It’s because your score was determined when AAMC shook a magic 8 ball.
We're kidding. Mostly.
Score discrepancies between AAMC Practice tests and the real exam have become larger and more frequent in the last half decade so let's explore why.
We have discussed the ways that the AAMC deflates students' scores and uses 50/50’s style questions to cheat students at length so we will disregard the AAMC’s treachery in this lesson and focus on what we can control regarding our performance on test day. Most of our points will apply to all sections of the MCAT but we will note specifics when needed.
The first thing to point out is that the real test is SCARY. Every passage will be packing much more content than you are used to( and the CARS passages will mostly be hybrid style). This makes the test seem VERY intimidating off the bat. You probably began the test fairly anxious and under pressure so when AAMC adds in a little psychological warfare, its easy for things to go south fast. Lets talk about a few common issues that deflate test day scores.
Issue #1 Application of Strategy
One of the key issues that students have noticed is that under the immense pressure of test day, they simply forget to apply their strategies. Yes. They forget.
No matter how cool all the free strategy courses you got from us are
if you forget to use the skills on test day they won’t help much.
We estimate around 60-80% of students who learn the strategy actually forget to apply some/all of it on test day. It may seem shocking but this is a true statistic we've acquired through significant post exam review.
Our strategy is actually very easy and intuitive to execute(use) but sometimes the key to gaining its benefit is simply remembering to apply it.
If you find that you are having timing issues on practice exams but you aren’t using any of your timing strategies it's probably a good idea to figure out how to fix that. Same for any other consistent issues you are experiencing.
A lot of students like to write “REMEMBER STRATEGY” in big letters on their dry erase board before the exam and a few actually like to write down specific reminders for strategies they tend to forget. Popular ones always include the one minute rule as well as section specific strategies for CARS like passage dancing.
Issue #2 Content/ test taking issue due to anxiety
This unfortunately goes hand in hand with mild/severe testing anxiety. It’s not uncommon for students to feel like their brain “freezes” during test day and they are unable to come up with common facts that they are sure they know. Anxiety is inevitable with a high stakes exam but here are some ways we can manage it.
One of the best defenses against “brain freeze” on exam day is to have a solid methodology for tackling content based questions. We have tons of this material in our free C/P B/B P/S specifics course.
We highly recommend students take a look at this material because if you have a plan, you can simply default to just following the steps in the event of brain freeze. Typically brain freeze is worse toward the beginning of the test and as a student gets used to the exam they find their “flow” and it fades.
If this is something that persistently occurs it can help to practice visualizing exercises to reduce anxiety or become a belly breather. Both of these tactics have been great for students previously.
For students with severe test taking anxiety that is affecting their capability it might be worth checking in with a medical professional to get evaluated for an underlying anxiety disorder. We have had many students that were professionally evaluated and tested better when on a low dosage of anxiety medication. It’s not something that you will often see discussed but students shouldn’t feel ashamed to pursue this avenue if they feel like they need to.
Issue #3 The real test looks NOTHING like practices
Of course it doesn’t. Do you think AAMC wants you to score high? Their magic eight ball only has so many numbers in it.
Jokes aside, it's not that the real test is that much different from other real tests, it's that AAMC only releases old outdated practice materials to students.(so ALL of the FL exams we get from AAMC are pretty old by the time we get them) This can be troublesome because all sorts of new question/passage types show up exclusively on real exams.( like weird P/S passages or a ridiculous amount of 50/50 questions)
The difference between the real exam and our previous experience causes us to doubt ourselves. We start missing tons of questions left and right and to compensate we start solving questions and reading passages differently than normal.
This COMPENSATION is the way the AAMC actually drops our score.
You have to remember that the AAMC is graded on a curve that is non linear, this means there is a lot of intricacy in the grading process.
Even if you usually miss 5-8 questions in C/P and you are now missing 16 on test day you can still end up with the SAME SCALED SCORE as your practice test. This is because if you usually miss 5 and are now missing 10, students that miss 10 are probably missing 20. Make sure you always keep that fact in mind and maintain your strategy and technique.
Of course there will be question/passage types you have never seen before and you will have to adapt but we want to caution students from drastically changing their approach to the exam or using new methods they create “on the fly” and have never practiced before.
Although the real test looks different it is very similar to your practice tests underneath and if you have done a lot of work to learn the content and consistently practice your strategy, you will be able to make it work.
Summary:
There are a lot of nuances to the actual exam. Thankfully the biggest three mistakes students make are easy to spot. Unfortunately they are difficult to handle so we hope that by highlighting them you will be aware of their possible presence and work to avoid/mitigate their effect.
We hope this information was helpful to you and feel free to check out all of our other free strategy courses in order to get an edge on this exam. Best of luck!
