bigreddawgie

i suggest you pick up the pace. you need to be finishing with a lot more time left in the science sections. good 1st score!

Colleges00701

^^^ dude sent you a pm.

Colleges00701

So I have gone through a couple more AAMC exams and I have seen my verbal score stabilize at an 11. (Miss around 6-7 questions on each AAMC exam taken so far). I still have to take another 9 verbal section tests in the EK 101 book (only done 5 so far) and I still have a couple more AAMC exams to go through. The weird thing is that I average 9-10s on the EK 101 verbal book but on AAMC I have always made an 11 on verbal.


Unfortunately I have seen A LOT of fluctuation in my scores on the science sections. They go anywhere from 10-13. (Never made below a 10 on any section). Also there isn't one particular science section that I seem to be good at. (Sometimes I score a 13 on PS and the next day I make a 10 on PS. The same goes for Bio). I was wondering about what I could do to stop these fluctuations. Would content review help or is it just more practice?

phonyreal98

This wide fluctuation probably indicates that you have some content areas that you are weak in. For example, if you're weak in magnetism and there's there's just one passage on magnets, this can be the difference between a 10 and a 12. Go through all the sections you scored 10-11 in and compare to the sections you scored 12-13 in. Compare the content of your worse sections to your better sections and see if there are certain content areas that appear more in sections that you do worse in.

Another possibility is if you have been doing better when you first started out doing practice tests and you're just now doing poorly, that you may be burning out.

Colleges00701

^^ Thanks for the great advice. I will def. start doing that.


^^^ I have just started doing FLs so I don't think its burnout.

mcat2

College, I could be wrong here, but I have the impression that some older (1-5 or 1-4?) AAMC tests are very old. This may affect how well its score would predict your real score.

Also, I do not know when you will actually take the real test. If it is still some time away, some said it is better to save a couple of these AAMC tests for the "last minute" practice tests 2-4 weeks before the real test.

I also heard some AAMC tests tend to be on the easy side and with a harsher curve (as compared to, say, the Kaplan science tests -- some of the Kaplan later tests could be a confidence crusher if taken right before the real test. But taking a few harder tests could help build the stigma and "harden" yourself in case your test happens to be more difficult. For example, for the real test DS took, his BS section was much more difficult than any of the practice tests he had ever taken -- even though he is a bio major and also did well on orgo.)

As I said, I could be wrong here...

Colleges00701

I take the test in less than a month, which is why I started using AAMC. From what I have heard, you are right the AAMC 1-4 tests might not be an actual representation in score with the real MCAT. I have heard that 7-11 tend to be very accurate though. I just gotta raise the science sections to 12s consistently in the next 3-4 weeks. Back to content review I guess lol.

Colleges00701

WOW, I just got done doing that and that really helped. Going through my exams I saw that usually on most science passages I missed either none of the questions or just one question per passage. However in certain weak areas (harmonics, sound) I ended up missing like 3-4 questions per passage which really screwed over my grade. The same thing happens in verbal. Usually I miss either none of the questions on a particular passage or just one question per passage. However there is always one passage that is extremely difficult and I end up missing 3-4 questions on that passage. Thats good to know. Now I know how to improve.

mcat2

In the past, some CCers mentioned that taking a physiology course MAY be helpful for the MCAT preparation to some (likely limited) extent. Do some UG professors really teach a physiology class out of a textbook by authors like Constanzo, Guyton, or Boron?

When people talk about Big Constanzo and Little Constanzo, I do not know what they are talking about. I only know there is a "not so thick" Constanzo (in paperback) and BRS Contanzo (for Step-1 review), Are these two big Constanzo and little Contanzo?

Colleges00701

I also heard that may be helpful, especially if your intro bio class doesn't cover any physiology and just focuses on genetics. However since a lot of pre-meds take the mcats after sophomore year that may be a little hard to do.

mrpenguin

I hate to resurrect an old thread, but I've been wondering about pacing on the MCAT. What is the benefit of finishing with more than enough time to spare? Is it primarily to account for pacing variability on test day? Or, is it mainly to allow for extra time to revisit tough questions?

entomom

Please use old threads for information only. When you resurrect them, other members often do not notice the date and respond to the OP.

Please start a new thread to ask your question.