<p>And those taking it in August. </p>
<p>How much did your scores on AAMC (or Kaplan) practice tests fluctuate in the last few weeks prior to the test? </p>
<p>How much did your actual results vary from your practice "average" (over the last few weeks)?</p>
<p>I took six AAMC practice tests with a 3 pt. difference b/w my highest and my lowest score. My actual score turned out to be within that range as well.</p>
<p>Thanks. Her swings are "wilder" than that historically but she has been taking some Kaplan tests recently and they seem to NOT be helping her AAMC scores. She will take a couple/few more AAMC tests before 8/7. She seems to be having trouble getting into test mode. She's finishing way earlier than she should (based on her better sectional scores), spending less time per question. She needs to put herself under near exact test conditions and put her game face on. She has always been an outstanding test-taker and feels she needs to pull a great score to get where she wants to go. The whole "It ain't great to re-take." might be messing with her, too. She just needs to adopt her old "have fun playing with the pencils" attitude. LOL. (Easy for me to say, right? ;))</p>
<p>(Edit: Her "low" scores are still "good", and she has no "weak" red flag sections , as in she'll probably get in somewhere. Just not good enough for some schools on her "list". She's just trying to see if maybe she should wait until spring of her junior year or January - if that's possible)</p>
<p>i thought in general that the kaplan tests were MUCH better prep than the AAMC ones, they were a bit tougher but the curve was a bit more forgiving, so the score you get is pretty representative of the real thing. I took 11 kaplan full-lengths and 2 or 3 AAMC ones, and thought the latter to be more or less a waste of time except for giving you a bit of a different look than the kaplan tests. On the real deal, I scored the exact average of the last 5 kaplan tests I took.</p>
<p>How good your daughter's practice test scores are could also explain some of the observed fluctuations. If she is already scoring at a very high level (meaning between 12 and 15 on a given section), the scaled scoring on that side of the bell curve is much less forgiving; one question can mean a point difference, especially on the AAMC tests. I observed about a 5 point range of fluctuation in my later practice tests, but I was scoring very highly in all cases, and I think the tightness of the curve is what accounts for much of the flux.</p>
<p>I'm taking it on 8/22, and so far I've taken 2 Kaplan FLs and 4 AAMCs. My scores between the two have been very consistent so far. An improvement on Kaplan, for instance, was met with an equal improvement on the AAMC tests.</p>
<p>Her's isn't going that way. She was hitting X on AAMC and then did only Kaplan for a couple of months , scoring x to x+3 on 3 tests (each test moving upwards). Went back to AAMC and scored x-2. And the section scores are staying with the same relationship to each other (within reason). She'll take another AAMC this week-end and see what kind of "data point" that yields.</p>
<p>I believe I scored between 30-33 on my Kaplan practice tests. I scored significantly higher on test day.</p>
<p>I'd say AAMC are much more predictable of actual score, not only from there being a consensus but also from personal experience. Your daughter is more likely to score somewhere in her AAMC range. Also, I would use up the AAMC tests before using Kaplan's.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with this assessment (not only that she should do all of the AAMC tests before moving on to Kaplan's, but that there is a consensus that the AAMC tests are better predictors of actual performance). I never scored below a 40 on any of the AAMC tests I took, and while I still did extremely well on the real deal, i didn't score quite that high. I don't think there is a huge difference between the tests in how predictive they are of real performance, but i do think the Kaplan passages tend to be more challenging, which is more important for practice purposes.</p>
<p>Might I suggest that your daughter has become to used to the curve on the Kaplan tests, which allow you to get a few more wrong than on the real thing or on the AAMC tests to compensate for their increased difficulty. If she is approaching the AAMC tests with this attitude, she may not be taking some of the more challengin questions as seriously as she might, and then getting penalized for it on the much harsher AAMC curve.</p>
<p>Maybe, Philly. I think I understand that but I will certainly pass it on because I'm sure she will.</p>
<p>curmudgeon, you should have taken the test in high school. i've heard of high schoolers who have scored a 44 on the mcat.</p>
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<p>I've read that , too. I think it is theoretically possible. Then again, I think that there is a theoretical possibility of a 27" Color Sony Trinitron TV appearing from a black hole. ;)</p>
<p>Holy crap! That's the kind of tv I used to have (until we got our HDTV :) )</p>
<p>I actually don't see why everyone is up in arms over the possibility...high schoolers generally have less responsiblities than college students and can thus devote more time towards studying for the test than anyone else. A high school senior who's taken college level bio, inorganic, organic chem, and physics probably could score that well due to retaining the knowledge so recently (since many college students take the MCAT as juniors and thus have to refresh what they learned 2 years prior).</p>
<p>If anything, high schoolers have far less time than the average college student.</p>
<p>Even though I have much more work and more commitments in college than I could ever dream of in high school, I manage to have several times as much free time as I did in high school.</p>
<p>Well then I guess my senior year was the exception, lol.</p>
<p>And no I'm not trying to say I could get a 44 if I took it right now - but I''m not saying I wouldn't. (let's see who gets upset)</p>
<p>is there a reason why we suddenly need to turn TWO otherwise worthwhile threads into a discussion of fictitious 44-scoring high schoolers? </p>
<p>I think the current high schoolers and college students who haven't taken or started prepping for the test yet just really have absolutely no conception of what the test is or what it's about; they look and say 'ok, it's out of 45, i want to score that high' or 'hey, this test is on all that science stuff i have to learn in my prereqs.' They never stop and think, 'hey, odds are i'll be weeded out before even getting to the MCAT' or 'the test is scaled to a 24/25 and after a balanced 36 or so no school not named WashU will care about what I got' or 'wait, i'm competing against an extremely pared down group of highly capable students who made it this far for the limited number of high scaled scores.'</p>
<p>This is why people are getting riled up about talk of high school students doing so absurdly well on the test; without and sort of substantiating evidence, it serves to only belittle the success of people who have worked for years to even get in a position to take the test, much less do well on it.</p>
<p>The fact that you're referring to it as "fictitious" is laughable, considering krypton's telling the truth...but I digress.</p>
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<p>And no I'm not trying to say I could get a 44 if I took it right now - but I''m not saying I wouldn't. <a href="let's%20see%20who%20gets%20upset">b</a>**
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<p>definition of trolling...</p>
<p>piccolojunior, just step back and stop perpetuating the off-threadedness.</p>
<p>I'll do my best. :)</p>