AAMC is a professional test making company and we would like to believe they are above using psychological warfare to ruin our scores.
They aren’t and here's why that’s especially harmful for average students.
Nothing the AAMC does is accidental and the sections of the MCAT are organized to inflict maximum psychological damage to test takers. This is the order of every test:
Chemistry and Physical sciences
10 min break
CARS
Lunch Break
Biology and Biochemistry
10 min break
Psychology and Sociology
Many students are good at C/P but the vast majority of test takers find the C/P section to be the hardest MCAT section. Most students come to test day highly anxious and under extreme pressure to perform and you are immediately launched into the section with the most content and most questions missed by students on average.
Coincidence? We think not.
After rattling students' nerves (and destroying their test taking confidence) with fast paced content based questions they give you a 10 minute break before CARS which requires calm subjective reasoning.
Both halves of the test are built with a heavy science based section (C/P or B/B) paired with a “softer” reasoning based section(CARS and P/S). The switch in test taking styles ruins our momentum and makes us more prone to simple errors.
At this point you probably think we are conspiracy theorists but let's ask ourselves this question:
Is there any actual need for the sections
to be in this specific order for EVERY test?
The answer is NO. The SAT has a random order for testing sections. The MCAT doesn’t and there is no logistical(regarding timing of exam hall and participants) or physical (you can’t cheat on the MCAT as you are constantly watched during the entire exam day) reason for the fixed order of sections.
Furthermore, everyone has similar but different versions of the exam(with different passages and questions) on test day. If we all did the sections at different times throughout the day you could try really hard and might find some way to cheat the AAMC. But the likelihood that you would get any meaningful score increase is virtually none.
The order of the sections is purposefully built to maximally challenge test takers psychologically. The stress of C/P and the usual feeling of missing tons of questions creates mounting pressure to perform better on the remaining parts of the test. This is a massive factor in rampant speeding in the CARS sections which ruins scores.
Students recharge after lunch but B/B is almost as tough as C/P which means students take on P/S(which is thought to be the easiest section on average) at the end of their test day while they are exhausted.
Of course, you can take our theories with a grain of salt but the key takeaway here is that the AAMC can and will incorporate psychological warfare into the mechanics of the exam.
This can be seen everywhere from the increasing number of 50/50 questions to how the AAMC builds CARS Passages.
As with all fun things you read on the internet the truth is often somewhere between the extremes but we encourage all average students to keep this perception of AAMC in mind. In order for us to compete with the 90th percentile test takers we need to think like AAMC to counter their tactics and maximize our score. Strategy is sometimes the only thing that can help us close the gap which is why we focus on it so much here at MCATSavior.
If you are interested in more information about the mechanics of the exam itself and why it's so difficult for average students to increase their scores, feel free to check out these resources or any of our Free MCAT Strategy Courses.(strategies for each specific section are also included)
