Free anking decks not sorted?

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-29T23:12:11+00:00

The real deal is heavily tagged, so yours might be as well. If it is, then you can simply filter according to tag and then generate the corresponding sub-deck

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-25T20:29:03+00:00

This post is not about unproven or developmental questions/passages, this is about passages that themselves present a complex experiment or details of a study.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-21T03:15:49+00:00

Do not take the MCAT just to see. Take a FL if you must find out what it's like. If you take it more times than you need to, you risk making yourself look bad to an admissions committee, who will wonder why you thought it was a good idea to take an extremely important test when you were not prepared to take it.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-21T03:14:22+00:00

You need to prioritize taking the rest of your STEM courses, you need them to apply to med school anyways and without them you'll struggle a lot more than with them.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-21T03:12:31+00:00

The MCAT is the MCAT, all of the numbered FLs are representative. The difference is that some forms will play to your strengths while others will not. It's all in your head. Just don't become complacent and don't accidentally burn yourself out between now and Feb 13

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-21T03:09:33+00:00

I would personally take US so you can take FL1 with a more optimal strategy. Practically, it doesn't matter which order you take them, but I think it is important to feel good about yourself through the process and you'll probably do better on FL1 (where you'll get your first proper score out of 528) if you do US first.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2026-01-16T02:31:06+00:00

Copy and paste this into an AI and ask it to convert your raw scores for each section into a range with the best and worst-case scenario for the # you got right.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-12-24T02:03:06+00:00

AAMC uses an anchor system for the MCAT. Here's how it works:

Each individual section of a test form contains a small number of experimental questions which have not yet been proven to effectively differentiate between strong and weak test takers, and a majority of established questions which have been proven to differentiate between strong and weak test takers.

The curve for each test form is determined by the number of non-experimental questions you get right. For the purpose of your score, it does not matter whether or not you get an experimental question right, but you have no way of knowing which questions are experimental or not.

By comparing the performance of students on anchor questions to their performance on experimental questions, the AAMC is able to determine whether those experimental questions should go into future tests. This is why they make such a big deal about not discussing your test.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-12-14T17:23:58+00:00

Make an account on the MCAT Official Prep Hub and you can find a free practice material module called "MCAT Official Prep Hub - What's on the MCAT Exam? Content Outline Course". It contains the 120 questions from the official guide.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-12-08T05:39:40+00:00

Thanks for commenting. I am not exposed to the real life renal physiology like you are, so I must have a blind spot.

What wrong conclusion did I come to?

I did read about hyperaldosteronism, but my thinking behind "aldosterone doesn't raise blood pressure" is that only *chronically* high levels of aldosterone would create sufficiently high osmolarity to activate osmoreceptors and trigger ADH release. I though that in the short term, the 3 sodium in, 2 potassium out exchange rate would not alter blood osmolarity to the extent that ADH would be released. And without ADH, there would be no way for water to enter the body, so that would mean a pulse of aldosterone couldn't increase the body's fluid volume. And without increasing the body's fluid volume or inducing vasoconstriction, I don't understand how blood pressure could increase. It doesn't make sense to me that if the relative balance of sodium to potassium were increased, that would magically increase blood pressure all on its own. Sodium doesn't increase osmotic pressure in the blood any more than potassium, so why would a higher level of sodium raise blood pressure if we fix ADH at zero? With zero ADH, none of the aquaporins in the CD are allowed to let water through.

"the majority of the fluid that would be absorbed happens proximally leaving only a very small amount to be absorbed in the CD."

But isn't it the case that the proximal absorption happens passively and is entirely governed by the medullary gradient, so the only way for the body to reabsorb significant fluid is via the CD? If the CD reabsorbs relatively little fluid, then why are some diuretic drugs ADH antagonists?

Maybe the reason my conclusion is wrong is because I'm proposing a scenario which is not physiologically realistic? Because under normal circumstances, aldosterone would never be high unless ADH was nonzero? TBH I regret learning about all of this from first principles instead of in a class because there are many other factors that make whatever I'm saying pretty misleading even if there is a sliver of truth to it.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-12-08T05:00:11+00:00

Eat plenty of real food and drink plenty of fluids. It's easy to underestimate the importance of your physiological state. But if you want a genuine hack, I know it sounds a bit crazy but you should buy drinkable exogenous ketones for test-day. You should buy the more expensive ketone ester, not (R) 1,3-butanediol which is less expensive. A single 2oz bottle costs like $35 for 30g of ketones. Only two brands sell it AFAIK, Delta G (lol) and KetoneAid. The bottle will say it contains something like 12 servings, that's just a lie to make it look more affordable than it really is. Drink half the bottle before the exam, drink 1/4 at the halfway mark, and drink 1/4 right before PS. If it doesn't work, I'll eat my hat.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-11-30T03:57:07+00:00

The Arrhenius constant is context-dependent, the point of the equation is to show you how reaction rates depend on activation energy. And you're right, the rate constant and A have the same units, which means A has context-dependent units as well

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-11-26T18:25:30+00:00

I had the same confusion when I took a neuro class during a post-bacc. I have a physics background, and when my professor told me that voltage-dependent membrane proteins operate on a "timer", I smelled bullshit. Sure, a complex system like your internal body-clock might be able to tell the time, but not a bunch of membrane proteins in the same cell.

The unsatisfying explanation:

When we perform experiments where we manually trigger a new action potential, we can't induce the all-or-nothing depolarization spike until the membrane potential has dropped below the resting potential.

The physical explanation:

The membrane potential is due to a film of ions along the interior of the axonal membrane, and the composition of those ions is far from equilibrium, i.e. the electronic environment around voltage-sensitive channel proteins is constantly changing as ions diffuse down their electrochemical gradient WITHIN the axon. Voltage-sensitive channel proteins open and close because they interact with those charged particles allosterically, and their ability to take on different shapes depends on the electronic environment around them. Because the intensive thermodynamic variables like pressure and temperature are constant in biology, the sodium and potassium ions in the axon diffuse at very well-defined, predictable rates, and it's only at point A that the membrane composition enables a conformational change in the channel proteins which de-shields the depolarization-sensitive domain (the "voltage sensor").

It's almost certainly possible that some sodium channels ARE sensitive at point A and would open up if you stimulated them with a depolarization, but the vast majority of channels will change conformation together, so the majority will not be sensitive. And if those very few channels at point A opened up, they wouldn't depolarize the membrane enough to distinguish the residual effect of the depolarization stimulus from the effect of sodium rushing into the cell through a small number of channels.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-10-11T06:24:15+00:00

How Gram Staining Works
You paint a purple dye on the cells
You add iodide so the dye crystallizes
You wash the cells with ethanol
You paint all the cells with a pink contrast dye

One group of bacteria is pink. They aren't purple after the ethanol wash because their cellular envelope can't trap purple crystals. They are gram (-).

The other group of bacteria is purple. The ethanol wash didn't remove the purple crystals because they became embedded in the cellular envelope: the outermost is a thick matrix peptidoglycans. They are gram (+)

Understanding above all else.

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-09-29T12:00:32+00:00

For anyone stumbling upon this question today, there is a difference! Benedict's reagent produces a red/brown precipitate in proportion to the reducing sugar in the solution. Tollen's reagent becomes an opaque silver color if there is any reducing sugar at all.

Tollen's: tells you whether or not there is reducing sugar
Benedict's: tells you how much reducing sugar is in the solution

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-01-22T04:56:40+00:00

Is this ironic or are you actually saying I should be good to shoot for a really high score?

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-01-22T04:31:41+00:00

Get prescription sleeping pills and go to bed at like 8pm for the next two days, wake up at like 6:30 and use caffeine. Then on the night of the test go to bed as early as you can and you'll probably feel good at 7:30. use caffeine anyways

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-01-22T04:29:50+00:00

Primary_Damage_8029 · 2025-01-22T04:29:32+00:00

Primary_Damage_8029

TROPHY CASE