AAMC C/P Timing
Hey everyone. Testing on 5/22 and my minimum score I need to get into my top school is 507ish.
I took AAMC FL1 back in November to establish my baseline and made a 501 (123/128/124/126). I finished it in 4 and a half hours because there were so many questions I just straight up did not know the answer to due to lack of content knowledge and I didn’t spend too much time trying to figure them out because it was just straight up guessing.
Since November I have been very casually studying since I was a full time grad student and also a TA. Fast forward to April and I sit for Kaplan FL1 and make a 509 (127/125/130/127). I didn’t have any issues with timing for Chem/Phys; it was just exhausting since it’s historically what feels like the most difficult section for me. As for the drop in CARS: I am approved for STC breaks and extended section breaks and took a long one after C/P, not realizing it ate significantly into my CARS time costing me at least 3-6 points.
Fast forward to this past Monday: I sit for AAMC FL5 and score a 510 (124/131/126/129). I got super lost in AAMC’s C/P, ran out of time and had to make a mad dash to guess on multiple questions, some of which upon review I would’ve gotten correct had I had enough time to read everything.
Today I am taking AAMC FL6 and I ran into a similar issue in C/P again. I did my best to triage/skim/answer questions I knew/could do with little information as possible but I still found myself struggling with pacing and still having to randomly pick answer choices toward the end. It definitely wasn’t as frantic as last time but still ended up feeling bad. I didn’t even end up reading most of the passages in their entirety but I struggle with basic unit conversions and calculations and ended up having to guess on most of these questions because it takes me at least 3+ minutes to solve any calculation/number problems. I am not technically dyscalculic, but I am ADHD and my formal evals show that my verbal IQ scores are around 30-40 points higher than my arithmetic scores are so it’s definitely a huge relative weakness for me. In undergrad when I took classes where “solve” or “calculate” was the question stem I had to use my 1.5x time accommodation but I don’t have that for the MCAT even though I could definitely use it for C/P specifically.
I know it’s rather late in the game and I definitely should’ve started with AAMC material sooner and done more full lengths but I lulled myself into a false sense of security after seeing my score increases in other sections on Kaplan FL1 and knowing I always kill CARS. That said, does anyone have any tips on timing/pacing for Chem/Phys in particular? I don’t really have the same issue on B/B and definitely don’t for P/S and CARS.
Thanks for reading!!!