Thoughts on May 31st MCAT

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Anyone remember what the last VR passage was about? Just trying to re-live some memories.
 
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The last one wasn't the cavern, which is what got me. Umm...I really don't remember at this point what the last one was. I think the first one dealt with the dreaded memory/sensory subject.
 
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To mark answers- do you just mark the circle next to your answer? Do you have to save the answers?
 
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Oh gosh, I just took the test today as well, and looking at everyone's posts made me feel sooooooooooooooo much better. I thought I was the only one thinking I totally bomed it. I didn't understand why I thought it was so much harder than even the AAMC 10CBT.
I forgot to save my first essay too but I hope it was saved.
How is this test graded? will there be a curve? I'm so doomed.
 
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hope4best said:
Oh gosh, I just took the test today as well, and looking at everyone's posts made me feel sooooooooooooooo much better. I thought I was the only one thinking I totally bomed it. I didn't understand why I thought it was so much harder than even the AAMC 10CBT.
I forgot to save my first essay too but I hope it was saved.
How is this test graded? will there be a curve? I'm so doomed.
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yes there is always a curve, plus they always used experimental questions which will not even be scored so it will even out at the end.
I wish you all guys luck and lets just think we all did fabulous.:luck:
 
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Vanguard23 said:
Anyone else look at the diagram for the BBMC(renal passage) and go: "Where the f*** did they get these hieroglyphs at? " By this time I was so cold and freaked out and mentally fatigued that it just looked alien to me.
I mean, the thing was so jumbled that it was incomprehensible.
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Hmm I don't remember this passage at all... I don't know if I should be worried lol. My bio passages were about the tumor injections, dog exercising blood flow, short eared mice... can't remember the other two. Did we have the same form?
 
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according to my logic, the june 15th test should be quite a bit easier because the past several tests have been really hard...

...then again, with this type of reasoning, it's no surprise i suck at verbal.
 
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SnoPearl said:
Hmm I don't remember this passage at all... I don't know if I should be worried lol. My bio passages were about the tumor injections, dog exercising blood flow, short eared mice... can't remember the other two. Did we have the same form?
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Yes. I had the tumor cells that were injected into mice, I think. The dog blood pressure thing which I didn't even look at the graph for and the short/long eared mice.
The renal one was about Na+ and glucose concentrations/filtrates.
 
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SnoPearl said:
Hmm I don't remember this passage at all... I don't know if I should be worried lol. My bio passages were about the tumor injections, dog exercising blood flow, short eared mice... can't remember the other two. Did we have the same form?
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sounds like you had the same exams as me...but honestly i think they kinda mix everything because i remeber the BBMC passage and there were also 2 last passages on orgo....i don't however recall the pawerplant passage at all on PS.
 
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SnoPearl said:
Hmm I don't remember this passage at all... I don't know if I should be worried lol. My bio passages were about the tumor injections, dog exercising blood flow, short eared mice... can't remember the other two. Did we have the same form?
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yup it was all on there - it had the figure of a glucose molecule entering via protein channel and the Na/K pump
 
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I don't remember a power plant equation...not immediately anyways.
I remember the proposed battery passage.
 
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Vanguard23 said:
Yes. I had the tumor cells that were injected into mice, I think. The dog blood pressure thing which I didn't even look at the graph for and the short/long eared mice.
The renal one was about Na+ and glucose concentrations/filtrates.
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Ohhh that one you're right I had that too, I just didn't remember it being the "renal passage" b/c they pretty much didn't ask anything specific to the renal system. Yeah that figure was terrible... thank god we didn't need to understand it for the questions haha.
 
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First Post but long time reader.

My thoughts:

First of all, I was surprised how much energy I have after the test. although I was still tire, I wasn't so drained as after completing other practice tests.

PS: First two passages were difficult for me. For the first passage,I knew they were asking about waves and stuff but I couldn't gleam any information from the passage. second passage had that weird diagram about magnetism and projectile motion. Again, I couldn't understand fully what was going on. I understood the rest but I am uncertain about them. But when are we ever certain about our performance on the MCAT?

VR: uhm verbal is my worst section. For this test, I understood most of the passages but I don't want to have high hopes because I tend to miss even the easy questions. Yeah, I agree with everyone that the passage about caves and rocks was just too detailed. It was an expository essay so it was difficult to grasp tone or mood of the author. Besides, all the questions were asking about some obscure details and not the "feeling" of the passage. Reading it once would never be enough. And I gave up on the last passage. I was running out of time and I didn't understand the passage. All I remember were some key terms: hope, hopelessness, positive thinking...The questions were just killers. Each one was like a paragraph in itself. It asked about if thoreau said this...blah blah blah. My brain automatically shut down when I see "thoreau".

WS: I felt like vomiting trash half of the time. oh well who cares!

BS: I usually finished this section early but that could also be a curse because I would review my answers and start second guessing. There were some questions that I thought were tricky, or maybe I was just overthinking it. I was surprised how little O-chem was asked. Overall, the subject matter was not difficult but it was just tricky. But that's the story of the MCAT, isn't it?

Hope everyone did well. I am serious in saying that. We need more doctors in this world and if we are willing to grind though another 4 years of schooling, why shouldn't we be allow to?
 
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megboo said:
Art - philosophical nature of newer art and how anything can be art nowadays or sthg like that.
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I remember the passage about art being a commodity, but I think the last passage was about something really obscure regarding positive thinking in the past and the new hopeless attitude that we have... it's starting to come back to me but I definitely didn't understand the argument being made.
 
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SnoPearl said:
I remember the passage about art being a commodity, but I think the last passage was about something really obscure regarding positive thinking in the past and the new hopeless attitude that we have... it's starting to come back to me but I definitely didn't understand the argument being made.
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yes that is what i had but i also had a passage about art...i really think they just randomly mix everything out. That there is no more form A, B and so forth. At least this is what it seems.
 
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SnoPearl said:
Ohhh that one you're right I had that too, I just didn't remember it being the "renal passage" b/c they pretty much didn't ask anything specific to the renal system. Yeah that figure was terrible... thank god we didn't need to understand it for the questions haha.
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LOL...yeah i noticed a lot of the questions were not even related to passages on this MCAT...it seemed like they just threw in these long passages to drain you out and make you loose time. I didn't even read some of them and was still able to answer questions.
 
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SnoPearl said:
lol now that I think about it... it's really cruel of them to put a passage about hopelessness as the last and most confusing VR passage
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i didn't even read it. I read questions and tried to skim to get the answers and the rest i just was plain shooting😳
 
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SnoPearl said:
I remember the passage about art being a commodity, but I think the last passage was about something really obscure regarding positive thinking in the past and the new hopeless attitude that we have... it's starting to come back to me but I definitely didn't understand the argument being made.
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Ah yes, right, that's the last passage. Americans are hopeless blah blah blah
 
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I thought PS and BS were okay. I think the PS question on drums was in one of the AAMC practice tests. Either that or I had a dream about doing that question before hand. The verbal one on hope was confusing...So sad. 🙁
 
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Let, me start by saying this.

Why did they have to start off PS this way? You have to be kidding me? I couldn't for the life of me understand the system they were trying to implore regarding drums and sand. I read through this verbal like type passage and tried to understand what it was about. After reading it twice as fast as I could I proceeded to say in my head, "this is stupid and I am not getting it, go to the questions and try to answer those and see if the questions make more sense." NOPE!

They were WORSE than the passage. What happens to SAND when you put it is a bag and walk to the BEACH and open the bag and pour it all over your head. Where might the sand Land.

A. Mostly on your head
B. Mostly in your ear hair
C. Mostly there is no mostly
D. Sand wouldn't leave the bag because it would have static forces from walking to the beach and not rubbing the pole from across the street while looking left and right to cross. <<<<<<<< This must be the answer.

IMO, starting off like that was horrible. I mean I don't mind skipping questions to come back and I thought about it, but JHC I didn't want to skip a passage after reading it twice.

Calculations... Someone said there wasn't calculations... What crack rock are you on. Perhaps you might have forgotten but there was a ton of calculations and a couple were easy and then some where like huh? For Jimminy Cricket there were calculations in the BIO... Again, WTF...

Verbal, was going along smoothly untill middle earth... And how many Art passages could they have? I was thinking gEEZ another art passage. I just got mad because the middle passage was hard enough that it took so much time away, that by the end passage that was super rediculous I probably screwed that up too. I will never forget where MY freaking spring water comes from and how it is made...

*****************************************

Ok, yea it was hard, but what is the deal with giving something obviously no one is going to get in mass right on the first opening passage. What a joke. I am a competative person and when I see something it is harder for me to walk away then per se another person that would quickly concede defeat and go on to the next passage. I dunno yea, there will be a curve but what about the other passages that those couple CRAZY passages ruined.
 
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christian15213 said:
Let, me start by saying this.

Why did they have to start off PS this way? You have to be kidding me? I couldn't for the life of me understand the system they were trying to implore regarding drums and sand. I read through this verbal like type passage and tried to understand what it was about. After reading it twice as fast as I could I proceeded to say in my head, "this is stupid and I am not getting it, go to the questions and try to answer those and see if the questions make more sense." NOPE!

They were WORSE than the passage. What happens to SAND when you put it is a bag and walk to the BEACH and open the bag and pour it all over your head. Where might the sand Land.

A. Mostly on your head
B. Mostly in your ear hair
C. Mostly there is no mostly
D. Sand wouldn't leave the bag because it would have static forces from walking to the beach and not rubbing the pole from across the street while looking left and right to cross. <<<<<<<< This must be the answer.

IMO, starting off like that was horrible. I mean I don't mind skipping questions to come back and I thought about it, but JHC I didn't want to skip a passage after reading it twice.

Calculations... Someone said there wasn't calculations... What crack rock are you on. Perhaps you might have forgotten but there was a ton of calculations and a couple were easy and then some where like huh? For Jimminy Cricket there were calculations in the BIO... Again, WTF...

Verbal, was going along smoothly untill middle earth... And how many Art passages could they have? I was thinking gEEZ another art passage. I just got mad because the middle passage was hard enough that it took so much time away, that by the end passage that was super rediculous I probably screwed that up too. I will never forget where MY freaking spring water comes from and how it is made...

*****************************************

Ok, yea it was hard, but what is the deal with giving something obviously no one is going to get in mass right on the first opening passage. What a joke. I am a competative person and when I see something it is harder for me to walk away then per se another person that would quickly concede defeat and go on to the next passage. I dunno yea, there will be a curve but what about the other passages that those couple CRAZY passages ruined.
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😆😆😆😆 this must be the funniest thing i ever read on SDN...you made my day

but seriously i totally agree with you. The questions were rediculous and a lot of passages were written like they belonged in VR not PS...same goes for BS, some of them were really looong. But i think overall PS was the worst.
 
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I took the test today in san diego and it looks like it was the same exact one as what you all are discussing. the PS was very difficult, I agree. I managed to complete about 2/3rds of it and usually my timing is pretty good. I suppose I was freaked out and didn't have my brain awake. and they didn't have a damn question about circuits! I thought the VR was ok, but that last one was a killer! A few of the passages were organized such that you could easily scan the topic sentences and then immediately do the questions by referencing those topic sentences, so that saved me some time.

I voided it. And why not? June 15 is only 2 weeks away, thats 14 more practice tests I can take 😍

Anyways, off to the library for me. Good luck all!
 
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does anyone know when we will get our scores? the aamc website said july 3rd, but after the test, the webpage said 30 days which comes out to like june 30

does anyone know if random questions from throughout are disregarded, or is there one whole passage that is disregarded from each section
 
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How could you void it? I was not given an option to at the end of the test. It just exited to the desktop.
 
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just got back from my test. I have to say, it definitely was a more enjoyable experience than my one last year since there wasn't a chance at skipping a question but bubbling an answer for that question (7PS 11VR 11BS last year, guess where I skipped the question...haha).

In any case, I thought the PS was so-so. Right in line with the difficulty of some of the practice tests. Real glad I went over harmonics last night. I only finished 10 minutes early

The VR was fine except for that last passage. I thought there were 52 questions to this part, so when I was on #38 I was starting to freak out. That's okay, still ended up finishing early (~15 mins).

The BS I had a harder time. Don't know if it was the waving of the lines on the CRT screen had finally done a number on my brain or what, but I got real sick of it. Of course the last two (the ochem) I didn't do so well on, but such is life. Although I finished early, I didn't get to go through all of my answers. I was actually pressing down on the mouse to change a question when I ran out of time, haha.

We'll see how it ends up. Anyone know if they take the best score from each section when you apply? If so, I'm pretty sure I did better than a 7 (god knows I hope I did better, else I might just give up for good).
 
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Vanguard23 said:
How could you void it? I was not given an option to at the end of the test. It just exited to the desktop.
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i had an option to void it and then the whole questionare about the test center experiance.
I acctually was really satisfied because my test center had flat screens and it was really quiet.
 
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After the BS section there was an option for me to void... my sister did the same thing for hers in january.

She retook her mcat in april and the score report actually took a bit more than 30 days for her...she was agonizing over it... so maybe its the same deal here
 
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I had no questionnaire or option to void. Nor did anyone else at my site either...I was one of the first in and people were walking out with me.
 
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moe_4eva said:
just got back from my test. I have to say, it definitely was a more enjoyable experience than my one last year since there wasn't a chance at skipping a question but bubbling an answer for that question (7PS 11VR 11BS last year, guess where I skipped the question...haha).

In any case, I thought the PS was so-so. Right in line with the difficulty of some of the practice tests. Real glad I went over harmonics last night. I only finished 10 minutes early

The VR was fine except for that last passage. I thought there were 52 questions to this part, so when I was on #38 I was starting to freak out. That's okay, still ended up finishing early (~15 mins).

The BS I had a harder time. Don't know if it was the waving of the lines on the CRT screen had finally done a number on my brain or what, but I got real sick of it. Of course the last two (the ochem) I didn't do so well on, but such is life. Although I finished early, I didn't get to go through all of my answers. I was actually pressing down on the mouse to change a question when I ran out of time, haha.

We'll see how it ends up. Anyone know if they take the best score from each section when you apply? If so, I'm pretty sure I did better than a 7 (god knows I hope I did better, else I might just give up for good).
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I hate those flickering screens! I thought the first time that I was just unlucky, but now I know they're all this bad and I still have a terrible headache from it. You'd think they could afford to make testing conditions a little bit better when they're making you stare at a screen for 5 hours...

Oh and according to my preprofessional office staff they look at all your section scores and try to look at your improvement or lack of improvement. They also use it to learn about your decision making process.
 
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dr.kicia said:
i had an option to void it and then the whole questionare about the test center experiance.
I acctually was really satisfied because my test center had flat screens and it was really quiet.
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I absolutely hated my center. The employees were laughing outside the testing rooms and I think there was a bank robbery nearby or something because there was a period of time when police cars with their sirens blazing were passing by the center. Too bad there weren't any doppler effect questions. I would have aced those. At the end the CRT monitor was the least of my worries.
 
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I feel so off from everyone - I thought the drums passage was really easy but I missed so much other stupid stuff..

Last passage in verbal - I may have as well guessed on all of it
 
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christian15213 said:
people said they saw the drum thing before??? Where, what planet was this experience on?
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Someone on this thread had mentioned it was either in one of the Kaplan or AAMC practice test.

megboo said:
Me too, but not likely

I've always finished early when i take tests, standardized or not.
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Oh no don't think like that. You tried your best is what counts. If it makes you feel any better, she got the 15 on BS on her second try🙂
 
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tigercu said:
does anyone know when we will get our scores? the aamc website said july 3rd, but after the test, the webpage said 30 days which comes out to like june 30

does anyone know if random questions from throughout are disregarded, or is there one whole passage that is disregarded from each section
Click to expand...

I can see them stringing us through the 4th holiday. Blast!
 
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megboo said:
Me too, but not likely 🙁

I've always finished early when i take tests, standardized or not.
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i wish i could do that but i barely finished on time, especially on the VR...acctually on that last passage i just said screw it and read the questions and tried to use question stem with skimming thru passage...and the rest i just was shooting....totally blindly shooting out of desperation:laugh:
 
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dr.kicia said:
supposedly it was in the one of AAMC practice exams...i also do not recall it. So maybe it was in the 4R since that is the only one i didn't take.
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Nope not in the 4R, I just took that this week. I think it must be the kaplan ones, since I doubt aamc would knowingly put the same passage in the practice and then again later in the real thing. Though I can't say I recognize this passage from anywhere either.
 
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yea I have not seen the drum one before either. The exam was a bit difficult, harder than the AAMCs I had practiced. Why did they happen to make the May 31st one harder??
hopefully the curve turns out be good and benefits all of us!
 
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But can someone explaint the sand to me... I just took my drum set, went out side and started beating it. What do you think happened?
 
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SpartanBlueJay2 said:
+1
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Yeah, +1+1+1 to the whole harder than any of the practice tests...

PS- wasn't too bad.

VR- I guessed on the last 4 questions... I was cruising, then I just ran out of time, I had 3 minutes on that last section... pissed me off

Writing Sample - Not bad... super easy

BS- Easy

Overall I hope the VR comes out alright for me. If I did above an 8 I think I'll be golden.

I'm going out to have a beer... Night everyone
 
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HoistDaColors said:
I found it. Full length test #3 from kaplan. Passage 4. I have all these practice tests but I never did them. sigh!!
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o wow! here we go again...we will have a january MCAT story repeating...now once all these ppl who never took Kaplan will start complaining that Kaplan ppl had an advantage...
AAMC srewed up again...geeez. I hope they at least asked Kaplan to use their material before putting it on their exam...otherwise we will be looking at some interesting things happening.
 
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