April MCAT - It's over!

[Guest steak]

Anyone have any feedback on this most recent MCAT?

I was on cruise control until the BS.. Then I hit a wall.. The real problem is that I didn't slow down, swerve, or see the wall coming until the book was open.. And I was (repeat was) flying..

 

blech..

 

maybe the med schools will lower their BS and raise their PS/VR cutoffs for me..

 

or maybe i'm writing in august again..

 

Going off to die in the corner..

 

later..

steak

[Guest Lorae]

Don't let yourself think you did poorly. I left (last august) thinking I bombed... and it took me about 5 days to come down off the stress of the day.

 

Turned out I scored the same (or higher) then I did on my practices - and all was well!!

 

Take a deep breath! You deserve it.

 

Congrats to all of you who wrote today!! YOU'RE DONE!!:rollin :rollin

[Guest Elaine I]

No matter what, I'm going to enjoy the next 60 days! If I have to re-take the exam in August, I'll start studying once I know that. Until then, no more organic for me!

 

Elaine

[Guest byjude]

Don't forget, your scored is scaled compared to how everyone else performed. So sometimes your score may surprise you.

 

For now, relax and enjoy that it's over. You can't do anything until you find out your score...

[Guest 0T6]

I thought all was good except for VR.. not sure how I did on that one, but yah, glad it's over with.. now 60 days of fun

[Guest mgupta]

congrats on being done 'the beast'

 

[Guest Ian Wong]

Ditto. Congrats on finishing it off. Now go out and celebrate this week!

 

Ian

[Guest steak]

Thanks for the encouragement.. I'm not too worried about it - still expect that I didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but I can still write in August and use those scores for this application process..

 

As for relaxing.. well, I'm normally about a 7-hour sleeper.. Came home from the test yesterday to watch a bunch of stress-free hockey. I couldn't make it through the first game - fell asleep at 7:30 and didn't get up until almost 9:00 this morning..

 

Taking today off, and then starting a week with 7 :eek UG course exams.. So much for relaxing...

 

Maybe i'll just go back to bed and sleep for a week.. |I

 

steak

[Guest ploughboy]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hash: SHA1

 

My impressions of form AM, without discussing too many specifics 'cuz I signed AAMC's ridiculous "remembering is copying and copying is *theft*!" statement...

 

Physical - went pretty well, but that's my strongest section. Most of the questions could be answered without reference to the passage. Was surprised at how much chemistry there was, but that's ok, I like chemistry.

 

Verbal - I'm a bookworm and I'm used to reading heavy stuff. I'd also done a bunch of non-AAMC practice tests, but I found the MCAT questions were a lot more...finicky than questions on any practice test. That freaked me out, I wound up second-guessing a bunch of my answers. Didn't understand the "faith vs reason" passage (not the Sagan one) until after I'd answered all the questions. Ohh, that's what the author means! Weird feeling.

 

Almost laughed out loud during the Sagan passage. Saw the setup for the "Bozo the Clown" line coming a mile away, because it's one of my favourite one-liners. That lightened my mood a bit. Too bad there weren't any questions about Bozo...

 

Writing - I'd printed off the AAMC prompt list and brain-stormed a bunch of answers, identified common themes etc. So there were no real surprises in the prompts. For the first one I wound up comparing JFK with members of a local school board and arguing that powerful positions attract extraordinary candidates, while successful local politicans need a more human touch. In retrospect my argument could have been tighter, but hey, it's a first draft, right? I was proud that I resisted the temptation to make snide comments about the current POTUS.

 

Second prompt was straight out of the AAMC list, and it was one of the few I'd actually written a full response to during my preparation. It went better in rehearsal than it did on the exam, but I still had fun with it. I got to cite Clifford Stoll and use my word of the month - Luddite. All in all a warm and fuzzy section. Lots of crossing out and insertions though. That, coupled with my terrible handwriting, will probably annoy my evaluators.

 

Biological - this is where things got ugly for me. I haven't taken any formal bio or orgo, so I was relying on self-taught knowledge from review books here. Zipped through, answered the questions I knew right away. That gave me an hour to work on the ones I wasn't sure about (well over half the questions). Tackled them passage by passage, guessing frequently. Was happy that there were only a few orgo questions. Found I didn't know what a lot of the words in some of the bio passages meant, which was a little disconcerting. Last 10 minutes I totally crashed. I'd gobbled down a chocolate bar and some Gatorade during the break to boost my blood sugar, and that helped enormously for the first while. Too bad the sugar low caught me before the exam ended. By then I was almost done, but I wound up going in circles on several questions, waffling between answers. Really don't think I got the 10 I need on this section. I expect to do it all over again in August (sigh!)

 

On the other hand, I lurked over at sdn for a while today. Lotsa complaining about bio over there, it sounds like even some of the biology geeks were a little put off by a couple of passages. So maybe I'm not alone.

 

Test centre - in the Sub at Waterloo. Hot, stuffy and full of stressed premeds. Once you got two feet in the door you could feel the wall of stale air hit you. Gross.

 

Praying for the power of the curve,

 

pb

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32)

 

iD8DBQFAhDU4/HNgbK3bC2wRAumNAJ9MTzQFQkTMdXUAob0OQX8GPRITvwCfekGL

HM/V/NmlcuTu4RH0Rmu8+To=

=w/OY

-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----