As i've trolled the boards (yay for 12 hours at triage!), i've noticed that people do state that the real MCAT seems harder but similiar to the AAMC... i know it is hard and very subjective what is "harder". Do you believe it is because the real AAMC tests you on different material then what their practice AAMC did or is the actual depth of question tougher... or what is your opinion on it student1799? People always have middle the road answers *shrug* haha They also say the curve is more generous in the real thing, did you find that to be true?
Of course it's highly subjective, but it seems that BOTH the topics tested and the individual questions are harder now. The first MCAT I took had several of those "WTF?" passages, where you just stare at them and your heart sinks. Also, that PS section was VERY physics-heavy (I'd estimate about 70%), and that's definitely the weaker subject for me. Bottom line, I ran out of time with about 8 questions to go--had to leave them totally blank (didn't even have time to guess). I got a 7 on the section, because those blanks count as wrong answers.
The second MCAT was more balanced between chem and physics and felt considerably easier overall, but as I mentioned earlier, I got bogged down in one hard passage near the end and had to leave 4 questions blank. I thought this was still going to be an improvement over the first time, so imagine my reaction when I saw that I'd gotten a 7 AGAIN. I'd guess that a harder curve offset the progress I'd made in finishing more questions, leaving me with the same score.
Relative to the curve, I think it's important to point out something that's often poorly understood: the curve is set by your fellow students, NOT AAMC. What I mean is that every numerical score on an MCAT section is really a percentile range: for instance, a score of 10 means a percentile rank that is usually centered around the 75th percentile, although the number of right answers needed to get this score varies from section to section and test to test. You can see the percentile ranges for past exams here:
http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/pubs.htm So in order to get a 10, you need to score better than 75% of the students who took YOUR exam (this is determined after the test is scored).
These tables don't tell you the raw scores behind the percentiles, because AAMC doesn't release them to test takers. (I've always thought that was pretty obnoxious.) But you can get some idea by looking here:
http://www.e-mcat.com/ (You can register for free, then look under "MCAT Scoring."). These are the scaled score tables for the AAMC practice tests. If you look at them, you'll see that the number right needed for a given scaled score in the same section (say, PS) can vary by 2-4 points from test to test. That fluctuation is due to how test takers performed on exams of varying difficulty. (An easier exam will mean a higher raw score is needed to get the same percentile rank, while a lower raw score would be needed to get that rank on a harder exam.)
AAMC influences the curve by the difficulty of the questions, but the test takers are an unknown variable: if they do unusually well, this will push up the curve, while if they are more test-challenged, the curve will be lower. This can't be predicted in advance, so the notion that AAMC is "more generous" with the curve is really a misconception. As a general rule, I would be wary of the notion that "the curve will bail you out," because it probably won't.
And yea, i hate those passages where you look at the screen and go... wtf? 
) but became very good at estimating on the PS section. That saved my *** on the real deal. I am still terrible in math/loathe math though.
