congrats redo! i know you made a huge and difficult decision to delay applying by one year so i’m very happy to see you get a great score. i think you’ll be fine when you apply. can’t wait to see where you get accepted.
Hi desert
Thank you much. I do hope to get in somewhere. We’ll see.
I appreciate your words. In the meantime enjoy the ride, and I will surely keep you posted.
Cheers Dr (-4years).
Congrats on the awesome score redo.
Hey Redo - That’s a fantastic score. I think if I remember correctly you mentioned that english is not your first language. I think a majority of people (presumably most of those english as first language) don’t get a 9 on VR so I think you’ve got a great shot at a wide range of med schools.
Way to go. Keep us updated on how the application process progresses.
Lynda
Dear Bailey and Linda
Thanks a lot for your kind comments. Linda, you are right, English is my third language (after French and Moroccan). But certainly not an excuse I can make. However, I am sure very happy. To get this 9 represented a lot of work and efforts. It could have been better, but it could have been worse.
Anyway, I will all keep you posted. Thank you for all your support (throughout the year).
And Carrie, my apologies for hijacking the thread. It certainly wasn’t my intention.
Thx again all, what an amazing group of folks… I am proud to be part of your community. Truly.
redo-it-all -
Congrats!! That is awesome!! Looking forward to hearing about your applications and pulling for you to get into your top choice this year!
Kate
No way! Hijack all day long with news like this. It’s actually an encouragement… Way to kick off this MCAT/Application cycle with a bang! 
Now send some of that good mojo my way!
Redo-
That’s a tremendous score. Awesome job.
I took AAMC 10 yesterday with some better results than 11. I think 11 was just a bad combination of less familiar science passages, and bonehead mistakes on my part (I had a 5 pt fluctuation between the two exams; crazy, right?). Oh well, gonna review it today, and maybe do a little practice.
Redo, geez, 36? 
Kate and Olderguy, thank you for your comments. Carrie, I will be keeping my fingers crossed. Now for you and Olderguy, I would like to say that you really need to get the concepts down. That will give you confidence. I am saying this because, no matter how practice tests you take, the questions on the actual test will be surprising. These folks are truly ingenious and it is impossible to predict what crazy way they will be testing you. Obviously I am speaking of the sciences (as VR, no expert here).
Confidence is important because the situation will be unexpected. Knowing that you have the concept down will help tremendously. Don’t doubt your ability.
Honestly I was better prepared for my first try in terms of knowledge, but the hectic situation and the lack of confidence (perhaps intimidation as well), created circumstances where I doubted on a few questions and here we go.
BTW, a lot of questions are “common sense” or “understanding” questions. That’s where while any reasoned individual could guess, being confident about your knowledge will help you guess right. The proportion of these questions (gut feeling, intuition…) was substantial and in my opinion the ability to answer right is not knowledge dependent. I’d say a good 30 to 40%. I remember in PS, I used less than 10 formula (and I know I made one mistake, so perhaps it explains the 14). So it really isn’t about formula or calculation, but more about concept reasoning. Stuff like why you can’t apply newton’s law of motion to harmonic motion (ie because acceleration is not constant with time) or that pendulum frequency doesn’t depend on mass or angle of deviation, only when angle is small etc… Stuff like that. Concept reasoning, heavy in PS.
For OChem, it is knowledge based and puzzle reconstitution. For BS it is in between, knowledge based with heavy reasoning, but not as heavy as PS. Most of the time it was experiments or theories with evidence and be able to argue in favor or against an explanation or theory based on knowledge AND info in the passage. I remember a question where were asked to ignore something that was true. Ignoring would make the statement false. Taking it into account would make it True. It is like, discounting effect of gravity, would the apple fall. This one is simple, but in a BIO passage, with genes, proteins etc… The situation becomes a bit more complicated.
So don’t sweat too much on the practice test. Take the philosophy, timing etc… IMHO, the best predictor of how well you will do is “how well you answer those questions for which the answer is not in a textbook, for which you are not sure. Are you able to get a good feeling?”
As for VR, for which the previous statement is the only one that matter, no knowledge is there, just gut feeling. I just struggled my way through the best I could. I don’t do well on gut feeling alone…
My best wishes to you all. You are almost ovaaaaaaa with this thing. Hang in there.
Great job on the 36; Good luck on getting an acceptance into your #1 choice school. You deserve it.
Amazing score redo! That should get you in anywhere!
Thank you Idalyn and Guitardan for your kind words. I do hope that you are right and that will get me where I want, but with this process, there are no guarantees. I will keep posting as the season unfolds.
And good luck to all of you who are taking the test tomorrow!
I. Can’t. Breathe.
Test time is 21 hours away, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
That’s normal, right???
My 5 year old is sleeping over at Grandma and Grandpa’s…the house is all quiet tonight. And I have a feeling I won’t sleep an ounce. (But yes, I will try. )
On my way to take a physics final… and then I’ll come back here and just scan through a few practice tests/solutions…and then I’m done. I promise!
Do they have oxygen masks at the test centers? Because passing out is definitely a possibility.
Anxiety at this point is very normal.
I would suggest to try and relax with your guy and a beer or something. Working tonight will probably not make a big difference, while resting and preparing your mind can (take it from my own experience).
There is no doubt that you will survive the test no matter what. Frankly, with your VR scores so far, I wouldn’t worry much. Just try to avoid the careless mistakes in the BS section and if you do, I am very confident that you will score very well.
So take a breath, relax a bit and you will do just fine.
Best of luck to you.
@CarrieLiz…
When I knew I HAD to sleep (like for the 3 hour block between when my husband came home and I had to leave for a 12 hour night shift after being w/ 4 young kids all day long and staying awake during my natural “nap time” around 2pm), two glasses of red wine with dinner were perfect for letting me relax just enough to fall asleep. But I had to go to bed right afterward, before they had a chance to wear off.
Good luck! You are prepared - show them what you’ve got!
To echo Redo-it-all: Best of luck to you! And grace during the next month while you wonder 
(And big time congrats to Redo-it-all!)
Good luck today Carrie. I’ll say a prayer for you
By now you are done! Rejoice!
Feeling nauseous before is perfectly normal. Feeling nauseous afterwards is also normal but should also have a huge sense of relief. One more mountain climbed!
Relax, go out. See a movie this weekend.
Congrats getting thru this one!
Kate
Thanks so much, guys–but unfortunately, I am NOT feeling the relief that I was hoping for.
My test was… awful.
I was counting on PS as a ‘point getter’ section, since I’m so very good at gen chem. But my PS was like a foreign language. Obscure. Nothing that I expected. Horrible. Ran out of time. THIS was the beginning of my test experience?
I think I did really well on VR… the writing section was a joke…and I feel like I have a reasonable shot at a decent bio score (not excellent–but good)…at least no real surprises there–although I made a few stupid mistakes that I really shouldn’t have from just mentally freezing.) But the PS section was a nightmare that I never could have imagined. It almost felt like someone was playing a joke on me, or exerting some kind of cruel experiment.
I will definitely schedule another test date.
Defeated…frustrated…angry… definitely not relieved.
And now, I get to wait 30 days to find out how badly I actually did. sigh
Nobody said this would be easy…
Hi Carrie
Well, what is done is done. The MCAT is a terrible experience no matter what.
At this point, and I do know this is not easy, you just have to forget and work on your application. In the end, your score might be better than what you would expect. It is really hard to know.
And in the worst case, you can always retake. I did, and it worked out OK.
So do not feel defeated just yet. Wait for your score and if YOU are not satisfied, you CAN always retake. Not ideal, but hey, I am happy now…
Don’t worry. You don’t know the MCAT until you have taken it.
- redo-it-all Said:
You don't know the MCAT until you have taken it.
Truer words have never been spoken re-do.