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Help I got 1 on VR


BlessedSoul

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I don't know what happened, I just got my score back and somehow I got 1 on my VR score... I was getting between 4 to 10 on my practice AAMC's. The week before the actual MCAT I stopped practicing once I hit 10 on AAMC 7 and I used AAMC 8,9, 11 as random passages. I applied to all the schools in Ontario, do I even have a chance at UofT?

 

wow.....something went wrong :( aaronjw is right - your options are limited. It sucks but you will have to ride the course, hope for the schools that would potentially accept you and plan to try again. There is a huge variation from getting a 10 on a practice test and a 1 on the real thing - although you are in general quite variable on that section. It is difficult for me to believe that your true ability is anywhere near that level. Did something happen during the test?

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wow.....something went wrong :( aaronjw is right - your options are limited. It sucks but you will have to ride the course, hope for the schools that would potentially accept you and plan to try again. There is a huge variation from getting a 10 on a practice test and a 1 on the real thing - although you are in general quite variable on that section. It is difficult for me to believe that your true ability is anywhere near that level. Did something happen during the test?

 

Nothing really happened, I completely changed my strategy the days leading the test. Before I was trying to rush to do all 7 passages and would get 7-10 (I got 10 on aamc 7 somehow). After I got 10 on AAMC 7 I thought I should try using TPR method and take my time and guess on a 5 question passage. I ended up doing the first 3 passages in 30minutes and did the next 3 in 28 minutes with 2minutes to quickly do the last passage (was luckly 5 questions)....The passages were not as difficult as I expected which is why I think other people probably scored much higher. Reflecting back I realised how stupid I was to do this because I specifically noted that the longer time it takes me to do a passage, the lower the score I get (this ALWAYS happened to me)....

 

Should I ask them to rescore my MCAT?

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Should I ask them to rescore my MCAT?

 

I'd recommend rescoring. Scoring 3 points below your worst ever VR score is somewhat anomalous. Hopefully it was just an error on their part and you did better. I really don't see you having anything to lose from getting it done.

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Nothing really happened, I completely changed my strategy the days leading the test. Before I was trying to rush to do all 7 passages and would get 7-10 (I got 10 on aamc 7 somehow). After I got 10 on AAMC 7 I thought I should try using TPR method and take my time and guess on a 5 question passage. I ended up doing the first 3 passages in 30minutes and did the next 3 in 28 minutes with 2minutes to quickly do the last passage (was luckly 5 questions)....The passages were not as difficult as I expected which is why I think other people probably scored much higher. Reflecting back I realised how stupid I was to do this because I specifically noted that the longer time it takes me to do a passage, the lower the score I get (this ALWAYS happened to me)....

 

Should I ask them to rescore my MCAT?

 

well that section is computerized - there is nothing really to rescore. You can ask and there is nothing really to lose in the process but really it is extremely unlikely that there was a malfunction in the scoring system :(

 

Clearly that strategy didn't work - although post analyzing why you did how you did is always a challenge. I have never been a big believer in anything other than figuring out how to actually have time to read and answer each passage. Hindsight though is 20/20.

 

The MCAT VR is a nasty section for many - I hope you still manage to advance on the schools that don't require it, while refocusing on improving in that area.

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Should I ask them to rescore my MCAT?

If you had any other score, I'd suspect you'd keep at what you had. With a 1 though, it seems possible (though not likely) that you had a memory error on your test.

 

It doesn't hurt to try. At best, you'll find it's a glitch in the recording or something and you jump from a 1 to a 7-10 overnight or a voided score because the VR failed to get recorded. At worst, you'll be told you still have a 1. Even if your other scores go down, I'm not sure it'll hurt as a 1 really stands out. Much more so now that a few schools hone in on that over any other score (and sometimes exclusively).

 

I think the answer should be to go to whatever strategy gave you the best results in practice.

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I would get a rescore, not to be condescending or anything but you can only go up right.

 

Yea ill rescore in that case. I'm in a state of shock atm because now this looks terrible on my record. I scored 9 on ps and 11 on biol, and phys is usually my strongest... So itS not like its a memory problem or else I would have messed up the other 2 sections too. I think the strategy I chose was just outright dumb, I was even relaxed half way through... I would have been happy even if I got a 6 at this point , I mean anything is better than a 1. :(

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well that section is computerized - there is nothing really to rescore. You can ask and there is nothing really to lose in the process but really it is extremely unlikely that there was a malfunction in the scoring system :(

 

Clearly that strategy didn't work - although post analyzing why you did how you did is always a challenge. I have never been a big believer in anything other than figuring out how to actually have time to read and answer each passage. Hindsight though is 20/20.

 

The MCAT VR is a nasty section for many - I hope you still manage to advance on the schools that don't require it, while refocusing on improving in that area.

 

it costs like 50 bucks

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To get a 1 you would have to be able to CHOOSE the wrong answer. So in that sense scoring a 1 actually takes some skill. You need to make sure you don't pick the right answer.

 

You can literally picked randomly and still score higher then 1.

 

Therefore, I would think that there was some sort of error. Definitely get it re-scored.

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To get a 1 you would have to be able to CHOOSE the wrong answer. So in that sense scoring a 1 actually takes some skill. You need to make sure you don't pick the right answer.

 

You can literally picked randomly and still score higher then 1.

 

Therefore, I would think that there was some sort of error. Definitely get it re-scored.

 

This is not completely true. You could get a quarter of the questions right and still only get a 1. It is likely that the OP approached the VR section incorrectly and thought his answers were right when in fact they were not.

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This is not completely true. You could get a quarter of the questions right and still only get a 1. It is likely that the OP approached the VR section incorrectly and thought his answers were right when in fact they were not.

 

I think is much more likely unfortunately - I mean people do get 1 on the test, just likely people do get 15 (15 is perfect necessarily on a section either).

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  • 2 weeks later...
UPDATE: I just got a message back from AAMC. There was an error in my score and they fixed my score.

 

Im actually shocked that this could happen...good for you...did you have to email them? or did they realize the problem on their own? also what did their message even say

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