<p>I'm sure this seems like a silly question, and maybe it's already been answered somewhere in this forum, but how do the AP classes (AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Physics) correlate with the subject matter on the MCAT? Like, is AP Physics good prep for the physics portion on the MCAT, or is there more infor on the MCAT physics portion compared to AP Physics? thanks a lot for answering my question!</p>
<p>Material-wise, AP Physics is harder than MCAT physics; AP Chem works well for MCAT GenChem; AP Bio serves as an acceptable but skimpy preparation for what you'll need. English and Organic Chemistry, obviously don't have AP correlates.</p>
<p>^ how about AP Eng Lang and Lit?</p>
<p>Don't correlate.</p>
<p>To elaborate a little bit more. The skills the AP english exams are testing are very different than what the MCAT requires.</p>
<p>am I the only one exceedingly bothered by these threads? high schoolers who are already thinking about the MCAT are the only type of people who ask this sort of thing</p>
<p>philly: dont be bothered man. Sometimes we just want to think ahead which is a good thing. The better we have it planned out, the better decisions we will make. </p>
<p>BRM: thus, ap english will be of very little help? i always prefer sciences and maths over english ( i hate it )</p>
<p>AP English is not very relevant, but make no mistake: English is by far the most important part of that exam.</p>
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am I the only one exceedingly bothered by these threads? high schoolers who are already thinking about the MCAT are the only type of people who ask this sort of thing
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<p>I think we've beaten the subject of early preparation to death. Unfortunately, these HSers were pretty stubborn.</p>
<p>philly: i was just wondering, that's all, and as paki786 mentioned, its good to think ahead, and know what to expect. u dont have to be bothered by it lol. thanks for the replies</p>
<p>lol i dont see any reasoning behind not preparing early NCG......as long as it is not crossing the limits like starting to take the MCATS already, i believe its all good</p>
<p>The reasoning is that it's a waste of time and your time could be better spent doing something else. The people on the board who've taken the MCAT (BDM, BRM, Philly, Shades, etc.) all advocate studying 6-10 weeks or so for it. I know no one in real life who studied more than 1 semester or 1 summer for the MCAT. It's just ridiculously unnecessary.</p>
<p>"AP English is not very relevant, but make no mistake: English is by far the most important part of that exam."</p>
<p>Why is that? Does English portion (reading and writing) take more than half of the exam? How can I prepare for it? I'm pretty confident with scientific subjects but sort of worried with English..</p>
<p>The entire exam, even the science portions, is a reading comprehension exam. The science portions are reading comprehension ABOUT science. But it's still fundamentally reading comprehension.</p>
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The people on the board who've taken the MCAT (BDM, BRM, Philly, Shades, etc.) all advocate studying 6-10 weeks or so for it.
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<p>If you're in school full-time, 6-10 weeks may not be enough. I started my Kaplan course in January and ended just before the MCAT in April, so that's... 12 weeks or so. But I agree that anything more than 1 semester is a waste of time.</p>
<p>While it is true there are many high schoolers who are overly concerned with med school issues far in the future, I think the basic question here is a good one and the answers are helpful. I know kids who are now taking the MCAT at the end of their college Sophomore year, which is only two years removed from taking thr AP exams. I think contrasting the two allows the kids to get a sense of where they are likely to be strong or weak.</p>
<p>Because the MCAT is not a knowledge test, the science sections will probably require less scientific knowledge than the corresponding AP tests. The MCAT is passage-based so it requires a little bit of knowledge and the critical thinking skills required to apply that knowledge to what you've just read in the passage. For example, you may be given a passage on a jet engine. You are not expected to know how a jet engine works beforehand but you should know things like work, power, force, etc. The corresponding physics questions will then focus on those concepts, but in the context of a jet engine.</p>
<p>The biggest problem with trying to guage MCAT performance based on AP performance is the curve. You can miss 30% of the questions and get a 5 on the AP test. If you miss 30% of the questions on a MCAT section, you will still get a 5...unfortunately the section is curved out of 15.</p>
<p>So approximately how many questions can I miss to get ...say 36ish?
Assuming I do avg on the essay portion.</p>
<p>Depends on what section you miss them in. Verbal errors are punished much more heavily than Physical Science errors.</p>
<p>This depends on the individual tests as the scale will vary. But, I'd say you can miss around 10 out of 77 questions and get a 12 on a science section. This is the old test. The new MCAT only has 52 questions per science section so I don't know what the new scales look like.</p>