<p>As “extreme” as that case was, it was the first sentence in the quote that I found the strangest. I know personally of several cases contradicting it and I hope to soon be another.</p>
<p>@brd,
</p>
<p>LOL, you’re welcome. reddit much? :)</p>
<p>@kristin,
</p>
<p>Interesting, my dad’s semi-retired and spends most of his time optimizing an algorithm that seeks to predict the action of automated trading (since over half of all daily volume is now automated/no human needed). I love the markets. I did a poster presentation on them in third grade. :)</p>
<p>I’m sure you do, plum. But I’d much rather put my faith in BRM and BDM and the several other Kaplan instructors we have been lucky enough to have on here. But again, you know best.</p>
<p>But anyways, I think test prep company strategies help people to get above a 30, but not the high scores. For example, princeton review’s verbal strategy is to skip one whole passage so you can have more time for the other passages. Clearly this isnt the best way to get a high verbal score. I actually dont remember a whole lot of strategy involved in doing well on the mcat. just do lots of practice passages.</p>
<p>I completely agree with the statement you disagree with plum. The people who score 40+ didn’t get there by knowing more than everyone else, they got there by understanding and outsmarting the test more than everyone else. I am not saying you need Kaplan to get there but anyone who thinks they did it on content alone is fooling themselves. Maybe they didnt study it explicitly, but the practice questions are more about learning to recognize patterns within the test than about memorizing facts.</p>
<p>Exactly, how can time saving strategies do any good at all if someone is already finishing each section with plenty of time to spare? It’s a no brainer!</p>
<p>@iwbB,
</p>
<p>What exactly are you talking about?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What? The errors I have made on recent practice tests have been 100% fact based. That’s the reality of the situation, nothing mystic here, just more study needed.</p>
<p>iwbB, would you please explain to me how sitting in a class full of people who scored in the teens and twenties on a diagnostic test is going to help me meet my goal?</p>
<p>The subtleties of big test taking. Once you get to the point of recognizing these “patterns” you start understanding the personality of test and the test makers. plum. Your attitude about the test is very familiar to me. ;)</p>
This could be true for MCAT. But how about STEP-1 which is more like an achievement test than an aptitude test? I remember some CCer here posted that MCAT is like a kid’s play as compared to STEP-1. (But still a multiple choice test though.)</p>
<p>I know this is an MCAT thread. But my point is: If you can not handle MCAT, how can you handle STEP-1, STEP-2, etc.?</p>
<p>I think I should clarify that I do not intend to say MCAT is not challenging. It is. I believe DS said he was quite exhausted toward the end of the MCAT test, likely because he had rarely taken such a long test. However, STEP-1 test is a much longer test as compared to MCAT. The demand for test taker’s physical and mental endurance is at a different level.</p>
<p>there are some questions that are largely fact based, but most of the questions on the MCAT are based on novel information presented to you in the passages and how you interpret them. I still remember that there was very little “damn, I wish I remembered X” on my actual test and much more “wait, how the hell am I supposed to know that?”</p>
<p>For me personally, having scheduled study time (e.g. classes - well for me tutors but we did the same kaplan curriculum just covered the 3 hour lessons in 2 hr sessions) and having someone tell me “ok, for next time, do XYZ” instead of having to design my own lessons and manage my own stuff made it much easier for me to focus on learning what I needed to. Yes, there was some content review, but in the end, all the MCAT questions fall into something like 7 categories, which I used to be able to rattle off the top of my head and by test day could unconsciously (i.e. instantly) spot and process. Additionally the wrong answers fit into certain categories. I learned those by going through blocks of questions and in addition to answering the questions (although initially I would just look up the answers to save time) I would write up an explanation as to why every other answer choice was wrong. Then I would compare my explanation with the Kaplan one. By test day I usually could essentially verbatim deconstruct any question/answer choice in the way Kaplan does. This was great because if I couldn’t initially spot the right answer, I would start deconstructing the wrong ones.</p>
<p>Now you’re right, you might be able to do it faster on your own, and that’s what I thought and my family is luckily well off enough that I could shell out extra bucks to do that. You might be able to manage it on your own, others like kristin wanted structure and group structure is better than no structure. It’s possible that you’re already good at this and thus really only making content errors. It’s also possible that you’re questions aren’t MCAT style enough. It’s also possible that you don’t know enough about the test to even recognize that your errors aren’t simply content based. Without seeing your questions and hearing your thought process I wouldn’t know.</p>
<p>mcat2,</p>
<p>With regard to Step 1, they are different. Step 1 is a much more content based test than the MCAT and the amount of content is LARGE. Unlike the MCAT, there were only 1 or 2 questions out of the 322 that I struggled with beyond going “oh crap, I knew this, is symptom A more likely to be disease X or Y?” The other difference is that your average med student is a MUCH better test taker than your average pre-med. Remember that the average matriculating score for med school is the 85th percentile on the MCAT. You essentially are taking the top 30% of MCAT test takers and then stratifying yourself within that. My percentile dropped by 10 or 11 points from MCAT to Step 1. Contrast that with SAT to MCAT where the percentile only dropped by 3. My class’s average MCAT score is something like the 98th percentile but our average Step 1 is only like the 72nd percentile. There is obviously some correlation, but the tests are pretty different. On a question by question basis, Step 1 is easier. As a whole exam, Step 1 is much harder.</p>
<p>With regard to endurance, definitely a factor, but when you’ve been studying for 12 or 14 hours a day for several weeks, a 7 hour test with 1 hour of breaks scattered about actually feels pretty short.</p>