EPT30th July: biggest test in my life so far - Page 2
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Jathin
United States3505 Posts
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eshlow
United States5210 Posts
On July 28 2008 22:19 Jathin wrote: ?? The only part of the MCAT that was truly straight-up knowledge was the discrete questions. Everything else you could figure out from the passages. That's one of the primary distinctions between the MCAT and the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam) and why people criticize the MCAT as not being a good predictor of USMLE scores -- the USMLE is heavy on facts. For the most part, if you didn't know what you were looking for (had some semblance of background knowledge), you couldn't figure out the answers on a bunch of the questions. For example, the questions about physiology of different body systems or a knowledge of say IR spectra for organic chemistry passages. Sometimes they threw in obvious answers in the passages, but maybe only for the first question or two out of 5-6 of each passage. I dunno I had taken orgo about 4 years ago so I was getting like 40-50% when I first started studying it again when I had a fairly "decent" background knowledge on it. But it was only when I started rememorizing mechanisms like Sn1/sn2/etc. and the NMR/IR spectra that I bumped the percentage up to like 70-80%+ But yeah, as you said, there were also the discrete questions as well. In any case, I would hope it's not a good predictor of USMLE because it was a bunch of crap as far as I'm concerned. | ||
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Jathin
United States3505 Posts
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eshlow
United States5210 Posts
On July 29 2008 01:11 Jathin wrote: Ah I see what you mean. I never considered NMR/IR/Sn1/Sn2/etc. as memorizing because I used it so frequently as an undergrad that I never had to explicitly memorize them. Where are you going to med school? Yeah, it's funny I probably would've done better if I took it back in like sophomore year right after I had taken physics, orgo and all of those classes. But hey, can't complain with a 33 after a month or so of studying.. all came back pretty quick overall. Not yet. Applying this cycle.  Planning on getting into Univ of Md though. I like their class format, and it's in state so tuition is much, much lower than anything out of state. As long as I don't blow the interview I should be able to make it.Where are you at? | ||
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Jathin
United States3505 Posts
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Mastermind
Canada7096 Posts
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
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eshlow
United States5210 Posts
Sounds good Jathin.  | ||
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Jathin
United States3505 Posts
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Fen
Australia1848 Posts
 I sat the UMAT and am currently a med student at UWA. Dont be too worried about how you did, its one of those ceiling tests where your not expected to get really high scores. It just about beating your competition. Goodluck with your results. Maybe we'll run into each other some day as students or doctors Just for everyone else. The UMAT questions are generally quite a lot harder than the practice ones they put out. The time constraints on the test are quite rough as well (1.5 mins per question if I remmember correctly). | ||
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
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eshlow
United States5210 Posts
I'm doing application stuff now... not fun. We shall reconvene later. | ||
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
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Jonoman92
United States9103 Posts
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Fen
Australia1848 Posts
To Jonoman92, the sample questions they release are generally a lot easier than the ones in the test itself. In the test there are a range of questions from easy to downright impossibly hard. The idea being that they can see about what difficulty level a persons brain starts crumbling . | ||
Plexa
Aotearoa39261 Posts
Well done! | ||
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Kennelie
United States2296 Posts
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Duke
United States1106 Posts
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eshlow
United States5210 Posts
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