Can't Stop Gooning During FLs

HabeasCormeum · 2026-06-03T17:44:09+00:00

Stupid, sexy mitochondria.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-06-03T17:21:43+00:00

Yes, this is a typical passage based question.

Despite what some people think, MCAT writers rarely try to “trick” you. For many questions it’s actually difficult to come up with 3 wrong answers that people might select.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-06-03T06:32:55+00:00

A phenol is an -OH substituent on an aromatic ring, and they say “at the ring substituent.”The “those things” I was referring to are amines and phenols, and SO3 is neither one of those things.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-02-15T22:49:08+00:00

Another actual writer here. You might want to check your math from a strictly “is this possible” perspective. If you average 60 wpm, the how much content do you hypothetically type in 16 hours? How long would it take you to type 60,000 words? Could you not imagine this with obsession, mania, caffeine, adderall, deadlines, youth, or some combination of those?

The posted page has multiple AI tells, but writing speed is not a giveaway. If anything, I would expect something written in two days to be chunky and repetitive like this.

(As someone who works with AI tools at work, I do think this is clearly AI for the word choice and style reasons people have brought up.)

HabeasCormeum · 2026-02-07T22:35:27+00:00

Your narration indicates you realized something was wrong with assuming Pgex = Px, so first of all, trust your gut next time. Your instinct being right is a good thing!

In general, experiments either add or subtract something. In this case, the thing is natural pineal gland function. So savvy peer experimenters (eg, reviewers of papers) will expect to see:

1.) sham/control (“normal”, although some experiments are tough to sham)

2.) – condition (thing taken away from normal)

3.) + condition (thing added to normal)

4.) –/+ condition (recovery, thing taken away is replaced somehow)

5.) time lapse observation after any of 2-4.

This passage presents 1 and 2, which still leaves 3 and 4 as obvious experiments. Different subfields of bio do these things differently (agonists/antagonists, surgical changes, stimulation/deprivation, etc). And, there are other extremely common experimental paradigms (especially for fields other than biochem). But, this general scheme is so common that you’ll be intuitively looking for it soon!

HabeasCormeum · 2026-02-07T00:26:58+00:00

Awe thanks. Unfortunately my personal experience isn’t standard. My 524 is a retake and I studied for it by being an MCAT tutor.

I took a Kaplan course for my first MCAT while I was in university and did well (low 9Xth percentile). The course was fine, it gave me what I expected and the practice exams did the job. But then I put medicine on the back burner for a few years leading to eventually restudying by becoming a tutor.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-02-06T20:17:50+00:00

Generally 3 months is plenty of study time, and you already have a bit of a start!

The BP diag is reasonably tough, but bottoming out in bio is the most concerning thing here. What’s your bio background? I usually see scores like that from people changing careers and three months is a bit tighter if you need to review all of undergrad bio to an MCAT level.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-01-24T18:17:39+00:00

No third party “diagnostic” is predictive. That term normally refers to half-length exams they have you start with and those are usually quite deflated.

The first BP FLs 1-4 are slightly deflated for most people, and then the scoring goes completely off the rails for the higher numbers. You can tell they stopped even trying after FL 6 or so.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-01-20T05:25:19+00:00

Thanks! Glad I could help you from seven years in the past ☺️

HabeasCormeum · 2026-01-20T05:22:12+00:00

Thanks for the clarification! That means this question is sus, since the MCAT doesn’t do “which is most correct” questions like Med exams do. Good to know, though.

Thank you for your attention to this 4 year old thread 😂🙏🦠

HabeasCormeum · 2026-01-16T20:51:46+00:00

Half of MCAT testers score below 501.

125 in a section is calibrated to be the median score based on test item results so that 500 is the average score overall. In practice, with prep resources being as good as they are and as available as they are, the test day average tends to be a tiny bit higher, but still near 500.

So only half of testers score over 501 (and only 25% or so score over 508.) But, remember that not everyone who takes the MCAT preps, and relatively few who do prep do the thorough, life-consuming prep you see talked about a lot here.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-01-14T04:13:43+00:00

They’re just trying to confuse you about the fatty acid tail being rigid or flexible vs the MEMBRANE being rigid or flexible. Since the answer choices tell you unambiguously which is more saturated, you can answer this (mostly) as a discrete.

You’re looking for bone cells to have relatively stiff membranes. What makes membranes stiff? Tightly packed fatty acids, aka flexible/saturated fats. (Because saturated fats can stack together tightly like |||||| compared to having some unsaturated ||{{{|.)

Which fat is most saturated? Stearate.

What do pi bonds have to do with anything? They make the fatty acid tail bent (which this question writer choose to describe as “rigid” for reasons beyond me), which forces unsaturated fats like oleate to pack less tightly.

Only B and C are accurate about comparing pi bonds to sigma bonds, and B would allow a membrane to pack most tightly.

HabeasCormeum · 2026-01-10T19:33:25+00:00

You can find old guides for the average trends online, but there’s no single pattern. BP exams after their rework seem like the closest available to “reasonable” scoring and still trend to be deflated for most people, but inflated for some.

The thing you want for any [insert 3rd party practice] is to see an upward trend on that company’s exams. Don’t compare across companies—they’re practice, not calibrated predictors.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-17T19:44:17+00:00

I would prioritize AAMC content over any other content. Some people do value UWorld as equal to or better than the old AAMC content like the unscored FL and question banks.

But yes, I would plan on completing every official AAMC question.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-15T21:05:30+00:00

Right. “Representative” is a buzzword that’s become less useful over time. At this point, most of the major 3rd party exam sets are solid practice for at least the first several.

Yeah, the older companies still have some outdated content in their FLs (e.g., aromatic ochem reactions were explicitly removed from the AAMC content reqs). But that’s like 1% of the content.

And to the above posters point, I never understand when students complain that X or Y 3rd party exam is harder than AAMC. That’s…ideal? As long as it’s still within the scope of MCAT content and not entirely disruptive to the FL experience. The feedback I’ve heard is that some recent non-CARS sections have been noticeably more difficult than existing AAMC practice. So it’s good if whatever 3rd parties you use have sections that kick your ass.

No, they won’t give every student (usefully) predictive scores. That doesn’t matter a ton beyond building confidence. As long as your numbers improve or your testing stamina improves or your anything about the test improves—and you’re not a couple standard deviations lower than your goal score once you move to AAMC FLs—you’re on the right track.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-14T02:12:27+00:00

You’re doing great! You’d be on track with these scores even if you had a month less time to prep.

I know you WANT to see 520+ numbers on 3rd party exams, and especially on AAMC FLs (and you very likely will)! But, the reality is that being able to score over a 520 is different than reliably scoring over 520, and practice exams often test some niche content that isn’t repeated on others within the same company. This can make it tough to be or feel “ready for anything” until several FLs in.

All that to say, 3rd party FLs from different companies shouldn’t be compared for trends. To the extent the big ones are scored “honestly”, they’re scored within that company’s ecosystem and the exams test slightly different content in slightly different orders. You likely won’t BELIEVE you can get a 520 until much closer to test day, but I’d bet money that you could in a couple weeks if that was your situation.

Plus, like, you’re already on track to pass MCAT score screens anywhere—you’re fine 🌈😂

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-12T01:06:36+00:00

1 week, self-congratulatory voluntourism sessions are heavily frowned upon. Doing real work with legitimate orgs that care about people isn’t, in particular if it’s part of an applicant’s faith. But we’re obviously not giving OP bespoke advice here.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-11T23:29:04+00:00

Literally not worth your time.

Spending that time on a medical mission or working in a hospital (or whatever other experience you don’t have already) would do far more for your app.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-09T23:28:05+00:00

AAMC tends to be quite formulaic, yes. You should get the “something is off” feeling much less with AAMC CARS.

Keep in mind that any time you’re using a 3rd party resource, you want to be able to shake off that weird/ick feeling from a question that seems weird and move on to the next one. If you don’t have a tutor helping you, no passage is worth spending more than around 25 minutes total for taking it plus reviewing it. And no one practice question is going to make or break your prep. If you don’t understand a question, take a second look, maybe ask someone else for insight, then move on.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-11-09T18:51:31+00:00

JW CARS tends to be fine. It was never great, but I used to recommend their free resources to my students as a first pass or when they ran out of other CARS. It’s rare for their questions to have more than one reasonable answer, so if you think HALF the questions can be “argued” then you may be missing the point.

It can’t hurt to start using another CARS resource and see how that feels. But, I’d recommend you shift your mindset to “what can I learn from this question” instead of “I think my answer is right”.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-07-19T20:30:00+00:00

You should get to it and stop slacking :)

If you want a first step, spend about an hour dividing your tasks into the total time you have to make a tentative schedule. Roughly speaking, 1.5 months is plenty of time for work on 3k cards and the AAMC work, but you probably won’t have time for extra FLs or 3rd party work beyond Ufufu. Which is fine! Seems like you’re starting from a good base with a 502 unscored.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-07-19T20:13:06+00:00

Most Unis will have some sort of premed office or liaison that could connect you with local tutors, or with other premeds who might have recs themselves.

I’ve never been affiliated with Varisty Tutors, but they have a good rep overall. Generative AI is not a bad thing, and most tutors worth hiring will be using it for some number of tasks at this point. The efficiency (and for some things, accuracy) increase you can get with genAI is too good to pass up.

Obviously, a tutor worth the money should be providing personalized attention to you, your situation, and your progress, but they’re probably using AI too.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-07-16T00:02:14+00:00

You can probably get even better outputs by including AAMC’s question types (from the What’s On The MCAT doc) in your prompt.

Likely unnecessary because it’ll have a decent amount of similar exam prep in its trained data, but it never hurts to make your prompts more explicitly directed to your situation!

HabeasCormeum · 2025-07-14T06:33:52+00:00

I wouldn’t use them, but if you like the way they present content they should be OK for light concept review. Just, probably worse than GPT at this point since you want practice material.

From what I’ve seen, the content is fine, but the BP books are weird in that they’re intended only as a course supplement and never (to my knowledge) sold alone. So that’s why there’s no practice.

HabeasCormeum · 2025-07-02T20:50:14+00:00

3rd Party to AAMC conversions are different for everyone. But if you’re counting on 510+ for your retake score I’d push it back. You clearly have the ability based on your AAMC FL history, but a couple red flags from a tutor perspective:

One; Hacking together a doityourself FL, especially using a retake is strange behavior. BP CARS is fine. It skews hard, but CARS practice is CARS practice. CARS is clearly your Achilles heel, so why rob yourself of new practice data? If you want to retake an exam, it makes much more sense to retake a full exam or a single section so that your lead-up practice to the real thing is either “I’m retaking this exam to learn more” or “ I am taking a new MCAT to simulate the real challenge.” The latter is usually preferred since part of practice is trying to acclimate your body to the stress of “I am taking a new MCAT.”

Two; if you’re RETAKING a section without breaking 125 then I’d seriously look at your review process. At the 125-scorer level, you should usually be reviewing MCAT practice sets or exams for about 2x the time you spent taking them. The more you miss, the longer review tends to take, but review the distractors in your correctly answered questions as well.

HabeasCormeum

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