What were your initial scores?

[dreaminOfMD>.<]

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When you FIRST took a practice MCAT, what were your scores? How much time did you spend studying for the MCAT and what did you score on the real thing?

I'm a bit paranoid. I didn't study at all for the practice exam and over spring break I took one. I got an 8 in Biological Sciences, an 8 in Verbal, and a 5 in Physical sciences 😱 . That's a combined score of 21...I'm REALLY freaked out cuz I'm taking the test in August and I'd like to hear your stories...

 

[Soccrtrela]

Don't worry, when I took my diagnostic MCAT at Kaplan, I only got a 21 too (although I think they make the diagnostic test harder on purpose to convince you to take their class).

My Kaplan classes started in October, and I've been broke all year because of it, but it's definitely worth it in my opinion... if I didn't have a structured block of time to do MCAT studying I would've become way too absorbed in my schoolwork! Anyways, at my first full length, I got a 28, and was able to increase to a 30 by the end (although I never memorized all my physics equations until the day before the real test and that's what was keeping me back I think).

Don't give up hope... the biggest challenge the MCAT presented to me was just getting comfortable with the format of the passages and questions and learning not to get intimidated by them! A good portion of passages (either in practice or on the real test) might deal with concepts that the test-makers don't expect you to know a whole lot about, but with the right training, you can find the right answers anyway!

You can take my input with a grain of salt, since I just took the MCAT last weekend, but I'm confident I didn't bomb it (hopin I did good enough to not have to take it a second time! 🙂) and the long road of studying is still very fresh in my mind!

 

[Sparkles]

um... The first time I took a practice test (back in January) I got a 5 in PS, 4 in VR, and 6 in BS... combination of 15. I worked my way up to getting 8's, 9's and even an 11 once on BS practice tests. I took the test in April so I don't know how well I did yet. So don't sweat it.

 

[dreaminOfMD>.<]

Thanks for the posts guys. Congratulations on finishing the exam in April! Hopefully all went well.

Sparkles, wow! You made some drastic improvements! I hope you did even better on the real thing. Hopefully, I'll be okay...I have a noticeable downward grade trend due to factors outside of school. B/c of that, my GPA is now borderline...I know I have to make up for that with my MCAT scores which I'll be taking this summer. I'm taking the Berkeley Review...finally, I made up my mind on which course to take...

Once again, thanks for your feedback!

Anybody else?

 

[DW]

Originally posted by dreaminOfMD>.<
When you FIRST took a practice MCAT, what were your scores? How much time did you spend studying for the MCAT and what did you score on the real thing?

I'm a bit paranoid. I didn't study at all for the practice exam and over spring break I took one. I got an 8 in Biological Sciences, an 8 in Verbal, and a 5 in Physical sciences 😱 . That's a combined score of 21...I'm REALLY freaked out cuz I'm taking the test in August and I'd like to hear your stories...

dont get too worked up, everyone starts slow. which test prep's diag did you take, TPR?

I started out with a low 20s score too, and ended up a 35 on the real thing. Those first diags are meant in part to scare you a little bit and highlight your weak points. physical I felt at least was the best section to go up in since it was mainly an issue of rehashing all those physics equations I hadn't used in a while. hey, an 8 in verbal is a pretty good start, seriously 🙂

Just study hard, and keeping taking diags until you're gradually ready for test day! 🙂

 

[Amit1]

My first test was the bogus TPR diag. I got a 14, but with a few hours of study I scored as high as 34 on some AAMC "r" tests.

 

[dreaminOfMD>.<]

That's a pretty big discrepancy there Amit...how the hec did that happen? Is it just that TPR is super hard or something? I heard that Berkeley Review exams are the same way...I'm not sure.

DW,

I took a practice exam out of a Barron's book (not from an actual course...I'll begin one next month). I'm not sure what the origins were on the exam but I just took it since the book had the answer key along with the score scaling. That way, I was able to see an actual score. I've taken some exams before off of the internet, but they had no answer keys or you had to purchase them for some money and at that time I wasn't really interested in spending any money on the MCAT. But yes, I will take diags over and over again. You honestly think an 8 in Verbal is okay? Thanks for you input though...congrats on Cornell!