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Uworld or practice tests?
Started by Petor16
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I personally think UWorld has better quality questions/passages, but it's definitely expensive. I'd only get Altius if I had a ton of time to study.
Both. This is a big test, and you really shouldn't skimp over a few hundred dollars given how high the stakes are and how much you are going to end up spending between now and when you matriculate. UWorld is really good for drilling content, and practice tests are invaluable for working on timing and having a metric to judge where you are with respect to an expected test score. They are not substitutes for each other.
You need both. A retake is more expensive.
I never paid for third party practice tests outside of aamc, and I honestly don't think you should. Uworld is a better investment. Nextstep has a free diagnostic and then one full practice test (if you're needing a diagnostic exam). With AAMC you have the Official Guide, sample test, FL1-FL4, and then you can make your qpacks and section banks into unscored practice tests (that is what I did with the section bank), especially if you want to practice timing. You could get at least four practice tests out of the section bank and qpack materials alone. They're releasing more practice materials in October too if you have a later test date.
Third party exams are good for identifying content gap, but they do nothing to help prepare you for aamc reasoning that's why I never used them.
Also: Khan academy has free passages ( a lot of them), and aamc happens to endorse KA, so I think if you're needing anything third party, I would go with them.
Uworld was great for P/S. Their CARS is better than commercial FLs. For B/B and especially C/P, you are better off getting FLs. I would definitely not spend much time on Uworld C/P.
Respectfully disagree with the above, I think UWorld was fantastic for C/P, and the main reason I got a 132 in that section. I'd say get both if it's only $100 extra - FLs for timing, and UWorld for reasoning practice/content review check. If I had to pick one though, I'd go with UWorld (plus all AAMC tests of course). How much time do you have before your official test?
UWorld C/P is good for knowledge, less good for practice. Altius prepped me well for CP and BB imho.
I got practice tests and UWorld and they were both worth it. I used the tests to simulate taking the test and then did UWorld to study areas that were giving me trouble on the practice tests.
