<p>I took a Kaplan course in the Spring, and I'm taking the MCAT June 13th.</p>
<p>I've been taking a lot of the AAMC practice tests recently, since I've seen some threads stating that they're the closest in difficulty level, best predictors of score on the real thing, etc.</p>
<p>I've been cruising through the PS sections with high scores and a lot of time left (like 20 minutes). However, a friend that has taken the exam twice now cautioned me that the real MCAT PS section involves significantly more calculations than the AAMC practice tests (or at least both times he took it). I was just wondering if other people had similar experiences, and if perhaps taking the harder Kaplan PS practice tests would be more representative preparation. I don't want to get shocked by the PS section on the real thing, especially since it's the section I should be able to put down the highest score on.</p>
<p>I thought, in general, that the AAMC tests were very poor preparatory tools in that they were much easier than the actual thing. Yes, those practice tests are curved more harshly than the Kaplan ones to compensate for the difference in difficulty, but your score on practice tests does not matter, learning how to handle the passages does, and so using practice materials significantly easier than the real thing will generally be a waste of your time.</p>
<p>My D just took the MCAT for the second time on May 27. She did think the PS was harder than most of the AAMC practice tests, but more comparable to the Kaplan subject tests. She was able to finish but barely. There was some discussion on the Student Doctor site on a thread about that test date that the PS section was so difficult that some test takers just voided the test.</p>
<p>Yeah, when I took it (end of May last year), there were some people who voided their test because of the PS section. Like I said, my score was comparable to my practice scores. The hard part was not letting myself be spooked and mess up the rest of the test, since PS is first.</p>