<p>Does anyone know if Kaplan Practice tests are good indicators of actual mcat performance.</p>
<p>My average on the 5 kaplans i took was 34.4</p>
<p>I took the april 7th test and am a wreck right now. help.</p>
<p>1.) No sense worrying about it until the time comes. You've taken the test already and will get the score back in two weeks. As far as you should be concerned, there's no such thing as the MCAT, you never took it, and you've never heard of it. All that matters right now is your schoolwork. When the score comes back, we'll talk about it then.</p>
<p>2.) Back in the day (Aug2004) almost all of my friends saw considerable jumps -- four points in my case, nine points in the case, usually around five, of one of my friends relative to their Kaplan scores. AAMC scores were usually considered better predictors. PS in particular tended to be underestimated.</p>
<p>3.) In every administration since then, however, Kaplan scores have seemed to be considerably overestimates, often by around 2-3 points or so but I've heard the occasional horror story of five points. The one that seems to be surprising people the most is Verbal. AAMC tests are more wrong than Kaplan tests seemed to be. Only once have I heard of an underpredicted score (three points), and even then that was a +4 PS, +2 BS, -3 VR.</p>
<p>With that said, however, I will make the note that for some reason all my friends my age are very calm, levelheaded people. (Or, at least, we were when we were sophomores.) Somehow the friends I attract who are younger seem to me to be much more easily stressed out. So that might well explain part of the gap I've seen.</p>
<p>Kaplan science questions tend to be too hard. To compensate, Kaplan uses gianormous curves. So neither the questions nor the curves are realistic.</p>
<p>The AAMC PT's are amazing score predictors. I scored within a 3 pt. range on all 6 of the AAMC PT's and my actual MCAT score fell in that range as well. I don't know how good the new CBT AAMC PT's are though.</p>
<p>In general, when I was teaching for Kaplan, most of the actual scores were +/- 2 points from a students highest practice test. A lot of that subsequent jump or drop had a lot more to do with how the student went into the test. If they went in with confidence and a sense of purpose, ready to knock it out of the park, their score went up. If they went in fretting, anxious, nervous and thinking "this is the day that will decide the rest of my life" then the nerves got to them and they dropped points.</p>
<p>Also, and maybe this is just seeing what I wanted to see, but those who took the Kaplan strategies to heart and allowed themselves to try new things, even when they hampered them at the beginning tended to see their scores jump...but again, that may have been me wanting to see those people who listened to me do better.</p>
<p>I just feel like i did crappy on it....it's dominating my thoughts. I mean finals are coming up and im worried about may 9th....my two highest kaplan's were 37 and 38....i really dont think i scored near there though</p>
<p>It's out of your hands now. It'll come back in two weeks. Until then, you have schoolwork to worry about, friends to spend time with -- after all, you were a little too busy for them while you were studying, so now's a good time to make that up.</p>
<p>Go. Take care of the things you need to take care of and realize that there's no sense worrying.</p>
<p>Im not going to make it, BUMP</p>