I was going to go with the May 26 date, but I could use a little more time. I started content review a few weeks ago, and I'm going to take a "diagnostic" in a few weeks to see where I stand.
So, who's with me?
So, who's with me?
The Official 06/16/2011 MCAT Club!
- Thread starter Mbeas
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Got a mid-20 score. Retaking in September. For those of you who retook and improved alot, what did you find to be the most effective study method the second time around (keep in mind that I have just over a month). Did you re-read books? Section tests? Any help is appreciated!
I found that studying helped. Not being facetious, I literally studied maybe 8-10 hours total for the first attempt (27M), studied for around a month this time around + took all the AAMC FLs and improved by 9 points. Only used EK.
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I took the 8am test on 6/16/11 and I'm quite disappointed with verbal.
Here are my recent AAMC scores:
AAMC 4: 10P 9V 12B - 31
AAMC 11: 10P 10V 10B - 30
AAMC 5: 12P 10V 11B - 33
AAMC 10: 10P 10V 11B - 31
I felt that the physical science section was really difficult and I couldn't finish so I expected a below average score. I thought the verbal section went well and the biological science section was average.
I ended up with a 9P 11B and a 7 on verbal!!
I am going to retake the test at the end of August and I am really not posting to complain about my scores. Looking ahead, I am just trying to figure out what went wrong with verbal and whether I should change my strategy (I took EK course and was following their strategy). I have gone through Kaplan, EK 101, and Princeton review hyper-learning verbal. I started at an 8 and was getting consistent 10s at the end of my preparation...but a 7?! I got through the entire verbal test on the real sitting with 2 minutes left to spare and I really felt like I understood all the passages since I still recall some of them.
I suppose outlier performances do happen and I am looking forward to another shot. Nonetheless, something smells fishy.
Here are my recent AAMC scores:
AAMC 4: 10P 9V 12B - 31
AAMC 11: 10P 10V 10B - 30
AAMC 5: 12P 10V 11B - 33
AAMC 10: 10P 10V 11B - 31
I felt that the physical science section was really difficult and I couldn't finish so I expected a below average score. I thought the verbal section went well and the biological science section was average.
I ended up with a 9P 11B and a 7 on verbal!!
I am going to retake the test at the end of August and I am really not posting to complain about my scores. Looking ahead, I am just trying to figure out what went wrong with verbal and whether I should change my strategy (I took EK course and was following their strategy). I have gone through Kaplan, EK 101, and Princeton review hyper-learning verbal. I started at an 8 and was getting consistent 10s at the end of my preparation...but a 7?! I got through the entire verbal test on the real sitting with 2 minutes left to spare and I really felt like I understood all the passages since I still recall some of them.
I suppose outlier performances do happen and I am looking forward to another shot. Nonetheless, something smells fishy.
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From what's been said I would guess the Verbal section had a VERY strict curve. I doubt the highest score was a 12 or something cause from what I think I know you can always get a 45, that's the way the grading works. But it might've been really harsh like 1 wrong = 14, 2 = 13, 3 = 12, 4 = 11, 5-7 = 10, 8-10 = 9, 11 -14 = 8, etc or something cause AAMC thought the test was relatively "easy".
You think that maybe the verbal was "easier" than expected and therefore the curve was ridiculously harsh. It seems many of you feel the verbal was very fair...and if so maybe you guys were curved "down..." the curve on the aamc is pretty sharp for high scores and maybe that just expanded out to other scores. I mean and 8 is average so if it was easy an 8 could have been like in the 30's our of 40 instead of high 20's.
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Lots of people have been saying this, but I don't think it's accurate. They don't curve the test so harshly that people all do horrible just because they were "easier" questions. I believe the fact that someone thought the test was easy is reason to believe they were doing it wrong when they took it.
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Totally agree that thinking verbal is easy indicates they were doing it wrong. Verbal is always ambiguous and for some of the questions you literally pick the answer that sounds the least bad or just find the answer through elimination of the answer choices. On all my practice tests I thought I did pretty bad after I finished the verbal. Sometimes I thought I nailed it too, but either way the score always came out to an 11 (and it was always the same in the 11 Range).
Anyway what I'm getting at is verbal doesn't have that much certainty. The author of EK who scores 15's on the verbal section said that he still feels uneasy every time he finished a verbal practice, but yet scores 15's.
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Here's the thing, though...
I thought it was a tough, somewhat ambiguous verbal section (2pm administration) and complained in this forum afterward about questions that felt like "If the author were a bus, would he have an apple, an orange, or the Greek letter theta painted on his side?" I made a 12 on it, feeling like I had no idea what I was doing, but here's the thing. If it's that misleading for everyone, including the people who thought it was easy, the curve should be lower because everyone should be screwing it up.
In my score predictions I thought I'd make a 12 or 13 in both PS and VR sections but predicted no higher than 11 in BS. I was wrong on the third count because that was a hard BS section and I underestimated how much that would affect the curve - my feeling of "I think I've mostly made good educated guesses" was a 13.
I know they set the curve based on previous administrations of the same material, but also reconfigure the order of passages, etc, between administrations. I wonder if it's possible that something about the new ordering of the verbal section made those previous curves less predictive than they should have been, for example if passage X follows passage Y, people are predisposed to think along a different line and choose different answers than otherwise...? The scaling is supposed to mean that a more brutal than average section won't actually cause scores to be worse than average, and if that's not the case, something weird must have happened.
It's hard to say, though, 'cos our sample size is so small.
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I'm not trying to bring the people down who thought it was easy and did poorly, I actually believe something went wrong with some of the administrations. If someone scores 12 5 12, those 12's say to me that this person is a pretty good test taker and on a bad day the lowest they would get is an 8 in verbal. That being said I think something most likely went wrong.
And as far as curves go they are not that variable based on the practice test data. For example, the lowest amount of correct answers you need for a 10 on one of the practice exams is 29/40 correct. And the other extreme (the one where you need the highest amount of correct answers to get a 10) is a 31/40. Based on that data I'm guessing the scaling on the actual test doesn't vary too much. But then again who knows.
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Hey all...sorry to hear your test had such a bad VR section...but many of you got some awesome scores! Congrats to everyone for taking it! It's really stressful. Anyways, I was a 7/6 taker...and our BS sounds similar in terms of ridiculousness to your VR. Anyways, I know there's no algorithm for guessing scores, but since you all already got yours back, you probably found some trends with your AAMC FL's and the actual MCAT. My scores deviated from about a 27-36, and on my last FL's - 9, 10, 11 - I got 35, 30, 36, respectively. Any thoughts? I know it's a toss up, and sections like VR can foil you into thinking you did well/bad and you end up with the opposite sometimes. Anyways, good luck to everyone. 
Hey all...sorry to hear your test had such a bad VR section...but many of you got some awesome scores! Congrats to everyone for taking it! It's really stressful. Anyways, I was a 7/6 taker...and our BS sounds similar in terms of ridiculousness to your VR. Anyways, I know there's no algorithm for guessing scores, but since you all already got yours back, you probably found some trends with your AAMC FL's and the actual MCAT. My scores deviated from about a 27-36, and on my last FL's - 9, 10, 11 - I got 35, 30, 36, respectively. Any thoughts? I know it's a toss up, and sections like VR can foil you into thinking you did well/bad and you end up with the opposite sometimes. Anyways, good luck to everyone.
On those same last FLs (9,10,11) I got 34, 34, and 29. Got a 34 on the 6/16 2pm. So yes it is a toss up, but I would bet money you got between a 30 and 36.
Good Luck
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Yes, I have. It's funny because the scoring is so simple, but I still have stared at it for the longest time trying to make sure I hadn't made some mistake when reading it the first time. I really feel bad for the ones here with bad scores, because the worst part is having to go back through all of the studying and stressing over this test. I'm really glad I won't have to.
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So, is there a definite issue with the 6/16 Verbal score?
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We ain't gonna find out until one of us gets rescored. I sent mine in with a money order, and it was received today. Hopefully I'll find out in a few weeks so that I can report back to everyone here.
I'm applying this round. i decided to go ahead and apply this round to lower tier schools. i'm a californian so i have a bit of a disadvantage i guess. but my plan B is to take the GREs and do a masters before i reapply.
thanks for the advice!
thanks for the advice!
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+1. I still can't believe it. I've logged in so many times just to stare lol. Great success!
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I did pretty much what I did before. Just had the books (kaplan) and took notes on them like I would do a chapter of a text book and then went over my notes. Started practices a month before hand. I tried not to worry so much about it this time. I actually think I studied less but that also means thinking about it less.
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I took the 2pm and thought the verbal was pretty easy and definitely didn't do it wrong. I stuck with my plan of 8 minutes a passage. Ended up with about 8 extra minutes at the end. Only changed two answers. Got an 11
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I do 8 minutes a passage too
at least that is the target sometimes I do 9 and sometimes 7.
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I was more talking to the people who made low scores. But anyways, I guess what one person perceives as easy is relative. For instance, if I made an 11 on any section of the mcat, I definitely wouldn't have considered that an easy section, as I would hope that I would do better than that on an "easy" test.
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Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster!
I am looking for some feedback regarding my current statistics. I scored a 27O on 8am exam, 08, 08, and 11. My practice average of 10 practice MCATs was 33. From what I've read, 27 is on the 50% line of acceptance.
My gpa is 3.6, I am 27 years old, married, own my home (as if that contributes to my standing lol), have 2 years ICU experience as an RN, research experience in microbiology and now physiology, strong letters of rec from 2 MD's with whom I've worked, my physics and physiology professor's, and have done some shadowing.
As for the MCAT experience, I thought it was completely different than the practice exams in a few regards.
On the PS, I normally score between 10-12 finishing in enough time (5 mins or so at least) to go back over my work, do some calculation etc. On the actual MCAT, I had 20 seconds left with 7 questions left!!! so I just guessed on them hoping to get 1 or 2 correct statistically.
VR....sucked lol. I had trained my self on the assumption that I would be given 1 or 2 long passages followed by 1 or 2 short, and the time always averaged out to where I had an additional 5-7 mins to review particularly ambiguous areas. My practice scores we ALL OVER THE PLACE. I'd scored from a 6 to a 14. I swear, I kept waiting for the short passage on the MCAT, and it never came. I finished that section with 45 seconds left, hardly enough time to even look at 1 marked.
The BS, normally takes me the ENTIRE time, but i typically score 10-12. On MCAT I finished with 20 mins to spare!!!! Scored an 11, which is my average, but with 20 mins to review marked issues, I thought I'd do better.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts/feedback.
I am looking for some feedback regarding my current statistics. I scored a 27O on 8am exam, 08, 08, and 11. My practice average of 10 practice MCATs was 33. From what I've read, 27 is on the 50% line of acceptance.
My gpa is 3.6, I am 27 years old, married, own my home (as if that contributes to my standing lol), have 2 years ICU experience as an RN, research experience in microbiology and now physiology, strong letters of rec from 2 MD's with whom I've worked, my physics and physiology professor's, and have done some shadowing.
As for the MCAT experience, I thought it was completely different than the practice exams in a few regards.
On the PS, I normally score between 10-12 finishing in enough time (5 mins or so at least) to go back over my work, do some calculation etc. On the actual MCAT, I had 20 seconds left with 7 questions left!!! so I just guessed on them hoping to get 1 or 2 correct statistically.
VR....sucked lol. I had trained my self on the assumption that I would be given 1 or 2 long passages followed by 1 or 2 short, and the time always averaged out to where I had an additional 5-7 mins to review particularly ambiguous areas. My practice scores we ALL OVER THE PLACE. I'd scored from a 6 to a 14. I swear, I kept waiting for the short passage on the MCAT, and it never came. I finished that section with 45 seconds left, hardly enough time to even look at 1 marked.
The BS, normally takes me the ENTIRE time, but i typically score 10-12. On MCAT I finished with 20 mins to spare!!!! Scored an 11, which is my average, but with 20 mins to review marked issues, I thought I'd do better.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts/feedback.
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Yea, I guess scoring in the 95th percentile wouldn't be good enough for some people
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Eh when I think of an easy section I think of scoring like a 13 or higher. I think the 10-11 signifies a challenging section.
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Actually, you're just as likely to do *less* well in terms of scaled score on an "easy" test. These scores are curved!
This means that, for example, you can take a practice test, gotten 88% of the questions right in a particular section, and make a 14, because it is considered a "difficult" section, vs. another practice test where getting 92% of the questions right gives you a 12, because it is considered an "easy" section. (This accounts for a lot of variability in my verbal scores - I have usually missed similar small numbers of questions on practice tests and have gotten practice test scores ranging from 12 to 14 (one 15 where I missed none) and made a 12 on the real thing.)
You know how, in your classes, if there's a curved exam and everyone else does abysmally it makes your 80% test score into an A? That's how the MCAT works, too.
According to this:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...Z2U3tZ&sig=AHIEtbRLF7gQ83rTO68PkrM8SEuXeCH7TQ
An 11 is not in the 95th percentile of any section except verbal reasoning, and even then, it's at the high end (the range is 84.6 to 95.5). A 33 composite barely touches the 90th. That being said, complaining about an 11 is pretty pathetic.
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I don't believe I was complaining. I was and remain happy with it. I am well aware one or two questions misinterpreted on that section can ruin what would have been a very good score as it seems has happened to many on here.
Of course you may be talking about the other guy in which case I agree. My over all score was 34 and you wouldn't catch me complaining about that. By the way, that doc is from 2008. The percentages are probably translatable but slightly different for this administration.
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Latest Data (2010): https://www.aamc.org/students/download/157904/data/combined10.pdf
The MCAT is statistically robust, so the percentiles are quite similar year to year
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Latest Data (2010): https://www.aamc.org/students/download/157904/data/combined10.pdf
The MCAT is statistically robust, so the percentiles are quite similar year to year
Lol, true but I said slightly. Based on both of these I would have preferred to taken it in 2008.
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hey folks
took it at 8 AM in Toronto, Canada
Aug 2007: 13PS 8VR 11BS Q 32Q
Aug 2008 11PS 9VR 13BS O 33O
Jun 2011: 14PS 11VR 10BS R 35R
Contrary to everyone else, I am stoked about my VR (and PS). 10 was my dream, but 11 is just awesome. I think I scored 11 only once on my practice. My PS average was around 11-13.
On the other hand though, don't know what happened in Bio, 10 is my lowest practice score ever.
I am not gonna whine though. I know that med schools look at the most recent but would they consider my constant improvement in the total score and perhaps see that I have scored 13 in Bio before, so that they don't think I am weak in Bio with that 10????
I hope so.
took it at 8 AM in Toronto, Canada
Aug 2007: 13PS 8VR 11BS Q 32Q
Aug 2008 11PS 9VR 13BS O 33O
Jun 2011: 14PS 11VR 10BS R 35R
Contrary to everyone else, I am stoked about my VR (and PS). 10 was my dream, but 11 is just awesome. I think I scored 11 only once on my practice. My PS average was around 11-13.
On the other hand though, don't know what happened in Bio, 10 is my lowest practice score ever.
I am not gonna whine though. I know that med schools look at the most recent but would they consider my constant improvement in the total score and perhaps see that I have scored 13 in Bio before, so that they don't think I am weak in Bio with that 10????
I hope so.
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I feel the same way. Some take composites of your best scores, but only a few. Most will either take the average of all your valid scores or if there is enough of an improvement from your earlier score (4-5 points) may only take the best score. They won't say this but even med schools understand a person may not have been at their best during an administration.
Btw, your 2007 score is older than three years at this point, which makes them invalid, so I don't even think med schools will get that from the AAMC.
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Oh yes you are right. But all 3 score sets are loaded in AMCAS and I just printed my application all of them appear on it. Maybe they are not valid but they can still see it....
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Med schools won't look at them. Pretty much every school's website says that scores older than 3 years won't be accepted and if you don't have any scores after 2009 you need to take one before applying. So idk if your 2008 will be looked at either.
http://sls.downstate.edu/admissions/medicine/how_to_apply/MCAT.html
for instance
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Yes this is absolutely true, I knew that scores older than 2009 are not valid. That was the whole basis for my re-write. And I really do want them to see my latest scores, after all its my highest total score. But the thought just crossed my mind that if the reviewer is looking at my latest 2011 MCAT and the two prior scores just appear above it even though they are older than 3 years...it might be looked at along with my latest scores. But if not, then its cool.
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They may. I don't think anyone could tell you for sure except the school's committees themselves. Mind me asking why you didn't get in with a 33 in 2008?
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What a late reply from me...been away from SDN.
I think it was a combination of my not-so-great essay + my not-so-great GPA plus me being a Canadian and so fighting for a very small number of spots.
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Perhaps marry an american? I'm sure you could find one looking for Canadian citizenship as well.
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Actually I have already married an American solely for the purpose of getting in, she is in the process of filing my application to come there so the future looks golden at this point!
[hell no, just joking]
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Damn, I need some Dental insurance at the moment
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Umm, you got a 26, what do you want us to say? Not good?
What do you think might have happened? Based on my scores?
I thought I was ready the day of the test. I took Kaplan and got ranges from 25 to 32. I was scoring above 10 often on PS, verbal 7-11, and 9-11. I was shocked that I got a 7 in Biology. Biology is my favorite section. I thought there were easy questions in the BS but killer experimental passages. Biology was my strongest section sometimes in Kaplan FL's. I love anatomy and physiology so much.
I thought I was ready the day of the test. I took Kaplan and got ranges from 25 to 32. I was scoring above 10 often on PS, verbal 7-11, and 9-11. I was shocked that I got a 7 in Biology. Biology is my favorite section. I thought there were easy questions in the BS but killer experimental passages. Biology was my strongest section sometimes in Kaplan FL's. I love anatomy and physiology so much.
I am applying next year for fall of 2013. I am taking the MCAT a second time in March.
I am working harder to score high.
I want to know what I did wrong. I wish I could have the test questions back so I can look in depth where I went wrong. I can't due to the rules.
I am working harder to score high.
I want to know what I did wrong. I wish I could have the test questions back so I can look in depth where I went wrong. I can't due to the rules.
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Huge bump, but accepted
