Students need high-quality, highly representative MCAT passages and practice questions to properly prepare for exam day. Passages of this nature are the gold standard of MCAT test prep; however, they are very hard to come by. The MCAT practice passages, questions, and practice exams published by the AAMC are the absolute highest quality and most highly representative resource available for students. The complete AAMC Bundle currently cost $236 and is worth every penny for those preparing to take the MCAT.
Pros
The benefits of the AAMC Bundle are seemingly endless, but we have listed a few of them below.
- Similarity: It is hard to find MCAT practice exams that mimic the actual exam you will see on test day. The AAMC Practice Exams (Exam 1, Exam 2, Exam 3) are hands down the best representation of what you will see on test day as they provide you with a score that is accurately scaled and questions and passages that match the difficulty level of your exam day.
- Cost: The AAMC has published the AAMC Bundle so that is may be affordable for all individuals. According to Karen Mitchell, senior director of the admissions testing service at the AAMC, ""For students who have economic need, they get a free official guide, they get a free self-assessment package and then we have a free practice test that's available to everyone." All of these benefits may not still be available to students, but the mission of the AAMC is still intact. The AAMC Bundle is designed to help students on a budget prepare for their MCAT.
- Learning Opportunity: At Pillar Prep, we teach students how to make what we call "replica notecards". These are notecards of the exact questions from the AAMC Bundle (including the four answer options) with detailed explanations on the back of the card. These notecards are tremendously beneficial to students during review. When students review these notecards on a dedicated schedule, they are able to familiarize themselves with actually AAMC MCAT test questions. In addition to this, writing detailed answer explanations for AAMC Practice test question is very challenging because the AAMC does not provide great explanations (see "CONS" section below for more details).
- User Interface: The AAMC MCAT Practice Exams are one of the few online test prep resources that actually represent the user interface you will see on test day. Unfortunately, the AAMC recently made changes to the user interface of the Question Packs (Question Pack) and Section Banks (Section Bank), which we describe in our "CONS" list below.
Cons
Although there are many benefits to the AAMC Bundle there are also several challenges that come with using the AAMC MCAT Practice test material.
- Answer Explanations: The questions in the AAMC Bundle are sourced from old MCAT exams and other AAMC resources - the answer explanations were written as simple indicators to mark which question was correct. For this reason, the explanations provided by the AAMC are not effective for learning. We recommend that you search the internet, your online MCAT overview, and your MCAT text books to learn the reasons why the correct answer is correct and the incorrect answers are incorrect. If you find that you are struggling with this, please reach out to our expert tutors for help with understanding the material.
- User Interface Changes: Recently, the AAMC changed the user interface of their Question Packs and Section Banks. Before the change, the user interface was consistent with what you would see on test day. This is no longer the case after the changes made by the AAMC. Luckily, the AAMC MCAT practice tests still have an interface that is representative of the test day environment.
- Limited Number Of Practice Questions: Unfortunately, the AAMC Bundle only consist of about 1500 questions. This may seem like a lot, but for any student studying for the MCAT for more than 3 months, we very highly recommend they do more questions to gain more MCAT practice test experience. After all, completing and reviewing MCAT practice test is the single most important way any student can successfully prepare for their MCAT exam.
Conclusion
The AAMC Bundle is the single most important resource you can use when prepare for your MCAT exam. For this reason, we recommend that you complete portions of the Question Packs and Section Banks weekly during the last three months of your MCAT prep and complete the AAMC Practice Exams in the last month of your MCAT studying. In addition to this, we recommend that you complete the Section Banks twice before you exam to ensure that you are comfortable with the passage reasoning and logic required on the MCAT. For more detailed information about when to complete the AAMC Bundle and how to learn from your mistakes, contact our expert tutors for help.
