AAMC Practice MCAT from 1993

[Goku]

Hey everyone just thought this would be of interest. When my older cousin had heard that I was taking the MCAT this year she began to offer me all her practice material from when she took the test back in 1993. I assumed that the material was outdated and wouldn't have been of use to me but I took them anyway. I gave it all a quick glance at first but eventually put them away to collect dust.

However, I recently decided to look through two of the official AAMC practice tests she gave me to see how much the questions have changed in the past two decades. The material and content is pretty much the same which is expected given that basic science hasn't changed since then. But what I found interesting was how ridiculously EASY the questions were. Almost every single question was straightforward. When compared to the MCAT questions of our time, the tests were a joke.

I figured that maybe these were relatively easy practice tests compared to others but given in the back are statistics relating to that specific practice test. In the answer key they give a number corresponding to the difficulty of the question, which is expressed as the percentage of examinees correctly answering the question on a recent administration. So a difficulty of 90 means that 90% of students would answer correctly. After looking for the very difficult questions (difficulties of <40), I still found the questions to be relatively easy compared to this generation's questions.

Which brings me to the interesting conclusion that if the students of today took the MCAT decades ago, everyone would be scoring at least 36+. Did premeds get smarter or did the MCAT get more difficult?

[Savac]

I think it's a combination of 2 things

 

1) The current test is more convoluted

 

2) Competition for admission gets worse every year, and therefore premeds these days probably are studying for much longer/harder to prepare for the test. Admittedly this is my own opinion and therefore conjecture.

[Intrepid86]

Did premeds get smarter or did the MCAT get more difficult?

 

Both. Educational resources have gotten better compared to 20 years ago, and students today generally do more preparation for the MCAT than was done back then. The MCAT has also gotten more difficult due to significant investments and development in psychometrics (i.e., test construction).