Leah here from leah4sci.com/mcat and in this video, I want to talk to you about if and
when you should take a shorter exam and how to make the longer seven plus hour exam fit
that new five 45 timeline.
The first question to consider is should you even bother with a shorter exam?
Why not just take them all at seven plus hours?
When I was in the Navy, we had a PRT or fitness test twice a year, this included a mile and
a half run back when I dreaded and hated running, as I practiced and got to the point of being
able to run a mile and a half, that really meant being able to run a mile and a quarter
dying for that last quarter mile and just collapsing at the end.
But that's not how you want to finish a military test.
So what I did instead was I practiced for two miles.
Running for two miles, meant struggling for a mile and a half squeaking out that next
quarter mile and barely surviving that last quarter.
But you know what?
My endurance got to the point where I could run a mile and a half just uncomfortably,
but to be able to finish in the required time.
And then my endurance would break down to the point where I couldn't really run the
full two miles, but I aced the mile and a half.
And that was until I found out that you can swim for the PRT.
And I love swimming, which is why I stopped running in the Navy.
When it comes to an exam, like the MCAT, a 5.45 hour exam or longer, it requires a lot
of endurance.
It's a lot like running even a marathon, right?
People run a marathon in three hours.
This is a seven and a half hour exam.
So my argument is unless you're in the final weeks, going into your MCAT, do you even want
to be taking a 545 exam?
Or what do you be better off to say, I'm a beginner.
My endurance sucks.
I'm going to practice.
I'm gonna to take the seven plus hour exam and I'm gonna to struggle with it.
And that's okay.
Because then when I take the shorter exam, it's gonna to feel like a piece of cake because
I've done a seven hour exam.
If you don't want to sit through such a long exam, that's fine.
A lot of third party companies have already revised their exams.
Like next step, Altius, Kaplan to 5 hours and 45 minutes giving you the new simulated
testing conditions.
You can save 10% off the next tab blueprint exams using the discount code link on my MCAT
resources page below.
This means phases one and two.
It's not a problem, but those are third party exams.
And the closer you get to your MCAT, the closer you get to the real thing, the more you want
to practice exclusively with AAMC materials and the AAMC exams are still seven plus hours.
I have options for you to consider based on how much time you have, how tedious you want
it to be and how accurate you want the scores to be.
The first is very simple.
Take a seven plus hour exam.
Yes, it's longer, but you know what?
If your endurance is up here and the real exam is down here, you'll be fine.
The only difference I recommend here is that instead of taking the allotted 30-minute break,
cut that down to about 12 minutes.
Why 12 minutes?
The current exam has a 10 minute lunch break and knowing that you're going to sit for over
an hour beyond the five 45 exam, those extra two minutes gives you a chance to just recover,
refresh, and build up your endurance for the second half of the exam.
If you're saying I don't want to sit a seven hour exam, I want to sit exactly five hours
and 45 minutes, because this is what the new MCAT is like for this year.
And I want to simulate testing conditions perfectly.
We have option number two, this one's a little tricky to follow, so bear with me.
What you are going to do is start that exam as if you're taking it for five hours and
45 minutes, but you're going to watch the clock very carefully because the shorter MCAT
gives you only 48 questions per section 76 minutes for the sciences and 81 for CARS.
So work your way through the chem phys section until question 48, which should end at 76
minutes.
And then end the section, yes, you're going to leave all those questions unanswered.
Hang on, but in the section, your section is done.
Take your 10 minute break, do the same thing for cars.
48 questions, 81 minutes.
When you get to 48 and 81 minutes, don't finish till 90 even though the full exam goes that
way.
And end your section you have your lunch break, it's set the 30 minutes after 10 minutes,
that's it.
Your break is over.
You're going into bio biochem.
Redo the same thing and for psych social.
When you score your exam, you're going to be a little bit disappointed because if you
stop at 48 questions, that means everything after that, you got wrong because you have
left them out and your score is going to be lower.
That is okay for now.
Your day is over.
Your exam is over.
Don't even look at the score, go do something fun.
Go watch a movie, hang out with your family.
Have a virtual hangout with your friends and go to sleep.
Relax.
Tomorrow morning when you're mentally recovered, here's the tedious part.
This is what you're going to do.
Open the exam.
As if you're going to review and Mark down, all of your answers.
You want to know exactly what you chose for question one, two, three, all the way to 48
for every section of exam.
This is very tedious, but this is the most accurate method I can come up with for getting
a realistic score.
After you have it all written down, take the exam again.
As if you're starting from scratch, you have multiple tries.
So this is attempt two, and what you are going to do, question one, look at your answer from
yesterday.
Add that in question two, what did I choose yesterday?
Add that in.
So you're copying yesterday's answers onto this new exam until you get to question 48,
then you ask yourself under realistic testing conditions, how much time would I be allowed
for the remaining questions for science passages?
That's eight minutes, CARS passages, 10 minutes science discreet.
One minute.
That's how I like to break it up and take the rest of the exam under realistic conditions.
If you do this for all of the sections, then by the time you're done this round two, everything
that you did yesterday is already done.
Anything you didn't get to yesterday, you just did now under realistic conditions.
Maybe you were more refreshed, a little sharper.
Maybe you scored a little bit better, but for the most part, yesterday was under MCAT
time conditions.
Today is just the remaining passages under MCAT conditions, then you score your exam.
Whatever score you get, this is where you assume you are, this is what you put into
your calendar.
This is what you use to evaluate your readiness.
This is the most accurate and most tedious method that I can come up with for taking
the exam under five hours and 45 minutes.
But if you're OCD like me and you have to have your data exactly as you need it, this
might be the way to go.
But if you're thinking, okay, okay, this is way too much work Leah.
I just want to take the exam and I have an idea of where I am.
There's option number three.
For option three, you sit down to the full seven plus hour exam, but like option two,
you're only going for 48 questions in 76 minutes for the CARS section 81 minutes.
Then any questions that remain you just guess I don't care if you go ABC, eeny, meeny, miny,
Mo, whatever!
Guess and end the section, take a 10 minute lunch break.
Same thing for bio-biochem.
Same thing for psych social and end your exam.
The situation here is that even though you did answer all the questions, if you guess
them right, they contribute to your scores.
But if you're guessing is less accurate than your ability to answer questions, you're going
to lose points.
But instead of doing that whole tedious next day process, like option two, I want to do
some math instead.
Look at the first 48 questions and calculate the percent correct in that part of the exam
compared to the percent correct when you guessed.
For example, let's say you got 80% of the first 48 questions, correct?
But you only got five out of the last 11 at 80% you should have gotten about nine out
of 11.
That means four questions that you got wrong.
You would have gotten, right if you took it under test conditions.
If the discrepancy is three to five questions, just add a point to your score.
Even though the score isn't going to be too accurate here, you're gonna be close enough.
And it's a lot less work than the previous option.
We kind of have to redo the entire exam.
So let's say you're looking at the percent correct.
You calculate the difference and you see, okay.
So I have a 124 in the Chem Phys section, I missed 4 questions, my score is estimated
at a 125.
So you do the same thing for cars.
You realized that you have a 126 and your difference in guessing is only two questions,
you probably don't want to add another point because two questions may not have bumped
the score, but if you're at a one 26 mentally, you can think I'm either at a 126 or a 127.
Now this seems a little wishy washy, but it still gives you the ballpark of where you
are.
Going back to my initial question.
Should you be testing with a shorter exam?
I'm gonna argue that early on.
It won't hurt to go longer, but if you want to go shorter, a lot of the third party companies
already accommodate that.
As you get to phase three and you want to get more and more accurate, closer to the
real thing, you can still go for the longer exam to practice extra endurance.
You can take just the first 48 questions, score your exam, re-enter and finish the next
day for a proper score.
Or you can take the first 48, guess on the rest and add a point to any section where
you anticipate you would have gotten at least three to five more questions correct.
Now, taking this into practice first, make sure you give this video a thumbs up and subscribe
so that you don't miss out on any new videos.
And then let me know in the comments below, are you going to practice with the shorter
exam?
And if so, what option are you going to use?
And more importantly, why?