Form AP anyone?

[coredump]

So, did anyone have form AP? Just from browsing some of the other posts, it looks like there was quite a bit of overlap of the passages/sections with a few of the other forms.

I thought this form was tough, especially PS. It was waay harder than any of the practice tests. Funny thing is, I went into it feeling confident about PS and if-y about the other sections. If any of the sections made me feel like voiding, it was this one.

VR wasn't too bad. Of course, it's always difficult to tell how you do on VR. But, those darn passages about the bears and wasps annoyed me a lot. I was using EK 101 for practice, and found it similar in style to many of those passages.

BS was very heavy in Genetics. I had thought it was one of my better subjects, but it didn't seem that way while taking the test. Overall, it was about average I'd say.

Anyone other AP-ers out there?

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[TX_Longhorn]

hmmm...seems very much like form BS.
what were your PS passages? was it really Gchem intensive?

 

[mr.pink]

I had form BP but I'm pretty sure this was the same as form AP after talking to people. The PS section was by far the hardest of the three and the hardest I've ever taken. The first half of the section didn't seem so bad but the second half was brutal. I think all the calculation questions took up a lot of my time.
VR and BS were not as bad. Do you remember that passage on morality? I had to read that thing 5 times and was still confused.

 

[coredump]

hmmm...seems very much like form BS.
what were your PS passages? was it really Gchem intensive?

Actually, I thought there was more Physics than Chemistry (could just be cause I find Physics harder). I do remember a problem with some skier, a problem about an arrow being shot into a medium, and 3 blocks sliding down a plane. Towards the end, I was just guessing. Nothing could have prepared me for such a beating.

 

[coredump]

I had form BP but I'm pretty sure this was the same as form AP after talking to people. The PS section was by far the hardest of the three and the hardest I've ever taken. The first half of the section didn't seem so bad but the second half was brutal. I think all the calculation questions took up a lot of my time.
VR and BS were not as bad. Do you remember that passage on morality? I had to read that thing 5 times and was still confused.

Yeah, I hear ya' on that 'morality' passage. I was literally just laughing when I did my first pass through the passage. Luckily, the others weren't as convoluted, but the questions were not as straight-forward as some of the practice tests lead you to believe.

You're right: The PS was decent for the first couple passages, then it just turned silly. Since PS is usually a section everyone fears, hopefully we'll have a generous curve.

 

[derf]

had BP. VS and BS not bad at all. PS- I'm praying for a 5 !!!

 

[Notzfall]

I had form AP. I've talked to many others, and their questions sound at least 80% the same. I though PS was difficult but what I expected, VP was not too bad but a slow read, and BS was more difficult than I thought.

I'm praying for a 33 but I felt like I got a 24.

 

[Nuel]

Coredump and Mr. Pink express my sentiments exactly. I got form DK--check the thread form DK. I listed some of the passages I had.

I went in VERY VERY arrogant about the PS--I thought I was going to get an 11 even if the world was going to end. I am good at physics and g.chem, especially calculations as a math dabbler, but for some reason my head was locked. VR and BS kicked me too.

I was very humbled mates, lucky I came out alive--the only good thing is that I didn't lose my cool. I think the best advice I can give August takers is to prepare for the worst. I was always thinking, "The MCAT can't be this hard". August probably beckons me.

 

[bidster]

I also had form AP, along with another friend....and yeah, it was a bitch. I had gotten pretty comfy with PS, even the Kaplan sections, and I had done AAMC's 7R that Thursday, so when I saw the first passage about Arrhenius/Bronsted Lowry and all the flaky acid/base questions I was pretty relieved. I got through the first 4 passages and the discretes in less than 30 mins....and THEN the bloodbath started once they got to the calculation-heavy Newtonian physics bit. I may exaggerate a bit because I was only skipping a question here or there to come back to in certain passages, but when there were 5 mins left and I had about 5-6 calculation-based questions to do some rapid-fire "educated guessing" on, it didn't help my confidence.

Oh, to make it almost worse....the scantron grids were different from the Kaplan ones we used, both in appearance and the size of the bubbles (I wonder how much time would have been saved if they just made those bubbles smaller). So before I started the test, I made a mental note to myself to remember to grid DOWN and not ACROSS (as in doing the first block of 5, and then gridding my next five answers in the block of 5 to the right of the first one instead of below it). Well of course, I finish the third passage and am ready to grid when what else should I see except that I had been gridding across!!!!! Granted, it could have been MUCH worse and I could have realized this on the 8th or 10th passage....in which case I would have had a heart attack

As for Verbal....by far the worst one was the philosophical one on moral skepticism blah blah blah. I have no idea what they were trying to tell me overall, and the three questions I had to come back to in the end dealt with that passage's overall message. The other passages I didn't think were too bad...they seemed to require a lot of simple line-referencing.

and then BS....I thought I would be cool with there being a lot of genetics on BS, but 4/11 passages seemed redundant and ridiculous. Not a SINGLE hormone question?!?!?!?!?!!? It was very lopsided.....and a friend of mine and I are convinced that unless we're totally missing something here (someone tell me if we are so we know we're not just crazy), there seemed to be a question on Endosymbiotic Theory that did not offer a correct answer....it seemed to us the answer should have been "prokaryotes live inside other eukaryotes" (Something along those lines) but it wasn't an option, and the answers that were there seemed illogical....arghhh! does anyone know what i'm talking about???

 

[Nuel]

I got through the first 4 passages and the discretes in less than 30 mins....and THEN the bloodbath started once they got to the calculation-heavy Newtonian physics bit. I may exaggerate a bit because I was only skipping a question here or there to come back to in certain passages, but when there were 5 mins left and I had about 5-6 calculation-based questions to do some rapid-fire "educated guessing" on, it didn't help my confidence.

Man, are you my twin? Seems we had the same kind of PS--same emotions. check out the form Dk thread. I am praying for a 10 here. The PS was from hell. I just can't stand the thought of August--I only I wish I knew stuff would be this killing. I feel really stupid. 32 looks rather elusive now.

 

[SitraAchra]

It was very lopsided.....and a friend of mine and I are convinced that unless we're totally missing something here (someone tell me if we are so we know we're not just crazy), there seemed to be a question on Endosymbiotic Theory that did not offer a correct answer....it seemed to us the answer should have been "prokaryotes live inside other eukaryotes" (Something along those lines) but it wasn't an option, and the answers that were there seemed illogical....arghhh! does anyone know what i'm talking about???

I remember that question vividly. I too was confused, but I think what they were looking for was an evolutionary context. I guessed it had to be one prokaryote living inside another prokaryote, before there were real eukaryotic cells. At least that's what I put - but definitely a strange question.

 

[bidster]

I remember that question vividly. I too was confused, but I think what they were looking for was an evolutionary context. I guessed it had to be one prokaryote living inside another prokaryote, before there were real eukaryotic cells. At least that's what I put - but definitely a strange question.

I also ended up choosing that option because it was the only one I could see as maybe having some logic. I know a lot of people besides me who spent way too much time on that one question...
that and that freaking question about the "planes" of the cochlea/eyes/ears!!!!!!!!!! WHAT was with THAT one? I got a sense of what they were asking for, but visualizing it was an exercise in futility.

That particular passage nearly gave me a panic attack when I saw it because when I studied, I kinda glazed over memorizing specific parts of the ear and the eye, thinking that memorizing every structure of the ear was insignificant compared to understanding the bigger picture.....then I got to that passage and saw the word "cochlea". Luckily you didn't really have to know anything about it to answer the questions, but still....way to mess with the test-takers.

 

[duck2005]

yeah. prok lived inside other prok (which LATER became eukaryotes). SET explains how eukaryotes evolved.

 

[Perrin]

I had form AP. I saw some people from atlanta had it as well. I wonder if it is a regional thing, because I took it in Huntsville AL. I am hoping for a 32 or better, but I left the test feeling like a 24.

It seemed that if you knew everything about genetics, you were golden in BS.

VR made me want to go to sleep, except for the passage about science/morality/will/etc. I felt like I was at a southern Baptist Revival...Haaalelujaaaahhhh, Amen

PS: scant conceptual problems, a lot of caclulations, they were relatively simple, but there were so damn many of them

oh well....

 

[SitraAchra]

dear god. the plane passing through the eye/ear/nose/pinky toe was ridiculous. Where on EARTH was that from? I put vertical between the ears or something. I tried to visualize the "V-shaped" hair cells they were telling us about, but how were we to know their orientation. All I remember is being told "the V-shaped cells are in a straight line" or something totally relative that could mean in any direction.

 

[bidster]

I had form AP. I saw some people from atlanta had it as well. I wonder if it is a regional thing, because I took it in Huntsville AL. ....

They definitely seem to concentrate test forms at different centers. I'm from Emory and at our test center we had an abundance of test forms beginning with A and B (AP and BP were the ones I heard the most....and I think there were some AN's) but I don't think I've spoken to anyone who had D or C....

The one fortunate thing about the essay prompts we received--I believe *everyone* in my testing room had the same ones--was that they were 98% similar to prompts I had already written for Kaplan full-length practices 4 and 5!!!! That was the highlight of the day.....and the only one.