<p>Hi, I'm a high school senior going to Rice University this Fall. I just took a practice MCAT test and I found it ridiculously difficult overall, and I lost a whole lot of confidence of academic capabilities. What can I do to improve my performance on this test?</p>
<p>Thanks a lot in advance</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it just yet. The MCAT is after you take your intro science classes in college. The MCAT is a hard test regardless but its not hard in terms of content more in critical thinking. You’ll get used to thinking that way after a year or two in college. For now just concentrate on doing well in your intro classes. Most people take the MCAT junior year.</p>
<p>Pretty sure most high schools don’t teach you mcat material. Wait it out.</p>
<p>AP bio, AP chem, and AP physics actually cover a lot of the same stuff as on the mcat because after all, they are supposed to be the hs equivalent of gen bio, chem, and physics. so if you’ve taken those, in theory you should know all of the material covered in the physical sciences section and 1/2 of the biological sciences.</p>
<p>Dont freak out, you haven’t studied for it yet, and you haven’t taken the classes for the information.</p>
<p>Thats like a jr high student saying they feel screwed because they did bad on a SAT subject test when they havent learned the information.</p>
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In theory, sure. In practice, college classes will go into a lot more depth and detail than high school AP classes.</p>
<p>OP, there is no reason for you to have taken a practice MCAT before even beginning college. Stop worrying about it for 3-4 years.</p>
<p>AP classes do not cover MCAT material at all, who got this idea? Very strong college juniors with perfect GPAs and all pre-req’s taken normally do very poorly on first few practice MCAT tests. They may or may not improve much with further preparations of about 3 hours / day for many weeks. How is HS senior supposed to do well? Did you go over all college Chem, Orgo, Bio, Physics? Otherwise, what was the purpose of taking MCAT? You have achived what was supposed to happened when one takes MCAT without prep. - low confidence level, which usually triggers desire to take expansive MCAT prep. class.</p>
<p>to improve your performance, go to college. chances are, you haven’t encountered over 75% of the material in high school.</p>
<p>In theory, AP classes do indeed cover about 90% of the material you’d need for the MCAT (not organic chemistry). In practice, very few high schools actually teach it well enough that you’d be able to get mastery of the subjects, and very few students take all of the relevant APs anyway.</p>
<p>thanks for the clarification, bdm. </p>
<p>Our HS AP courses use the exact same texts as Harvard (physics), and Cornell (Bio). Of course, not saying that the AP course covers even 1/10th of the depth of those two schools, nor has 1/10th of the competition for grades, but the books are the same…</p>
<p>Sure. And it’s possible that your HS is one of the few that does so adequately. Of my high school class, I suspect that probably half or so could have gotten a 30+ during senior year. (Our AP Chem class did cover the introductory portions of organic chemistry.) So I’m not discounting the possibility that some schools really are that strong.</p>
<p>Among those schools, however, textbooks are a relatively poor proxy. My physics, math, and English classes didn’t use textbooks at all, and in fact I was much better at those subjects than I was in chemistry and biology, based on the amount of study time that I had to spend during college.</p>
<p>My D’s Honors HS Bio used the same textbook as her college Bio (not mentionning that she had AP Bio in HS after Honors Bio and had “5” on exam). Still, AP / Honors whatever in HS has nothing to do with MCAT. Even after taking numerous advanced Bio classes at college and having straignt “A” in all of her college classes, she was not prepared for MCAT and her first practice MCAT score was low as well as all others around her. I do not understand expectations of HS kid to do well on MCAT.</p>