dude I feel you! i tried taking a FL last friday after taking two in a row (mind you that I learned about my MCAT score last tuesday and was still a little upset so emotions was haywire) and had to quit right in the middle of C/P....we're going to get through! Is this all of you guys's first time writing the exam?
I keep hearing that the NS exams keep getting harder and harder as you go through them....don't worry about it too much though.. based on my experience with the practice exam scores and the real deal, there's no real way to compare your scaled scores since the real exam has gotten a bit harder and each company arbitrarily comes up with their own scaling system....just take each practice exam just like it's name...practice and do as many problems as you can so you can become more familiar with the obscure that you might see on test day...and go over each question to see how you can improve your thought process and test taking skills.
I would bet that that is the case. Not many kids applying this cycle would wait till Sept. to take the test. I would think its mostly rising juniors who finished prereqs early, or seniors taking a gap year would take a fall exam. I doubt its of any advantage/disadvantage other than probably being able to get a seat easier than in the spring/early summer.
what sources are you using? I'd focus on knowing your amino acids like the back of your hand, structures of nucleic acids and sugars, and metabolism a lot...I keep seeing passages and questions on glycolysis, ETC, Krebs etc. don't worry too much about not having taken biochem before, if you took orgo you use that knowledge to help you get to the answer to the more unusual biochem questions.
ahhh truth in everything you've said..bleh will take another exam tomorrow and decide then...good luck though! I'm sure you will do great and do better than your target
When you say "512 scored on AAMC", do you mean the AAMC practice full length gave you that score? Or you translated your raw score into that? I took the full length AAMC and it just gave me my raw score (percentage correct), not an actual MCAT score (500 or something).
hmmm I think it's called that to differentiate the enzymes used in glycolysis vs gluconeogenesis (where pyruvate carboxylase is used to turn pyruvate into phosphoenolpyruvate which is also a misnomer now that I think about it lol) ? But yea in general a kinase adds a phosphate group to the substrate and just like everything in science there are a billion exceptions. I wouldn't worry too much about pyruvate kinase, actually it can be easier to remember what it does since it seems so illogical!
I don't like the scale for CARS. That's what worries me.
Apparently a 50 percentile is a 124
a 61 percentile is a 125
I really think you should take it a little slower on CARS...you have 9 passages to complete in 90 min, so 10 per passage is more than enough even with passages that come with 7 questions. But at the same time know that CARS passages are longer than the ones in the unscored and scored FLs so I suggest going through TPR Hyperlearning verbal passages and taking NS FLs to get the idea of passage length and difficulty.
got fustrated so went to the gym and punched the hell out of everything....then ate some good quality NYC pizza...all is well again in the world
Thank for the response. I agree about pacing myself in the CARs section. I was going to do just content review this weekend but I'm going to add in 3 CARs sections from the NS CARs book and then take an NS FL on Monday to focus on pacing for all four sections. Hopefully I get it down by next Friday.
