Computerized version versus Old paper exams? Any Differences?

I’m old enough to have AMCAS MCAT practice exams 1-10 on paper and I’ve also ordered the online versions of 9 & 10.


I know that versions 1-4 are not comparable in difficulty to the later exams, but I’m wondering how much more difficult people found the “real” MCAT, compared to both the paper exams 9/10 and the computerized 9/10 exams.


I’m primarily using EK, and find that EK is harder than the old paper exams. I haven’t taken the online exams 9/10 so I can’t compare. But I remember when I took the real MCAT on paper in 05 (?), it was easier than my EK prep materials.


Thanks!

No one has an opinion?

I found that the e-mcat (official online ones) exams were the most similar to my actual MCAT. I only really played with one old paper MCAT, so I can’t really say.


Exam Krackers seemed to have a similar verbal reasoning section, but there was an important difference. On the real exam(s), if I got something wrong on Verbal, I’d understand how they came to that conclusion. There were several examples in the EK “101 passages” book that I felt were simply implausible, or at least not as well supported.


From the perspective of style - like, the technical specs of the web browser - Princeton Review actually was the closest to my real exam. Even the e-mcat stuff was different, which threw me off half a step on the day of.


That said, TPR’s Physics section felt more like a Physics exam than an MCAT. I don’t think it was terrible, but the feel was different.


Kaplan was similarly different - focusing more on the information than the application, unlike the real exam. Kaplan also seemed in love with their own mnemonics. But I digress .


That was probably more long-winded than you were asking. From what I recall, the actual difficulty of my MCAT was similar to the e-mcat practice tests. I did feel more time constrained in the real thing, felt like I was running out of time and had to hurry. And it was somewhat more stressful, and it lacked the instant gratification of seeing and analyzing my results. That said… once it was done, it was done


Good luck!

Thanks for your response! I took the MCAT today, so I’ll try to answer my own questions since I’m sure it will help someone else.


I used EK almost exclusively and like you, I had some discrepancies with some of the explinations to the verbal passages. However, overall I found EK verbal FAR harder than the real thing, and there were fewer questions/shorter passages on the real thing. I found a similar trend in the science sections.


As for difficulty, I though the Chemistry was fairly basic but “out there” on a few questions. And unlike ANY of my practice tests, the real MCAT BS section was almost all genetics which was cool!