what was the worst section on may 31st?

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kateycat

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just wanted to see what everyone thought was the hardest section on the may 31st mcat... post any comments below or in one of the other 3 threads about today 👍
 
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VR was by far the worst. Here's a general question: what does the VR section prove? It's nearly impossible to read every passage in 60 min, and understand it. It seems like doing well just is a matter of comming up with a good system to find answers in the passage quickly, an eliminating trick anwser choices. Is this really a skill applicable to real life? As a Doctor is reading a passage on Art theory efficently going to save someone's life? I don't think so!
 
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hmm..... so if no one thinks it was easy.... i'm going to be feeling a lot better about things 🙂

i thought verbal was alright except for the last passage- i still can't even remember what it was about- and i didn't have much time left at that point

otherwise, i thought ps was the worst. bs was ok, but the way some of the questions were worded left me not feeling too confident.
 
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I agree that the verbal section seems to be a completely useless indicator for medical school success. Honestly, ask any doctor today to read a passage about limestone caves and answer questions about it..most likely he laughs at you and tells you he has better things to do, what a ridiculous passage!!
 
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jebrewski said:
I agree that the verbal section seems to be a completely useless indicator for medical school success. Honestly, ask any doctor today to read a passage about limestone caves and answer questions about it..most likely he laughs at you and tells you he has better things to do, what a ridiculous passage!!
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you know what's annoying though..... i had an interviewer tell me that the verbal score is the best predictor of step 1 scores....

id seriously like to see some scientific evidence on that though, i think its a load of crap
 
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VR was the worst for me. In all of my practice exams, the passages were somewhat readable, but two or three of them on this exam were just awful. Also on all sections, quite a few questions were worded so awkwardly that I wasted a lot of time just trying to figure out what the heck they were asking.
 
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PreMedMommy said:
VR was the worst for me. In all of my practice exams, the passages were somewhat readable, but two or three of them on this exam were just awful. Also on all sections, quite a few questions were worded so awkwardly that I wasted a lot of time just trying to figure out what the heck they were asking.
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i totally agree. this made me so angry and i think it probably cost me some points. (oh and the flickering monitors just made things 1000x better too.)
 
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An example of a very badly worded question in my opinion was the one about liver enzymes inactivating drugs...does anyone agree?
 
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Yes, you do in response to the above post. But you will be reading articles related to science and medicine...a report on an experimental new drug, or a published research article....not a short convoluted essay on art history, feminism, or caves. I've done extensive research over my undergraduate years and i've been to meetings with MD/PhDs whos job is to understand not only their daily jobs as surgeons but also the research...verbal is important as a section but they should test all science related material...the tests now are ridiculous in my opinion.
 
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I agree with you j-ski. Unfortunately most undergrads don't have the background to skim medically scientific passages and interpret questions from them. So I guess the AAMC feels a sampling of general topics is better. Maybe they're more interested in the critical thinking applied than the content? Who knows. I feel that if they want to test verbal reasoning, fine. Just give us something we are able to reason with!
 
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Screw those Phreatic caves...

Some of the questions on that exam had extremely odd sentence structure...
 
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megboo said:
I wonder if the test creators see these threads and laugh maniacally over them.......
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I bet the test creators laugh maniacally when they are creating the test..."well there will be a curve, so lets give them a ****ty cave essay, some boring art history argument, hey wtf, let's just throw in a third monster essay no one will understand just for our amusement (chuckles throughout the room)"
 
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I'm picturing Dr. Evil.......... verbal "reasoning"

drevil.jpg
 
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after having done all the aamc tests, the may 31 test was BY FAR the hardest, aamc 3-10, none has any science passage as long as the ones on the 31st test, nor do any of the aamc 3-10 have awkwardly worded questions
the 31st tests had so many badly written questions that i could not even make out what it was asking me, and i was scoring in the 30s on the practice tests, i was so close to cancelling my score
 
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I'm picturing the professor who realized that the test was a completely ridiculous set of questions only peripherally related to the material:

**Looks around at the scandalous expressions on the students**
"EVERYBODY GETS AN A!"

lol...

I think I got an A+ on this exam though...
 
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LOL i will be happy if I get anything above 20...seriously i feel horrible after this test:scared::scared::scared:
my friend is taking DAT today and i so envy her...it is so much easier and at least she will know her score the second she finishes.
 
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My PR teacher told me the reason there is a Verbal section is because if a patient tells you a story, you have to "read between the lines" and deduct clues from it. This is the skill we need to have in order to do the Verbal section. I think its kinda dumb, but take it for what it's worth.
 
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fuddydoctor said:
My PR teacher told me the reason there is a Verbal section is because if a patient tells you a story, you have to "read between the lines" and deduct clues from it. This is the skill we need to have in order to do the Verbal section. I think its kinda dumb, but take it for what it's worth.
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geez...i doubt any patient would talk to doctors in the kind of language that was on the "hope" passage...
 
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fuddydoctor said:
My PR teacher told me the reason there is a Verbal section is because if a patient tells you a story, you have to "read between the lines" and deduct clues from it. This is the skill we need to have in order to do the Verbal section. I think its kinda dumb, but take it for what it's worth.
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there's no way that's the reason there is a verbal section. that's the worst rationale I've ever heard.
 
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I have to agree with some of the posters here who said the May 31st test was considerably more difficult than practice CBTs 3-10.

I was scoring 28+ on all of the tests and on 8, 9 and 10 I was between 30 and 32, so I felt pretty confident going into the test yesterday.

I really didn't think the verbal reasoning section was that hard compared to what was on the practice tests. The two hardest passages were about the caves and the last passage about the lack of hope in America today (or whatever it was about, it was ridiculously worded). Other than those two, I thought the other 5 were pretty easy.

What I was totally shocked at was the difficulty of the biology section. I consider biology to be my strong point and was scoring 12+ on the practice tests. For the most part the passages yesterday were WAY longer than the practice tests and alot more difficult to understand. The questions were also worded funny and hard to decipher as many have mentioned. I don't know if it was just me, but the passage about the formation of the circulatory system with the chart of the proteins was freaking insane, I read it twice and still couldn't figure out the chart or the questions. On the practice tests, I was able to narrow down answer choices to 2 on most of the questions I didn't know, but yesterday I felt as if I guessed on way more than I am used to.

I was happy that there seemed to be less organic than on the practice CBTs tho, but the difficulty and length of the biology passages made up for that fact.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only person out there who thought it was more difficult than all of the other CBT's.
 
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Biology was definetly the hardest. The muscle/blood passage with the dog and the one about the renal vesicular(wtf is THAT in regards to the kidneys?) passage were both killers....
 
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VR by far was my worst. I was finishing VR in practices with 10-15 min. to spare and I barely finished the real VR. I attribute it partly to the passages and partly to the fact that I hit my mid-day brain lull during that section.
 
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VR imo isn't to show your reasoning ability...it's to show your reason under pressure...
fyi the mcat is very simple compared with med school.
 
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JohnnyOU said:
VR imo isn't to show your reasoning ability...it's to show your reason under pressure...
fyi the mcat is very simple compared with med school.
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I imagine the MCAT in content would be simpler, but in med school, exams are pretty specific, aren't they? You pretty much know what's going to be on the exam even if the material's harder.
 
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megboo said:
I imagine the MCAT in content would be simpler, but in med school, exams are pretty specific, aren't they? You pretty much know what's going to be on the exam even if the material's harder.
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my friend claims that MCAT was the hardes exam he had to take. Med school is not so hard but the amount of material you need to digest is overwelming...not the concepts. Most of it is just pure memorization.
 
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dr.kicia said:
my friend claims that MCAT was the hardes exam he had to take. Med school is not so hard but the amount of material you need to digest is overwelming...not the concepts. Most of it is just pure memorization.
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That sounds more realistic. I always ask my mom about her med school experiences but it was all 20 years ago for her. LOL even her MCAT didn't have all the topics we have to cover 😉
 
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