Anyone else taking the April 9th MCAT?
How are you feeling about it?
I am just ready to get it done to be honest. I am still doing some prep, but lets be honest if we don’t know it by now, cramming isn’t going to cut it. So, I am just anxious to get it done and move on to the application…
Bailey
the day before I did enjoy my time with kids and family. I felt great on test day (except for my allergies).
You want to be alert and in shape. Cramming now is useless and works against you. Have you taken the AAMC tests? How well were you doing? If you are in the 30’s then you shouldn’t have any issues pulling a decent score. But beware, accidents still happen (like in my case). THere were 2 physics problems and there is one in which I wasn’t answering the question and the other was just an enigma (and I am pretty sure something was on there that was not part of the AAMC official list of topics).
In other words, the MCAT folks will always try to trick you. Once you have acquired the knowledge, the deal is to avoid being tricked. And the VR section is a crap shoot.
Good luck. But don’t stress out. It is useless and again if you have taken the AAMC practice tests then you will likely feel alright during the test (I had one girl cry I think during the Science section, poor girl…)
Yeah I have taken I think five practice tests, and have done pretty well. Would still like to pull a point or two more out, but I kind of think those points are kind of based on the kind of day you have.
Oh and on Friday I plan to do nothing MCAT related and very little school stuff.
Well if you have done consistently well then you should expect at least a similar score and hopefully better. I can’t really speak about the curve and score calculation with the respect to the difficulty of the passages (nor can I say if any was a test passage).
You should just review the weak areas quickly and take you entire day off before the test. That’s my opinion.
Best of luck to you.
Thank you.
Not April 9 but April 29 for me. Have you already visited your testing center? Seeing the actual building/room where I’ll be taking it was beneficial. But I’m still feeling the pressure.
Went by there today. It was closed, but I peaked in the window.
Bailey
I hope you did well today. Not matter what you feel, I would say to try and forget for now. Go get a beer or a nice meal and treat yourself. Much deserved.
Congratulations! It’s done!!! =) No matter what, it’s done. All that hard work, and you can officially check this one off your list.
I definitely agree–hope you are finding a way to celebrate tonight!
Now…if I can just fast forward this year and get to next April when I say the same thing to myself!!
Bailey, how did it go? What did you think? What were your impressions?
Okay I am ready to try to describe my test day. Wanted a few days not in front of a monitor after 5 hours and Saturday and 3 hours a day for a month 
I will try to lay out how I felt without getting myself into trouble.
First off, if you get there early their is a good chance you will get in early. I started at 7:30 rather than 8:00. So if you need more time to wake up once you drive to the testing center, sit in the car. Not that it bothered me I was up at six.
Physical Sciences - Not as bad as I thought it would be. I really thought this would be the hardest for me but it was not. All of the stuff was pretty basic, the only thing was that the passages seemed to be designed to throw you off. It was like lets throw 5 different kinds of physics at you then ask pretty easy questions.
Verbal Reasoning - This was probably the hardest section. Pacing it was hard and most of the passages were really long. Beware, but don’t fear.
Bio Sci - Once again I was surprised by the content. My experience from Kaplan was that it would be very hard content but it was not as bad as that.
Overall, I enjoyed the test once I got past the opening nerves. It was really fun to feel like you are able to know something and apply it.
My “tips”
- First off, since taking the test I don’t know that Kaplan was worth what I spent on it. I know the lectures were not. Not that the teacher was bad, but all there talk of “high yield” info was pretty much BS. The technique for VR was working for me on the practice tests so I will have to see if it transferred over to test day. If you can get access to Kaplan practice tests and questions then I would definately go for it but I would say the lecture wasted 6 hours of my week that I could have been doing practice problems.
- One of the most important things is pacing. Do a lot of practice stuff to get your pacing down. Except for BS the time moves really fast. You will even want an extra five minutes for the writing sample.
- Take a snack for every break but especially the last one. By the time you get to BS you will be run down and a granola bar will help. (anectdote here about me: I took one practice exam and didn’t really take breaks and got a 7 on the BS, the next week I took breaks and ate between each one and got a 12.) You don’t think you are tired and hungry but you are.
- This is just my impression but I think the MCAT is going more toward seeing how well you can wade through everything and decifer a pretty simple theme or concept. Like I said in the PS section most of the passages threw a lot of info at you that you didn’t even need, I think medicine is going to be a lot like that. You are going to see a guy that is complaining about 40 different things but you need to find the most important or one thing that is wrong with him and treat it first.
Well there it is, I hope it is within the bounds of what I am allowed to say. If anyone thinks I have strayed please tell me so I can edit it out. I would hate to get this far and get blackballed over this.
Off to application work now.
Hi Bailey
Happy to see you had a pleasant experience. Your post is more than reasonable, no troubles with the AAMC.
Good luck on your application. The wait is a bit hard, but if you keep yourself busy, then time flies.
Thank you. Like you not sure I am done with the MCAT just yet, but with finals in two weeks, I’ll atleast have something to keep me busy.
Don’t know about you but now that I took, I look back and think man, if I knew then what I know now I could really kick the crap out of it.
Bailey
your thoughts right now are the “hard part” to deal with. I got so owned on a few questions that I literally hate myself. I have scored 100 on my two first calc based physics tests and yet the MCAT was able to trick me with very simple questions!!!
So yes, you would probably do better (if you were to retake it) and that’s the positive to take away (as in experience). Hopefully you won’t have to and neither will I. But the VR is such a crap shoot that I am truly scared of my score.
Ahhhhhhhhh. We’ll see. For now, I am working on my next Physics test and I am preparing some tests for the classes I teach. So I am “plenty busy”.
My experience was pretty much the same for all the sections. I would like reiterate number 2. I went out of the test room and walked out to the lobby and stretched for several minutes during all my breaks. Used between 6-9 minutes for all of them. I feel like it really helped me recharge for the next section.
I think you meant #3 owen. By pacing I meant the amount of time you spent on each question. 
Thanks for all the insights. I have been preparing the past 4 months by taking an AAMC practice every other week on my day/time as my real one will be (Fridays 1 pm). I do it at the library with ear plugs, bring and eat food during all breaks, and get up and stretch during them too. I’ve been trying not to stress too much but I do feel more anxious as my test date approaches. It felt so far away for so long but now it feels like it’s approaching too quickly!
I know, it creeps up on you quickly. I think you will find that as you get closer your nerves will feel more like “big game nerves” i.e. that you are prepared, you feel confident, and are just ready to get out there and perform.
I can’t remember the basketball player but one old NBA guy used to puke before everygame.
- BaileyPup Said:
This is just my impression but I think the MCAT is going more toward seeing how well you can wade through everything and decifer a pretty simple theme or concept. Like I said in the PS section most of the passages threw a lot of info at you that you didn't even need, I think medicine is going to be a lot like that. You are going to see a guy that is complaining about 40 different things but you need to find the most important or one thing that is wrong with him and treat it first.
This is indeed one of the things the MCAT is designed to gauge. There is, however, another practical reason for this.
AAMC has a larger pool of questions than it does passages and at any given time, there are different versions of the MCAT in active circulation. You could be taking one version of the test and someone else at the same test center taking the test at the same time as you could have a different version of the MCAT. Both of you could have the same passage, but a completely different set of questions based on that same passage. Therefore, the information in the passage that was superfluous and irrelevant for answering the questions on your version of the test may not be irrelevant for someone else taking a different version of the test.
Anyone taking the MCAT should bear this in mind because all that superfluous information is a verbal speed bump that can mess with your pacing if you're not expecting it.
That was one of the main things that the Kaplan folks emphasized. DO NOT GET BOGGED DOWN IN THE PASSAGE.