Who else is taking it with me this weekend? Most people in my post-bacc have yet to sign up (or, are taking it in June in Canada because they forgot to sign up in time…) Only 1 other person I know is taking it this weekend!
Good luck to you all - I’ll see you on the other side of the beast 
I’m right there with you on Saturday. No worries, we got this. It’s a beast, but a beast we can slay.
How’d it go? Feeling like you blew is normal and doesn’t mean anything…
I can’t tell how to feel. I was feeing good walking in, nervous but confident in my preparation. Then some sections just kicked my butt. There was definitely a ton of biochem on there and not very much physics at all. CARS was actually significantly harder than I anticipated – I was feeling fine with that section before the test, but I thought the answer choices were trickier than normal.
I’m most annoyed about the psych/soc section because I took an Examkrackers course and I swear half of the material tested was not in our book or presented. They published an errata after the fact, but it came out a week before the test and was just a (very extensive) list of other things to know. Not very helpful.
Above all, I’m still annoyed the AAMC changed this test so significantly, but itself is unsure of some of the changes, unwilling to release more than one practice test and selling students question banks that were made for the old test. I’m sure they view this period as a transition to the new test, but this is MY future.
So, we’ll see. We get estimated percentiles in three weeks and then a score in mid-June, I believe. I need a certain score in order to successfully link with a medical school and even if I don’t get it, I do honestly believe I did as much as I could to prepare for the MCAT.
I’m usually really bad at the physics section but felt good about it and that boosted my confidence. CARS was as expected, but the passages were a bit longer. The bio/biochem has been my strong suit thus far on practice exams, but this one was hard especially in the discrete questions, I thought. Like really fringe knowledge. I agree with Tallulah about the psych/social section - a LOT of that stuff was never on any of the official material or the AAMC Syllabus for the MCAT. I used Kaplan and another company’s resources and never saw a lot of those terms/ideas/concepts, which was really aggravating.
I’m a little miffed that they changed the exam and gave such little prep material to help the first few batches, but what can I do? I feel confident enough that I don’t think I’ll need to retake it, but that remains to be seen.
Here’s hoping the scaling reflects the fact that they tested concepts that weren’t on the exam breakout. Were the unexpected topics discrete knowledge based or were they worked into a passage? I remember the old test covering some very specific, one-off subject matter in passages that you could reason your way through.
@ Meg - did you feel Kaplan did NOT prepare you well enough?
I’m currently in the course, set for 6/20.
If you feel Kaplan did not prep you well enough, do you think it worth the time to map the AAMC information to Kaplan and prep differently for missing parts?
So full disclosure: I only had the Kaplan 7-book set and access to their 3 online tests.
That said, based on their material and what I saw on the actual test, I don’t know how helpful any of these test prep programs will be until there’s more intel about the AAMC tests, you know? The Kaplan practice tests still test a lot of “hard science” as far as physics and chemistry passages, whereas the actual test was physics and chemistry within the context of biochemistry.
Do you feel like you NEED the course? If so, go through with it. I personally don’t learn well in settings like that, so I made my own schedule and did self-paced with a variety of materials. I think the variety helped, and the Kaplan books were helpful for review of things I needed to review. Does that help?
Thank you, Meg. I’ve already paid for the course (paid for the 2014 test when I thought I was taking it 1/15). Given I moved my test date, Kaplan used my higher score guarantee and put me in a course for the 2015 prep. As such, I have both sets of books (2014 and 2015) and all practice exams.
I attended a few of the online classes and what the passages did in the books seems to integrate the physics with biochem, gen chem with biochem.
Do you think the hard science discretes were helped by Kaplan’s materials? For instance, I have all the physics equations written down on a sheet of paper along with units, corresponding equations (if missing d, use VAT which you can then derive d) and rewrite them pretty much daily. I also have all the primary ochem structures and reagents written down and rewrite them daily.
But I’m wondering now: is that a waste of time?
I like attending the online, live classes as I get tips and tricks from the instructors… especially when getting into complex passages with multi-variable analysis and MANY #s in the problems OR when getting into a complex passage about philosophy (sorry, even on ADHD meds, I cannot focus on philosophy passages!!).
I guess last: if you had to do it differently, would you use the Kaplan mats differently for the psych/soc? To me, that’s where I suspect the greatest disparity will come from as no one knows what AAMC has on the exams (or claims to).
Those of you who took the test last weekend - had you ever used Khan Academy’s MCAT practice questions? If yes, did you find the psych/soc questions representative? What about the other topics?
@ADoc2Be, I literally used 2 physics equations on the MCAT, one of which was a little random and I had to stretch my memory for, the other of which was basic physics and I remembered it instantly (let’s not talk about how I still couldn’t get the answer… that’s just a knowledge thing). I would keep up with some physics and general chemistry principles because you will need them, but it isn’t like the old test. I think the only time I used straight up chem and physics was in discrete, whereas passage based used those concepts but took them to a biochemical level.
@DullHead, I used Khan because AAMC had literally no practice questions on psych available except for the practice test and official guide questions. I think they were helpful, but did not cover the breadth of random knowledge the actual MCAT called for.
Thank you, Meg - that helps SO VERY MUCH!
What I’m reading here is that MCAT2015 is 99.9% Biochem with even Phy and Chem tested from a Biochem perspective. Great, FML. I should have not slacked and should have taken the damn thing in Jan. I even waited until the last minute to cancel, so lost the entire 250 bucks as well.
DH - biochem is NOT hard. NOT. NOT HARD.
Let’s think this through:
If you were an enzyme located in the lysosome ripping through the catalysis of fructose-1,6-biphosphate, and the reaction time is ksub [F16P] the rate of the rxn would be most dependent on the amount of ATP TCA could take up and how fast the NAD+ could deprotonate the substrate forming NADH. If the velocity of the substrate combining to the enzyme were accelerated, how would ETC most likely be affected?
*** I probably have a lot of that wrong but it’s symbolic of the types of questions I’m seeing in the Kaplan course itself ***
I do get physics, I do get biochem, I do get gchem. I don’t need v=d/t, or VAT, or TAX, or … I just need to understand what’s going on (and in this particular example, FYI, TCA is in the mitochondria (eukaryotes) and cytosol (prokaryotes).
So no matter what, I can’t have an answer that has anything to do with anything other than mitochondria no matter the rate, velocity, etc.
Adoc, thanks - I was just having a drama queen moment. I will be fine, I’m sure, if I put in the time. I’m just ticked at the AAMC for releasing only one practice test. Hopefully they release more practice tests before I take it.
Don’t be intimidated by biochem! It’s just integrating info, for the most part. Above all, learn the amino acids! Learn the structure, the three- and one-letter abbreviations and the categories. That helped so much on my test.
Agree on other points – I barely had any physics and I think I used one or two equations, not even my beloved PV=nRT. And I did use Khan for psych/soc, but the problem is AAMC added a crap ton of extra content after everyone (Khan included, it seems) already prepared their prep materials. But the more exposure to psych/soc, the better since it’s mostly definitions.
Also, I used the 10 minute test agreement and 10 minute tutorial to write down every equation I could think of before the first section. It didn’t end up helping, but you might as well use that time for something if you want. And I came back from lunch 5 minutes early to write down all of the amino acids.
Thanks Tallulah, that helps. I have been reading on that other site that the first few (have there been a few already?) tests were heavy on definitions and terms on soc/psych. I guess I’ll start with biochem now. Took it 20 years ago but that was engineering biochem…
I loaded up the battery on my video cam … will do the video tonight and try to have edited and posted by Friday on Youtube. Will link it.
Trust me - amino acids = easy. Linkweaver, Michaelis = easy. Protein folding and DNA/RNA = easy once you have the amino’s down… oh, and the TCA.
Give me a list of anything biochem related you think would be helpful and I’ll try to show the way as given to me by the best biochem prof ever 
@Adoc2be wrote:
…Michaelis = easy…
Without benefit of review and to change the topic somewhat - Michaelis-Menten! Oh my! Vague memories of 20 years ago. Gonna go open my biochem eng textbooks tomorrow just for fun. Sorry OPM if I’m being obnoxious…
Just wanted to say Congratulations on a major task completed! Sounds like you both prepared as best you could given all the changes. Thanks for sharing your feedback. Hope you took a moment to celebrate!
I am scheduled to take it 6/20. I am cautiously optimistic to say the least. I am currently taking Biochem and Orgo 2. From the sounds of it taking BioChem was definitely a good call. I know Orgo II isn’t really emphasized but since some of the schools I’m interested in either don’t accept BioChem in place of Orgo II or they want both I just took both.