August 5th - What did everyone think?

[dw88]

I thought it was pretty tough around the board.

Essays were odd ones, Verbal was void of easy passages and bio was death for me =(

[Femto]

Agreed.

 

Bio was death! Verbal had a tough 7 question first passage which kinda threw me off, and PS not so bad.

 

Writing prompts were straightforward.

 

But honestly, Bio!! HS that was rough!

[numero0121407]

oh dear God, its finally done... I feel so drained...my brain is really saturated, I will come back to write my review...

[dw88]

Those writing prompts were junk haha.

I mean straightforward I guess, but I found them pretty hard to write about.

 

I found PS reasonably challenging, but I have high expectations.

 

And yes, to re-iterate BS melted my face off.

It seemed like every paged I looked at I thought omfg did they really just ask that?

 

I thought VR was at the very least harder than normal to =( but I do tend to mess up some of those =(

[medguy5367]

Hmm.... sounds like a hard one.

[Patho_Medicus]

Was it just hard biology or...had too much orgo? I am writing Sept 3 so I am kinda observing the trend

[KTWD]

I thought the first passage in physics was hard!Guess on it. The last two of bio were not nice either. Verbal I hate and have no opinion on....pretty much guessed and moved on.

 

This was a re-write for me,... i think I should have voided... but didnt. Who knows. glad its over!

[numero0121407]

I just feel so unsure how I did...I felt it wasnt comparable to previous aamcs so I can't seem to predict...I was so confident going in and now I feel like crap

 

Just as I was feeling totally killed, one girl in my test center was like "Omg, I kinda thought it would be more challenging"....I was like wahhh...why do people love to demoralize others ugh, just shut up!! Anyways...

 

PS: I found it alot more passage-based than practice tests and I didn't get to use many formulas at all. Very few. I am trying to remember what topics there were? lol, total blurrrr

 

VR: I felt it was longer than usual. I usually end up with 3-5min left...today I may have had 30 seconds left when I was done....I felt liek I guessed fully on one passage as my brain just stopped reading about ocean waves and blah balh

 

WS: I thought the prompts were pretty straightforward but for the first one, I kinda used a stupid antithesis example...I hope it doen'st kill me so bad

 

BS: I thought it was very passage-based. I can't remember the degree of orgo for some reason, people keep saying synthesis passage, did I just miss that? loool I think I got a substitution elimination passsage for orgo...donno about the synthesis...Overall, my best feeling in this test. I finished at least 15 min early.....

 

Lets see what happens...oh God the wait is going to kill me...I wonder if I should rebook for a september test already....

[dw88]

Don't worry, I studied a lot and found that to be very hard so you aren't alone. Anybody who thought it was easy... well somethings wrong there.

 

I mean just to put things in perspective I'm a graduate student who did math/phys undergrad. And the that PS was STILL not easy. I mean I'm not worried I bombed it, but I definetely didn't get the marks I'm used to.

 

Bio - yeah a blur. The one organic chem one with synthesis stuff was insanity. A lot of very random and specific facts.

 

The writing samples - were stupid, what the hell do you say about things like that? I wanted to punch the screen when I saw those.

 

It's okay if we all do bad right? haha

[osmosis]

i pretty much feel the same as everyone. the bio? wtf? it was all microbiology and sn1 sn2 reactions. what happened to lab techniques? biochem? what about questions about the GI tract? hormones? the cell?

 

seriously. i practically did all 1001 ek bio questions and found the real thing to be unreflective of any practice that i had done.

[nuD]

I'm quite unsure about how I did. Overall I found it pretty tough.

 

PS: First passage experiment was kind of random/time consuming.

 

VR: I thought this was okay, no passages that were really dry and hard to get through.

 

WS: I agree with other posters; the questions were straightfoward and not really "I'm screwed" type questions, but once you start writing you realize there isn't much to say.

 

BS: I found okay. That one orgo passage was ridiculously long and more time consuming than hard.

[leviticus111]

I feel like I totally blew the verbal part... I was already thrown off by that first passage. And that one on ocean wave/air was just throwing a bunch of random facts to you.

 

That orgo passage was kind of hard too I agree. The physics and chem part was fair. Essays were arghhh

[KTWD]

Wow I am so happy to hear what you all have to say. IT IS EXACTLY HOW I FELT.

 

For me it was like I could have written that 3 months ago and not done any better. I say that bc like you have all been saying, no formulas, no hormones , essentially everything that I jammed into my head did not get used! I kinda feel jipped like I didn't get to show " what I knew". I left being like give me another one! Not only bc it was somewhat hard, but bc it was essentially a " stupid MCAT". LOL WTF was that! I feel like it could have gone either way....

[Femto]

Ya, that was a bizzarre experience. Not really what I was anticipating. The bad part is, I can barely remember any of the passages/questions now. I know the first verbal and physical sci. passage took me forever, and the rest is kinda a blurr - now I am freaking that I really screwed up! I could go on about Bio., not really representative of how I prepped!

 

This is going to be a long month!

[musicmaestro]

It was a fair MCAT same as most, first PS passage was cleverly disguised as the pressure and volumes laws, verbal was the same, BS was slightly cooling, the organic chem was not too difficult but did take more than the regular time per question because you have to know mechanism. It was different from practices but around same difficulty. Most questions may have seemed difficult, the mcat actually tests what it says on its official sheet, the only important difference is that the simple laws that it tests are very cleverly disguised.

 

Good luck to everyone

[claire_tea]

Ugh, that was very tough. I wrote an AAMC two days before hand (one of the practise ones) and breezed through it, with my best ever score and was feeling reasonably confident. After PS yesterday, however, I was almost ready to just leave (it was honestly that terrible). I guess, on the upside, if everyone found it super difficult we will hopefully have a generous curve. I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt like it went awful. I totally agree with osmosis regarding biology, too.

 

ETA: I also found verbal ROUGH, when it is usually my strong point. I was writing with a friend that has scored a 15 on verbal before, and even she said she thought it was hard.

[musicmaestro]

Other forums/threads say that the curve is pre-determined and your score is not curved based on other test takers relative score, instead the test makers base the curve degree. Also that the curve is also doesnt make a large difference, as seen in the scoring scheme for many of the practice aamcs the curve only slightly varied. The aamc seems to me that it doesnt care if entire test pool on date failed:mad:

 

Anyways dont base your entire life on this test, some of the questions to get them right you would have to be psychic, good luck to everyone.

[medguy5367]

I'm sure they do curve it based on the difficulty, otherwise it would be completely unfair.

 

On some other forum a student was talking about how his physical sciences section was brutal, but they ended up curving it so that 4 questions wrong will still get a 14!

 

 

This thread makes me think, though... Are "post-MCAT" threads always like this?

 

Have there been threads where people agree that it was generally an all-round EASY MCAT?

[changster]

I took my rage on SC2 and finished the campaign

[Femto]

Other forums/threads say that the curve is pre-determined and your score is not curved based on other test takers relative score, instead the test makers base the curve degree. Also that the curve is also doesnt make a large difference, as seen in the scoring scheme for many of the practice aamcs the curve only slightly varied. The aamc seems to me that it doesnt care if entire test pool on date failed:mad:

 

Anyways dont base your entire life on this test, some of the questions to get them right you would have to be psychic, good luck to everyone.

 

 

I think this is only a result of the fact that they reuse a lot of their questions. Say, for example, in the past three years 50,000 people have answered the same 7 questions on a specific passage, they already ahve a good idea of how difficult that passage is. And so if on a recent test date, there were only 300 additional people answering those same questions based on that same passage, the new bell curve would be based on 50,300, and not 50,000 - which is obviously not that different.

[aquadon]

Reading this thread is quite amusing.

 

I am writing my MCAT for the 2nd time (to improve my Verbal), on a relatively last minute whim (write Sept 3, started studying Aug 3).

 

To reassure you all, I think your thoughts are pretty common. I personally thought I had bombed my PS last time - I forgot periodic table trends, couldn't remember any formulas & didn't know what the passages were about. In the end I got a 12.

 

Here's hoping that all of you are pleasantly surprised in a month! My advice is to breathe, relax and think about anything but the MCAT. You'll be pleasantly surprised how quickly the questions and passages leave your thoughts.

[war485]

Rewrote because of my poor verbal reasoning and for the first time, I freaked out on the bio section! Other parts weren't too bad.

[numero0121407]

I'm just mad cuz I don't know how to feel about this, I don't know if I should feel guilty or blame myself or the test difficulty level! I have no idea how bad/good I did but I don't feel confident at all and its driving me mad...it just feels so surreal, I have no idea what happened

 

I did all AAMCs and all TPR practice and everything I could get my hands on...I don't know what else I could have done to avoid such an unsure all over the place experience, yet I feel like I can't forgive myself...I feel it was my fault somehow...

 

We're seem to all agree that it was a lil harder than usual, but I can't help but think that different people do MCATs at different times and still do well...

 

I don't know...I am so anxious...its killing me...