If you’re planning on taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), you need to know what you’re getting into! The best way to do this? Review MCAT sample questions at the start of your MCAT prep! As you do, you’ll be able to glean key information from test day, both in terms of what the exam tests and how the exam tests it!
In this post, you’ll find MCAT example questions for each section, plus a breakdown of what’s on real MCAT exams and where to find additional practice. Let’s get to it!
Table of Contents
- MCAT Sample Questions
- What kind of questions are on the MCAT?
- Where to Find More MCAT Sample Questions
- Final Takeaways
MCAT Sample Questions
Just like medical school itself, the MCAT tests a wide variety of topics. The good news is that these are all topics that will be incredibly useful in your future medical education. Feel free to jump into the MCAT sample questions below, then read on to learn more about what to expect from the actual exam!
What kind of questions are on the MCAT?
Section Overview
Here’s a quick overview of the sections you’ll see on the MCAT.
- Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems
This section is pretty much what it says on the box. Bio and biochemistry topics not directly related to behavior appear here: everything from amino acids to organ systems. - Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems
Love chem and/or phys? This is your section! Plan on answering questions related to everything from light-matter interactions to water properties here. - Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior
This section of the MCAT tests topics related to behavior. This includes everything from how we make sense of the environment to characteristics of demographics. If you have a talent for social science, this is your section! - Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS)
Here, you can expect to see verbal reasoning questions. But don’t be fooled by the familiar format—this is a next-level reading comprehension section! It’s crafted to test your reasoning skills through critical analysis of passages.
MCAT Question Format
If you’ve taken another standardized exam in the United States, like the SAT or the GRE, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that the AAMC (the MCAT test-maker) has made one thing easy on you: the question format. All MCAT items are multiple-choice questions.
In other words, you can expect the format of the questions you see on the exam to be exactly like what you’re seeing in these MCAT sample questions. They’ll each have a prompt. Sometimes this is just a single sentence, sometimes it comes with a complex illustration of a scenario. It depends on the section.
Then, you’ll have four answer choices to choose from. These are always labeled A, B, C, and D. Even better news? There’s no wrong-answer penalty on the test. So if you’re hesitating between two choices and you’re running out of time, pick your favorite letter and move on.
In terms of what the questions test, that’s a whole different ballgame! You can expect to see hugely varied content on the MCAT exam, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise at this point. After all, an MCAT biological foundations question will necessarily be totally different from an MCAT psychological or sociology question.
Before test day (and hopefully before you go too far into your full-length MCAT practice tests!) you should take a quick look at an overview of what’s on the MCAT to know what you’re dealing with!
Where to Find More MCAT Sample Questions
Now that you’ve seen what types of questions you’ll face on the MCAT, it’s time to get a better understanding of how the exam tests different kinds of knowledge. Here are a few good resources!
- To get a snapshot of your current strengths and areas for improvement, try our free MCAT Diagnostic. This diagnostic will quiz your knowledge of the MCAT subjects!
- Find out where you can get real MCAT exams and full-length practice tests with Magoosh’s MCAT practice tests post!
- For practice problems, the test-maker offers a great collection of materials on the AAMC website.
- For a new MCAT question every day, check out Magoosh’s MCAT Question of the Day post!
You can also find a great set of MCAT sample questions in Magoosh’s free MCAT practice test! Click below to access the free, full-length test.
Sample MCAT Questions: Takeaways
If you answered these MCAT sample questions as you went along, it can be helpful to note the number of correct answers (and the number of mistakes) you made in each section. That way, as you set up your MCAT study plan, you’ll already be starting with a sense of your strengths and weaknesses for the best MCAT prep for you.
You can also use a full-length exam, such as an AAMC sample test, to give you insight into how MCAT scores work on the real exam.
There’s no doubt about it: the AAMC asks future medical students to know a ton of material. But by starting early and getting an overview of what the test covers, you’ve already taken the first step to setting yourself up for success!
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