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Invictus1911

Invictus1911

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:):)We are the last of the fold. I wish everyone good luck. I am using SN2's method for three months on May 23rd allowing me two weeks for review. May the force be with you. Hope to meet some of you while we are in this together :):):):):):):)
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Like everyone else I found this test to be harder than any of the CBT's available. I scored very well on all available tests(high 30s with a couple low 40s), but felt this test was written a little different than the available cbts.

PS: I felt like I killed this section. I typically don't skip questions but I decided to do it for the first time when I came across 3 calculation intensive q's in a row. I felt confident in the rest of the questions and came back with only enough time to do out the calculations for 2 of the 3 I had skipped; so I had to blindly guess on the last of the three(first time I ever had to do this)

VR: Meh. Typically this is my worst section. From the CBTS I usually can garner 12 points but hardly ever more than that. After leaving the exam I couldn't remember what a single passage was about. However, before leaving to take my break after the section I did feel fairly confident. There was one passage I knew I didn't fully understand and I felt like I got more from the tone of the questions rather than the passage itself.

Writing: I never took this section seriously while studying and I hope it doesn't bite me in the butt. I gave political examples and filled up the blank enough where it only slightly extended the text box. So who knows

BS: As a bio major this is typically my strongest section. From what I have read I fall in the same boat as a lot of other people. There was an orgo passage that is a toss up. I used sound judgement(looking for patterns and eliminating) to answer the questions where I knew nothing about.

Hopefully the curve sits low to reflect the difficulty of some of the rogue passages.

Does anyone know whether or not the voided tests play into the curve? I'm hoping so but my gut tells me that's not the case.

Goodluck everybody!
 
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Desp said:
PS: I felt like I killed this section. I typically don't skip questions but I decided to do it for the first time when I came across 3 calculation intensive q's in a row. I felt confident in the rest of the questions and came back with only enough time to do out the calculations for 2 of the 3 I had skipped; so I had to blindly guess on the last of the three(first time I ever had to do this)


Goodluck everybody!
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*high five* that's what did too on 9/8 one =P
 
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kehlsh said:
:confused:
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What's confusing? He is saying that he left 3 questions with intensive calculations to the end. And he only had enough time to do 2 of the 3 questions. And he guessed on the last question only out of the three. So he did 2 and guessed on 1. Got it?
 
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MShopes said:
What's confusing? He is saying that he left 3 questions with intensive calculations to the end. And he only had enough time to do 2 of the 3 questions. And he guessed on the last question only out of the three. So he did 2 and guessed on 1. Got it?
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thanks for clarification i don't read these things lol
 
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BilalL said:
I know no one really reads it but there is a stick at the top of this sub forum that says:The Official MCAT Guide: Read Before Posting

And question 9 has your answer. So technically you should have looked through that before posting.

And I did answer your question instead of bluntly telling you to find it yourself.
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And technically it is not a big deal to just answer someone's question without feeling like you have some kind of unwarranted authority to reprimand them. I wonder how a patient would feel if their Doctor responded to an "obvious" question in a similar manner.

By the way - there is still a lot of speculation about what exactly goes on in grading AND the source you referenced does not fully answer or even recognize all of the questions asked in the original post (like experimental questions). They can say whatever they want, but how in the world does it take 30 days to go through the process you just described? A computer can do that in seconds ... And the writing sample simply shouldn't take that long to grade either. There is a lot of discussion on this forum about little things that are done to tweak scores that I don't think anyone truly has an absolute answer to that doesn't work for the AAMC.
 
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breakdancerj said:
By the way - there is still a lot of speculation about what exactly goes on in grading AND the source you referenced does not fully answer or even recognize all of the questions asked in the original post (like experimental questions). They can say whatever they want, but how in the world does it take 30 days to go through the process you just described? A computer can do that in seconds ... And the writing sample simply shouldn't take that long to grade either. There is a lot of discussion on this forum about little things that are done to tweak scores that I don't think anyone truly has an absolute answer to that doesn't work for the AAMC.
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There's actually not that much informed speculation about MCAT scoring.

There are an unknown number of experimental items on the mcat which do not count towards your score.

Your score is not based on your test cohort. This is explicitly indicated by the AAMC.

It takes 15-20 days to score all the WS.

The MCAT doesn't do anything more notably complex than any other major standardized test in terms of scaling. There are many research papers published by the AAMC about MCAT scoring and statistical methods.
 
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breakdancerj said:
And technically it is not a big deal to just answer someone's question without feeling like you have some kind of unwarranted authority to reprimand them. I wonder how a patient would feel if their Doctor responded to an "obvious" question in a similar manner.
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Good point. I see so many people on here responding to others with attitudes and nastiness that certainly does not reflect how I want to treat my patients. If someone asks a question that annoys you or has been asked before, just ignore it. Someone else can kindly answer it or POLITELY direct them to a previous source.
 
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paul411 said:
There's actually not that much informed speculation about MCAT scoring.

There are an unknown number of experimental items on the mcat which do not count towards your score.

Your score is not based on your test cohort. This is explicitly indicated by the AAMC.

It takes 15-20 days to score all the WS.

The MCAT doesn't do anything more notably complex than any other major standardized test in terms of scaling. There are many research papers published by the AAMC about MCAT scoring and statistical methods.
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Just to clarify the "little things" - There are plenty of threads here and elsewhere in which people speculate about how many experimental passages there are or could be, if experimental passages are truly thrown out, what it takes for a question to be dropped completely from scoring, etc. I do not know of anywhere where the AAMC explicitly answers these kind of questions. If you do, I would be interested in reading the information that you have found, but I have not found it answered in an unambiguous way here.

However, that is not really the issue at all. The issue is that people can have questions without being lectured or insulted. I am amazed at how many snide, thoughtless, and sarcastic remarks I see on Student Doctor which are written by the supposed future Doctors of America. In case anyone applying to medical school doesn't realize it, being a Doctor is about a whole lot more than making a lot of money -- it is about helping people. It has always been really difficult for me to understand how so many people with high MCAT scores and high GPA's don't get accepted to medical school, but after reading some of the posts I have seen on this forum, it has become increasingly clear that one of the reasons may be that arrogant and uncaring individuals actually have to sit through an interview where it is difficult to masquerade as something they are not. Medicine never was and never should be a business of building businesses. At its core it ought to be about the business of building people.
 
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breakdancerj said:
Just to clarify the "little things" - There are plenty of threads here and elsewhere in which people speculate about how many experimental passages there are or could be, if experimental passages are truly thrown out, what it takes for a question to be dropped completely from scoring, etc. I do not know of anywhere where the AAMC explicitly answers these kind of questions. If you do, I would be interested in reading the information that you have found, but I have not found it answered in an unambiguous way here.

However, that is not really the issue at all. The issue is that people can have questions without being lectured or insulted. I am amazed at how many snide, thoughtless, and sarcastic remarks I see on Student Doctor which are written by the supposed future Doctors of America. In case anyone applying to medical school doesn't realize it, being a Doctor is about a whole lot more than making a lot of money -- it is about helping people. It has always been really difficult for me to understand how so many people with high MCAT scores and high GPA's don't get accepted to medical school, but after reading some of the posts I have seen on this forum, it has become increasingly clear that one of the reasons may be that arrogant and uncaring individuals actually have to sit through an interview where it is difficult to masquerade as something they are not. Medicine never was and never should be a business of building businesses. At its core it ought to be about the business of building people.
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paul is a good dude.
 
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liveoak said:
paul is a good dude.
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And I am a terrible dude who has never helped out anyone on this forum.

In my defense I have written extensive detailed PMs to people asking questions about the MCAT material, and I help out whenever I can in the Q/A subsection.

On any forum you go to, you are expected not to pollute with threads asking questions that have been asked countless times, not to mention answered in the sticky at the top.

Anyways whatever I'm not a seasoned SD'er nor a moderator so don't use my response to judge others on this forum. Many people would have posted the same thing and many would have just answered your question "politely" so as not to get your panties in a bunch.(BTW I'm referencing the two posters who are arguing about my response).

I don't care about the "attitudes" of anyone on here, I just care about getting the information I desire.
 
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breakdancerj said:
Just to clarify the "little things" - There are plenty of threads here and elsewhere in which people speculate about how many experimental passages there are or could be, if experimental passages are truly thrown out, what it takes for a question to be dropped completely from scoring, etc. I do not know of anywhere where the AAMC explicitly answers these kind of questions. If you do, I would be interested in reading the information that you have found, but I have not found it answered in an unambiguous way here.
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The little things things that people speculate about are, for the most part, very inconsequential. The major things that matter have been addressed in "The Official Guide to the MCAT® Exam" by the AAMC. But if you really want those answers, they're buried in the literature. For example, in this paper, starting on page 22, you can see that the BS and PS sections contained 63 graded questions out of 77 questions presented on the test form which means that 14 questions were experimental. The VR section contained 55 graded questions out of 60 questions total. That 5 question deficit corresponds to one VR passage.

But again, these details are highly inconsequential to test takers.

However, that is not really the issue at all. The issue is that people can have questions without being lectured or insulted. I am amazed at how many snide, thoughtless, and sarcastic remarks I see on Student Doctor which are written by the supposed future Doctors of America. In case anyone applying to medical school doesn't realize it, being a Doctor is about a whole lot more than making a lot of money -- it is about helping people. It has always been really difficult for me to understand how so many people with high MCAT scores and high GPA's don't get accepted to medical school, but after reading some of the posts I have seen on this forum, it has become increasingly clear that one of the reasons may be that arrogant and uncaring individuals actually have to sit through an interview where it is difficult to masquerade as something they are not. Medicine never was and never should be a business of building businesses. At its core it ought to be about the business of building people.
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:laugh: I find your sanctimonious rant trite and pretentious. The "future Doctors of America" are not allowed to be sarcastic on an informal web forum? And anyone who happens to be slightly annoyed by a question that is repeatedly addressed on this forum is into medicine for the money?

Take it easy and get off your high horse. :thumbup:

PS. If you're really interested in the statistical methods behind the MCAT's scaling, the AAMC uses equipercentile equating method which is part of classical test theory.
 
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paul411 said:
It has always been really difficult for me to understand how so many people with high MCAT scores and high GPA's don't get accepted to medical school...
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I think that statement is not accurate. I think, for the most part, based on the published statistics, those with high MCAT scores and high GPA, generally get accepted to medical school. I think a more accurate something is that "some" people with high MCAT score and high GPA don't get accepted to medical school. This group may include a lot of students with non-science backgrounds (i.e. business majors).
 
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I wonder why this thread is probably the only thread that is really active after the MCAT is over.
 
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MShopes said:
I wonder why this thread is probably the only thread that is really active after the MCAT is over.
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Probably because the people who have not started school yet are more likely to sign up for this date (the last) compared to other dates. Also, these people probably have a lot of free time and can spend time on a thread like this.

I also think there is a sort of selection bias at work here. People who sign up for the last day in order to gain the extra days of studying are probably the neurotic type of people to spend more time on SDN than the norm.
 
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PingPongPro said:
Probably because the people who have not started school yet are more likely to sign up for this date (the last) compared to other dates. Also, these people probably have a lot of free time and can spend time on a thread like this.

I also think there is a sort of selection bias at work here. People who sign up for the last day in order to gain the extra days of studying are probably the neurotic type of people to spend more time on SDN than the norm.
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That makes a lot of sense. I just don't get how people start college too late like that. My college started Aug 26!!!!!!
 
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I know all the UC schools minus Berkeley start this week. I still haven't started yet and don't have class on thursday or friday so I don't start until NEXT week monday. Life is good.
 
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I had about 40 people ask me today how I did on my MCAT. After trying to explain to the first couple people that its really hard to gauge how you did accurately without the results, I got too tired and just told everybody the scores didn't come out yet, but I probably got around a 40. I tell them its out of 45, so I got like a 89% (40/45) which is pretty much the same thing as a B+.

After reflecting more and more on the MCAT, I increasingly feel like the MCAT isn't really that hard. It makes me feel like I want to retake even if I do score a score that is within my AAMC avg. Maybe I'm just going crazy, but I've actually come to grips with the fact that a retake in January might not be that bad. I wouldn't need to study as intensely and I think the testing experience from a first take is also worth about ~1 point in itself.
 
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PingPongPro said:
After reflecting more and more on the MCAT, I increasingly feel like the MCAT isn't really that hard. It makes me feel like I want to retake even if I do score a score that is within my AAMC avg. Maybe I'm just going crazy, but I've actually come to grips with the fact that a retake in January might not be that bad. I wouldn't need to study as intensely and I think the testing experience from a first take is also worth about ~1 point in itself.
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Yes! I've convinced myself this as well. It helps that i'm taking organic 2 now as well.

Bummer about people asking you about the mcat. noone knows i took it. :thumbup:
 
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This waiting is killing me. But, I'm not going to decide whether or not to retake until after the scores come back. Who knows how the curve will play out, amiright?
 
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PingPongPro said:
I had about 40 people ask me today how I did on my MCAT. After trying to explain to the first couple people that its really hard to gauge how you did accurately without the results, I got too tired and just told everybody the scores didn't come out yet, but I probably got around a 40. I tell them its out of 45, so I got like a 89% (40/45) which is pretty much the same thing as a B+.
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plus it doesn't help when your parents tell their friends' friends, and their familes

PingPongPro said:
After reflecting more and more on the MCAT, I increasingly feel like the MCAT isn't really that hard. It makes me feel like I want to retake even if I do score a score that is within my AAMC avg. Maybe I'm just going crazy, but I've actually come to grips with the fact that a retake in January might not be that bad. I wouldn't need to study as intensely and I think the testing experience from a first take is also worth about ~1 point in itself.
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dooo it, all the cool kids are :cool:

In all seriousness, while I did void, I do feel i know exactly what to do to think like this test and beat it, espically when it comes to verbal. It's like that slightest piece of ambiguity in the prep has faded. Best of luck if you guys decide to retake in Jan
 
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Invictus1911 said:
How are you guys coming along with content review, halfway? close to finishing?
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Desp said:
This waiting is killing me. But, I'm not going to decide whether or not to retake until after the scores come back. Who knows how the curve will play out, amiright?
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I think you can wait to decide because I am doing that.....we have three months to prepare after the scores come back....so I think we should be good.......for the retake.....
Ye waiting is annoying as hell....but am doing other stuff that keeps me busy for now......
 
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Well, it's been 13 days and I already know for certain i missed 3 PS, and 1 BS question. As pathetic as it is, it kills me.
 
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Desp said:
Hard to believe it's been that long already.
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Complete opposite feeling for me...it feels like it been months since we've taken it! I just want these stupid scores to come out already so I know whether I have to retake or not :confused:...
 
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liveoak said:
yep. haven't had a dream, but re-think questions all the time.

Going with a 10-8-10 prediction (very fluid) :luck:
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I like your prediction too.

Honestly I am now starting to feel as if I bombed PS but did really well in Verbal and Bio. Ochem passage haunts my dreams tho from bio.
 
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BilalL said:
I like your prediction too.

Honestly I am now starting to feel as if I bombed PS but did really well in Verbal and Bio. Ochem passage haunts my dreams tho from bio.
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That OChem passage is what keeps me from having any sort of prediction on the BS section. I don't know whether that stuff in the passage was something I was supposed to know or if it was something everyone was supposed to miss.

Right now feeling a 9/10/?.
 
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Trying to keep myself busy, so I dont think about MCAT at allll!!!! I just want to get it over with.....I waited the first time, worrying about it every single day....This time, I am doing other stuffz which takes my mind off the scores....BUT its gonna come back when days are getting closer to oct 11th....arghhhhh:mad:
 
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Just looking at some of the scores, and screen shots, posted from the 8/23 takers. Hope we come out as good as they did.
 
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nickmx50 said:
Just looking at some of the scores, and screen shots, posted from the 8/23 takers. Hope we come out as good as they did.
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As I wrote on both 8/23 and 9/10 it will be interesting to see what comes out of the 9/10 test.

An additional two weeks of preparation, hundreds of questions more, and another sitting should put me in a much better position for 9/10 than I was on 8/23.

I scored a 36P on 8/23 and am ecstatic! As I said earlier, I felt much better on 9/10 so we will see how well one's "feelings" match results (at least my own). I predicted 32Q for 8/23 and 34Q for 9/10.

If I were to give an honest prediction knowing the results of 8/23, I would have to guess my score on 9/10 will be close to but under my score from 8/23.

I found the PS section on 9/10 difficult but am confident in the VR and BS sections which I predicted to be my best scores to date.

We'll hafta see! It should be interesting either way.
 
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ClosetCrammer said:
As I wrote on both 8/23 and 9/10 it will be interesting to see what comes out of the 9/10 test.

An additional two weeks of preparation, hundreds of questions more, and another sitting should put me in a much better position for 9/10 than I was on 8/23.

I scored a 36P on 8/23 and am ecstatic! As I said earlier, I felt much better on 9/10 so we will see how well one's "feelings" match results (at least my own). I predicted 32Q for 8/23 and 34Q for 9/10.

If I were to give an honest prediction knowing the results of 8/23, I would have to guess my score on 9/10 will be close to but under my score from 8/23.

I found the PS section on 9/10 difficult but am confident in the VR and BS sections which I predicted to be my best scores to date.

We'll hafta see! It should be interesting either way.
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I'm curious why you signed up for two tests before knowing the score for your first? Truthfully, I wasn't aware one could do that. We must of had a similar test. I'm strong in physical sciences, and I felt that my PS section was brutal. VR felt moderate and BS was a breeze.
 
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nickmx50 said:
I'm curious why you signed up for two tests before knowing the score for your first? Truthfully, I wasn't aware one could do that. We must of had a similar test. I'm strong in physical sciences, and I felt that my PS section was brutal. VR felt moderate and BS was a breeze.
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Ah, right. My post in 8/23 explained the reasoning but I forgot to mention it here. My preferred school accepts your best score earned in a single-seating, regardless of whether it was your most recent attempt.

On 8/23 I received a 14 in PS and on 9/10 my prediction is 10-11. :cry:
 
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ClosetCrammer said:
Ah, right. My post in 8/23 explained the reasoning but I forgot to mention it here. My preferred school accepts your best score earned in a single-seating, regardless of whether it was your most recent attempt.
On 8/23 I received a 14 in PS and on 9/10 my prediction is 10-11. :cry:
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That makes sense. Do you have first hand knowledge of this for your preferred school? I didn't know that schools publish that kind of information, but it certainly would be useful.
 
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nickmx50 said:
That makes sense. Do you have first hand knowledge of this for your preferred school? I didn't know that schools publish that kind of information, but it certainly would be useful.
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Yup.

Under: 6.4 Operative MCAT® Score Determination

"The highest operative score contributes to the applicant's composite score."

Pretty swell!
 
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Guys, scores only come out in tuesdays....so count around 30 days from your test date and then see which day matches tuesday and that will be your day. For your case, scores come out the 11th which is tuesday.
 
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1 more week left for scores, I want to get it as soon as possible....am waiting on secondaries for few schools......just want to get this over with......am tired of this wait...
 
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Holy crap 1 week left? I totally forgot about this for a little while.

Anybody feel like putting down predicted scores? Or is everyone too scared/paranoid?
 
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rcheech7 said:
I'll bite.

I wasn't feeling very strong going into it but I felt a little better coming out of it.

Before I took it:
7 PS 8 VR 12 BS

After:
9PS 8-9VR 10BS

Lowest: 24
Predicted: 26-29
Highest: 32
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Don't worry! You already earned yourself MCAT karma points by being brave enough to post your predicted score.

Personally, I feel so uncertain about my predictions. There is such a high probability that I messed up on any random one passage and effectively killed my score.

Predicted Ranges:
11-13PS, 10-11VR, 10-13BS

If I had to bet on a number, I'd put my money on 33.
 
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