heavily passage-based but I thought most passages had way more calculations than the particle accelerator passage, so just noting that here for future testtakers.

It's very hard to identify one or 2 passages on old MCATs that mimic the real MCAT because the real MCAT passages were just THAT different in my opinion. However I would say generally the latter AAMCs are as close as you'll get to the real thing.

Also it seems like MOST people still do similarly to their AAMC scores on the real thing so despite a different seemingly harder exam I presume the curve evens everything out for most testtakers.