{OFFICIAL} August 9th MCAT Thoughts?

[jzeidenb]

good luck to the rest of you guys. I played a poker tournament this morning, am watching bad news bears right now, going out to hibatchi for dinner and watching the Yankees kick ass before bed.

I wish I had more time to practice verbal but I'm gonna go in there tomorrow and give it my effin best because that's all I can do.

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[ocwaveoc]

Good luck to everyone!!
As for today, I'm going to visit the test center, look around, see where the restroom is and ask if I can take a look at the computer room. I've got the afternoon administration, so I'll sleep in late, get there early and give it my best.

 

[olemissbabydoc]

checked into my hotel and curlee up with a good and fun book.. "memory keeper's daughter". may go to bonefish grill for dinner. feeling absolutely calm and collected.. went by the test center to figure time for the morning. good luck everyone!!!

 

[Ooglan]

...

 

[mmmfood]

i visited the testing center earlier today..

tonight im going to eat massive amounts of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and watch 300.

 

[TRuSchool]

since i've loaded up with so many equations and concepts over the past month I cant help but use my last night before the exam doing the same. I'm going to spend the next 2 hrs applying a constant force of 150N on my chair, wondering how long it will take me to slide down an inclined plane of 5 m (assume frictionless unless otherwise noted).

 

[olemissbabydoc]

hahaha. i'm going out to eat then reviewin flash cards for orgo and physics. fun fun. hahahah

 

[prionsRbad]

checked into my hotel and curlee up with a good and fun book.. "memory keeper's daughter". may go to bonefish grill for dinner. feeling absolutely calm and collected.. went by the test center to figure time for the morning. good luck everyone!!!

I loved that book!

Good Luck Everyone!!!!!

 

[sistahnik]

Well guys this is it!! Anyone taking it in OHIO?? I am so ready to take it and just relax afterwards. I'm pretty excited! Good luck to everyone and give it a run for the money!!

 

[AMmd]

good luck to everybody tomorrow!
Im so anxious!! lol

 

[Zoom-Zoom]

I'm feeling calm and excited to get it over with, but my stomach is also a little

 

[MedChic]

Aw, good luck You'll knock it out of the park! I'll be really jealous of you tomorrow when you're done!

Let us know how it goes!

 

[EECStoMed]

Good luck everyone and please post back on how difficult the test is tomorrow.

 

[EECStoMed]

So, I just got back from the test and here's what I thought....

 

[whoisthedrizzle]

Is the time machine for sale?

 

[crunchymilk]

my ex gf is taking this test. Even though she is heartless, I hope she does well.

 

[whoisthedrizzle]

my ex gf is taking this test. Even though she is heartless, I hope she does well.

I see why she dumped you.

 

[crunchymilk]

I see why she dumped you.

huh?

 

[EECStoMed]

I see why she dumped you.

huh?

 

[AMmd]

Is the time machine for sale?

hahahahahaha
only 12h left!!!! (btw, I really like this smiley)

 

[JediZero]

Well, I spent my day working... I work with kids, and they wore me out tonight, but I'm back to take a practice test, after which I shall sleep and then go handle the MKitten. Piece of cake, right?

 

[StrikeFreedom]

It's 2:15AM my time,
Thank god I'm writing at 1:30pm and not 8AM.

 

[olemissbabydoc]

I'm ready to go with my 45 T tshirt and JifToGo for breaks! let's do it guys. I wish you all 30+!

 

[olemissbabydoc]

ANND it's done! Woohoo!

 

[PaperMate30301]

A hard exam it was....

 

[jzeidenb]

that had to be one of the harder bio sections ive done and it barely had any orgo in it. I still felt i did well but i had to think much longer on average per question than i normally did, there was a passage on ADH and i never struggled with adh concepts before today, so that was tough.. only 2 orgo passages and like 1 discrete.. had to know some nmr things though which surprised but didnt deter me


i thought the PS was actually easier than average, i had less trouble on it than i did with even the aamc ones.. i hope that doesnt mess up the curve


verbal had long passages, but more natural science passages and only like 1-2 humanities passages made it easier to get through.. as far as the length of the passages go, id say CBT8 is the most accurate representation of mcat length.

 

[muffin man]

.

 

[jzeidenb]

i posted my impressions in the other thread titled aug 9

 

[dondon]

PS: not bad at all (with the exception of one passage)

VR: went pretty smoothly although I only had 3 minutes for the last
passage...

BS: I really struggled through this section... I came into it with a good feeling
and went out feeling pretty ****ty

anyways... F U MCAT!!! i hope i never see you again!

 

[EECStoMed]

So what did you guys think?

 

[Old Dude]

All in all, not as difficult to me as the May 25th exam (yes, I have been beaten down twice in 10 weeks).

Summary thoughts:

PS: Gen chem oriented and up the middle

VR: I thought easier than practice tests - the "hard" passage wasn't as nasty as usual

BS: Ouch - usually my best section in practice but got brutalized by one passage and thought many of the discretes were tricky

 

[J ROD]

Since there appears to be three threads out there, I figure I would try to start this one so that everyone could combine their thoughts into a cohesive effort.

Hopefully, this will work since many have not gotten back yet.

 

[olemissbabydoc]

ps wasn't bad... pretty much half and half possibly chem heavy but I felt good. vr wasn't bad.. passages long as usual. bs was pretty tough.. a passage on nmr which is pne of my weaknesses.. but overall I feel much better about this one than my april one

 

[olemissbabydoc]

much much better than april is my general thought. easier ps.. hard bs.

 

[medicalCPA]

much much better than april is my general thought. easier ps.. hard bs.

This is my first MCAT, so I cannot make the same comparison. But my general thoughts:
PS
I thought it was not too bad. It was hard, and I finished with seconds to spare, but it was not so bad that I wanted to cry. There was a question on there that I thought should be in Bio, but whatever.
VR
Some of the passages were quite long, and there was one where I was totally clueless (the passage about oral history). Marking the questions and coming back to them after I was done didn't help, either...I was still as clueless as before.
WS
I tried as best as I could to stick to the following formula: Explain prompt, give a concrete example supporting prompt, give a concrete example disproving prompt, and resolve the two.
Whether my examples were concrete enough is a different matter. But it doesn't matter much, so I don't care, as long as I get a P or better.
BS
This was hard. I thought I was good with the time, but then I came to the passage about Cdk1 and the cyclin B inhibitor. I was so clueless on that one.

Well, now it's over. I have finally taken my first MCAT. My "MCAT virginity" is gone. *sigh*

 

[KnuxNole]

PS: Gen chem heavy, not too bad. THe physics that was on there was mostly Physics 2 material

VR: MUCH better than my June 15th version. This time, I wasn't bored with my passages and focused more on applying the main idea as opposed to highlighting the passage and constantly going back. The passage topics were for the most part interesting(except for the oral history).

BS: Orgo was a joke(2 passages). IMO, the biology discretes were harder than the passages. There were two cell bio passages based on experiments, one genetics passage, and two physio passages. Overall, I feel I did the best in this section(especially considering last time I rushed through it, and this time I went slower in the passages and had 3 min to spare.)

It was funny though that in the BS, there was one discrete question that was EXACTLY like what was on the 6/15 exam....so at bare minimum I got 1/52 right

 

[jzeidenb]

medical cpa, i also recall that question wondering why it was in the PS section..

heres what i wrote in another thread:


that had to be one of the harder bio sections ive done and it barely had any orgo in it. I still felt i did well but i had to think much longer on average per question than i normally did, there was a passage on ADH and i never struggled with adh concepts before today, so that was tough.. only 2 orgo passages and like 1 discrete.. had to know some nmr things though which surprised but didnt deter me


i thought the PS was actually easier than average, i had less trouble on it than i did with even the aamc ones.. i hope that doesnt mess up the curve


verbal had long passages, but more natural science passages and only like 1-2 humanities passages made it easier to get through.. as far as the length of the passages go, id say CBT8 is the most accurate representation of mcat length.

 

[medicalCPA]

I hope the curve on PS isn't messed up, too. I distinctly remember freaking out in BS, worrying "what if my VR section turns out like the May 31st one, and I think I did well, but I seriously bomb it?"
Well, freaking out won't help now. I really must get off SDN.

 

[Rock Solid]

Is there a curve for just the whole test day in general or do they break it down by which test you have that day?

 

[habman6]

Hmm, I have the exact opposite views. I thought the BS was an absolute joke. There was literally nothing tricky about it.

PS I thought was tough because of stupid calculations that I wasnt prepared for (didnt seem to be any in the AAMC practice tests). I took way too long trying to do them, and converting the damn units, that I barely finished ontime. I was getting 15s on the AAMC practice but I'll feel lucky to get a 12 now.

That verbal was the same as usual, except that stupid oral history passage. Dont know what that was all about.

I woke up at 6:30am today (I was writing the exam about 1 hour 10 mins away), and clued in that my test was at 8:00am, not 8:30 like i previously thought. Well that was quite the mission hahaha

 

[buju]

i dont remember there being a cyclin passage on my Bio section. But my VR had a galileo passage. I just want to confirm is mine was different or not so here are some of the topics that i had:

PS: there was one weird passage with conductors and magnetic fields(had 1 big diagram), it had incline planes passage, There was one with birds and their forces and i think there was one with electron energy levels.

VR: it contained the galileo passage, along with a history passage(i dont remember anything about oral in there), there was also passages on intelligence, the wild, holidays and some other stuff

BS: again, i dont remember anything about cyclins what so ever. I did have a retrovirus passage, an ester passage, organic compound identification passage, osteoblasts, hormones and some other stuff

 

[JackieTreehorn]

Nevermind, found an answer in the FAQs

 

[Traign]

Omg thank god you said that habman, I was freaking out cause I knew that stuff cold but converting the units and the calculations took up so much time that I ran out majorly. Like more than I ever have on a practice test. I had to end up guessing on like half and almost voided my test. I hope a lot more people felt like you. Its upsetting, cause I studied for 6 months.

The Bio was ok, i agree that cyclin passage was absurd. I ended up skipping it and going back only to still not understand it.

Verbal was half tough/half ok.

 

[ineedhelp85]

just curious, i posted two questions in this topic about the cyclin passages and somehow they both got deleted, is it bcs the questions were tooo specific??? anyway i thought the test was hard now all we can do is wait for a month. take care all.

 

[pingouin]

To all 8/9 MCATers:

Congrats on finishing!

I need to remind everyone of the rules regarding posting post-MCAT. There may be ABSOLUTELY NO POSTING OF SPECIFIC QUESTIONS OR ANSWERS in these threads. Please see this post for further details.

There have been several violations of this rule so far, and those posts have been removed. Consider this your fair warning- from here on out, there will be a 1-week post-hold for any member who makes a post which contains an answer or question from today's (or any other day's) MCAT.

 

[pingouin]

just curious, i posted two questions in this topic about the cyclin passages and somehow they both got deleted, is it bcs the questions were tooo specific??? anyway i thought the test was hard now all we can do is wait for a month. take care all.

yes

 

[stardoodler]

habman and traign i am totally with you on the ps section!! i did all of the non-passage based questions first, and things were going really well, but also didn't realize i was spending so much time on them. there were a bazillion calculations!! then i got stuck on a tougher passage, and next thing i knew, i was out of time. i was never getting 15's, but i was doing fairly well in practice tests. i reaaallly ran out of time. in the last 30 sec, had to completely guess on at least 6 questions i thought verbal and bio were not too bad... but really, who knows? oh, and those essay prompts were so lame.

 

[ToledoPike]

Wow...so good to finally be done!! Hopefully I never have to take this exam again. Anyways, here are my thoughts:

PS
Coulda been worse. Not too many heavy concepts (lots of calculations which I love since Im a Chemical Engineering student) and I probably could have done w/o reading any passages before the questions and just found the answers simply. All in all, I finished with less than a minute left, but I expected worse so I felt confident after this one. The only hard passage was the one with the wire, magnetic field, and AC voltage.

VR
I took CBT 10 on Tuesday and got a 9 and felt pretty crappy and lost a lot of confidence for verbal. The passages are so dense in CBT 10. This VR section was a nice rejuvenation. Very sciencey passages, which was nice, and all of them were easy reads. A couple hard questions in there but that's expected. Overall, I expected much harder, so I was satisfied.

BS
I am not really sure on this one. This has been one of my strong points throughout my CBTs but there were some tougher passages in here. The discreets were a little iffy and I wish I would have looked over genetics a bit more. Overall, not the hardest out of all of the practice tests I have taken so I am just hoping for a 10+.

Overall, definitely on the level with CBT exams...easier than 10 definitely. I would probably place it with CBT 4 or CBT 8 more than anything else. Guess I just lucked out today though in seeing that some people dont have this same experience.

 

[THX]

PS: It was ok. I had difficulty with the diamond and magnetic wire passages.
BS: Difficult, very passage based with little outside knowledge. Could have done without one of the orgo section (one question was absurd).
VR: I did decently I believe, I had difficulty with the optics/warhol passage though.
WS: First passage = great. Second passage = WTF?

 

[misterex]

Do you guys think that if you had studied more you would have done better on the ps or bs? or was more of a reasoning type test?