Practice MCAT

If you read my previous post about the used car salesman I met at the Kaplan center, you may be wondering to yourself two things (maybe not)

1) Did you get a pitch from UCS to take the prep class
2) What was your score?

In response to the first question I actually had my score report explained to my by the woman in the room, who was much nicer, and less smarmy. She did mention that I would benefit from taking the course, but in a more of a "well studying doesn't hurt anyone" and she wasn't pushy at all. She mentioned the course and then dropped the matter, speaking to me about medical school and what I did now and all that jazz. Honesty if she were the only person I had heard from that day (instead of UCS) I would have probably considered taking the course (oh.. and if it weren't 1900 bucks).

As for the second question, I scored a 32. Seeing as how I was fully prepared to score in the low 20's due to my lack of studying I was pleasantly surprised by that score. If I scored the same on the real thing I would be competitive pretty much anywhere in the state of Texas. Of course I'm going to do a lot more studying between now and then so one would hope that my score would only go up. I knew there were several questions on the test that I was thinking "hmmm I know that I knew this at one point in my life..." and so if I learn all that recall information I will do much better on the actual MCAT. I actually preferred the passage based questions to the straight recall questions because I felt that I could reason through the passage based questions much more than the other type, which seemed to rely much more on recall of formulas and facts.

Anyone who has taken the actual MCAT I have a question for you:

I felt like there was not enough time to work through the physics/chemistry type problems, and on the practice exam we did not have access to a calculator. I'm not sure if this is the same on the computer based exam, but I would assume so.

That being said: Do you feel that many of the questions test your ability to think through a problem using information you learned from the different subject areas versus your ability to plug into a formula and find the correct answer? I would think it would be difficult to work through some of these problems given the time restraint and the lack of a calculator.

Any thoughts?

We now interrupt this broadcast...

Ok I know that I was right in the middle of explaining my insane decision to uproot everything in my life and go to medical school but I just have to tell the world about this incident.

So far I think I have spent a grand total of 5 hours studying for the MCAT - not a lot certainly. For some crazy reason a couple of weeks back I signed up for a practice MCAT (because in my head I was thinking I would have studied a whole lot more by this point) which appeared magically on my calendar this past Saturday. I figured... oh well I guess I will get a good baseline - know where I need to go from here. Did I mention this was a Kaplan practice exam... no I didn't.. well it was. My husband and I were discussing before I went about how we knew they were just giving these practice exams as a way to get people to take their prep classes (A lot like those "win a free cruise" ... if you sit through a 3 hour talk about our fabulous timeshares).

So knowing this to be the case I woke up Saturday morning, thinking in my head... Adrianne you are an idiot because you are going to do horrible on this test since you have studied about as much as your current students study for your tests... why are you even going to this? You could be sleeping in, instead of driving downtown to fail this test. But another part of me said "Suck it up, at least you will know where you are at". Internal dialogue argument continued until I actually left the house, at which I had committed and told the lazy part of myself to shut the heck up.

So I get to the testing center and there are two individuals in the room (in addition to the other gluttons for punishment like myself) who work for Kaplan - a guy and a girl. The guy has all the swagger of a used car salesman - we will call him UCS for short, but the girl seems nice (of course she doesn't stay for the majority of the time... so we are stuck with UCS... lucky us) . So I sit down, take the test, and after we are done the girl comes back in to take our scantrons down to the scanner (practice test was not computer based... not really the best simulation in my opinion but I digress) and while we are waiting on her return we get "the pitch". UCS starts telling us about why we should use a Kaplan prep program so to make it easy I will give you his reasons and then explain why he is a freaking idiot.

"Kaplan has the highest percentage of people accepted to medical school of any of the prep programs"

Ok - this may be true (I don't have the statistics to prove it otherwise) however I could argue that the majority of the people who would shell out 1900 bucks for a prep course are pretty serious about going to med school and are probably more highly qualified than some other shmucks who are aware that they aren't competitive. Of course not only good candidates take their course but I would be willing to bet that a high percentage of their students were competitive to begin with.

"A recent Harris poll showed that half of all doctors in the US have used Kaplan at some point in their life, be it for the SAT, ACT, MCAT... etc."

UMMMM HELLO??? I'm pretty sure that half of the US population has used Kaplan at some point in their lives. This tells me absolutely nothing about why I should want to take their MCAT program. Shoot, I used a Kaplan program to study for the SAT.. but I hated it. It was terrible... my main issue was that I didn't remember the math for the SAT because I had taken that class 4 years earlier in JUNIOR HIGH, and the Kaplan program assumed I knew it all and didn't explain anything when I got questions wrong. Helpful. So I bought a Princeton Review book and my score went up 70 points, I kid you not.

"Kaplan instructors all scored in the 90th percentile on the tests they teach for...."

Ok I have no problems with this statement, because it is their policy. But he didn't stop there

"I am an instructor for the MCAT, but I also am in charge of all the other MCAT instructors, and I can personally tell you that I require it to be a lot higher than that."

It is really hard to convey via a blog how freaking smarmy this guy sounded when he said this but it was so arrogant and "I'm so B.A. and did sooooo well on the MCAT" that I just wanted to roll my eyes and tell this guy to shut up. I believe it was about this time that I texted my husband "No, I will not buy your timeshare but thanks for the free cruise".

So all that aside the most asinine thing that this guy did wasn't until they were actually going over the score reports with people individually. Naturally I was the last person to get my score, so I had the opportunity to listen to everyone else's private convos. (Muwhaha) I was listening specifically to see how UCS was going to work into the conversation that this person really needed to take the Kaplan course. With some of the people in the room, It was apparent that they didn't score very well, so I didn't really see anything too off about this guy telling them that they would benefit from the course, because you know what, they probably would. But the icing on the cake was when he got to the guy directly in front of me. Apparently this guy got a stellar score because UCS was raving about it initially. This piqued my interest because I was wondering how he was going to work his pitch into the discussion. If this guy did so awesome, what possible use would he have for a prep course? It was clear that what he was doing was working for him. Wait for it... wait for it... so UCS leans in to him, all conspiratorially and says

"Well.. to be honest the practice test is easier than the real MCAT..... not to denigrate your score or anything."

I'm going to let that sink in for a moment.

WHAT AN ASS! Seriously... "good job your scores are excellent... but our test is easier than the real thing so you need to take our prep class" That alone right there makes me NOT want to take a class from this dude.

I also would like to pose a question here. If Kaplan uses these practice tests as a way to get more people to take their course wouldn't it make more sense that their practice test actually be harderthat the real thing? If it were easier people would get a higher score and say "oh shoot I'm good I don't need no stinkin' 1900 dollar prep course".

Any thoughts on the matter?

Who am I?

Before I tell you about where I'm going, I feel like I should tell you where I have been. In the past 7 years I have been many things - undergraduate, sorority sister, White House intern, girlfriend, grad student, teacher, fiance, wife, senior women's sponsor; not to mention daughter and big sister. I've never lacked for things to do, and life has definitely not been boring.

I know you are asking - if you want to be a doctor, how did you end up a teacher? Well, I haven't always wanted to be a doctor. Oh sure, I was the little brainiac girl growing up who thought she wanted to be a doctor, but then I got older, and I didn't want to spend my "whole life" in school (I was only a kid you know). So, unlike 90% of the student's who major in Biology (at least their first year...) I did not want to go to Medical school during my undergraduate. However, I did not know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn't want to spend my youth in some lab as a research assistant. I had had a rather dull experience in a plant genetics research lab during my junior year, where I was required to harvest the seeds off of arabidopsis plants (which are extremely small if you didn't know) and repot plants. Very tedious.

I heard about a program at the school that gave you both a Master's degree and a teaching certificate. I decided that I would teach for the time being. It felt right. I would be sharing my love of the biological sciences with young minds and could be a positive force in some young student's life (yeah...I was an idealist). So for the past three years I have taught high school freshman biology, AP environmental science, environmental systems, and AP Biology. Teaching has been an interesting experience, and I strongly believe that it influenced me to be who I am now. In fact, if I had never taught AP Biology, I may never have discovered the path my life was intended to take.

More on that in the next post.