3 Weeks until MCAT -- study guide now??

[hoyas9]

So my test is coming up in 20 days so about 3 weeks. I've been done with content for a while so I've just been doing lots and lots of practice problems from morning to night. I alternate between Verbal passages in EK books and the big hyper learning princeton book. I've also done a few section tests from Kaplan. In terms of AAMC tests, I scored a 25 on AAM5, 30 on AAMC7, and now a 24 on AAMC6. But when i looked at my mistakes, they were such stupid mistakes. I knew the material well, but the way they asked some questions just threw me off. Also, if i went with my original choice on most of them and didn't make such stupid mistakes with questions i already knew the answer to, it would've given me at least a 30. It's not that I don't know content, I just made really dumb mistakes.

I'm shooting for over a 30 on the test but I'm worried because of my random practice test scores. I do well when I do my practice problems but the test just throws me off sometimes.

Anyone have any advice on what I should be doing now with 3 weeks left? I kind of just get up and do problems all day but I feel like its pretty disorganized. If anyone has advice on how I should organize my study tactics these last 3 weeks I would greatly appreciate it. Anything helps!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[HCHopeful]

Dunno if this helps, but I'm in a similar situation. I was scheduled for January but started studying in July. I finished content review about 2 weeks ago and decided to take a Kaplan FL. I scored a 29 (12/9/8). This was encouraging so I took AAMC #7: 28 (10/10/8).

What's interesting is that I felt much the same about why I scored as low as I did. Many thoughtless errors that would have easily pushed me to a 31. So, I took AAMC #4 today and got a 34 (13/12/9).

How, you ask? Concentration. Honestly. I just told myself going in that I was going to murder the exam and make sure I kept my eye on every detail. If I answered an "easy" question quickly, I'd look at it again to be sure. I don't have any Organic knowledge (going in blind) so I used a lot of the time in BS to use the passage as much as I could to find info.

Confidence and concentration. Nothing can beat those two.

Well, studying for 5+ hours a day for two months also helps. But if you feel confident in your content knowledge, just focus on focusing during the test. Sounds odd, but it works.

I just rescheduled for October 21st and am ready to murder this thing. Best of luck!

 

[stitchattack]

My exam is in 3 weeks too. Despite all the practice I've been doing, I don't even feel ready. Since I haven't taken the exam yet, I don't really have an advice but since it seems we are sorta on the same boat..score-wise and study schedule-wise, I was wondering if you guys think reviewing the AAMC tests and SAs and understanding the concepts you missed will help boost the score. I started doing that for TBR passages as well and it seems the content gaps from my review get filled by reading the explanations and understanding the "why" part. As for VR, I don't know what to say about that one because I'm almost done with the EK 101 passages and the last few passages are not consistent with my overall score so I'm nervous about that too. I'm almost done with my TPR VR too. My plan for the next 3 weeks is to spend time practicing passages and giving 3-4 hrs a day to reviewing the content..really get my formulas and key concepts down. Oh and take the AAMCs.

Like what @HCHopeful says, confidence and concentration are important. Right now, my confidence has been slipping and I'm not sure if it's because I've been doing harder passages/topics I'm weak on or because I'm still lacking. Whichever may be the case, hopefully, I'll be confident on the test day. Rock the test or die trying, right? lol

 

[hoyas9]

Dunno if this helps, but I'm in a similar situation. I was scheduled for January but started studying in July. I finished content review about 2 weeks ago and decided to take a Kaplan FL. I scored a 29 (12/9/8). This was encouraging so I took AAMC #7: 28 (10/10/8).

What's interesting is that I felt much the same about why I scored as low as I did. Many thoughtless errors that would have easily pushed me to a 31. So, I took AAMC #4 today and got a 34 (13/12/9).

How, you ask? Concentration. Honestly. I just told myself going in that I was going to murder the exam and make sure I kept my eye on every detail. If I answered an "easy" question quickly, I'd look at it again to be sure. I don't have any Organic knowledge (going in blind) so I used a lot of the time in BS to use the passage as much as I could to find info.

Confidence and concentration. Nothing can beat those two.

Well, studying for 5+ hours a day for two months also helps. But if you feel confident in your content knowledge, just focus on focusing during the test. Sounds odd, but it works.

I just rescheduled for October 21st and am ready to murder this thing. Best of luck!

Thank you!! I definitely need to work on that. Best of luck to you too! May I ask what your plan is for studying these next couple weeks? I've heard to do practice test after practice test but i'm not sure if I should be doing them every day or every other day. Already in freak out mode!

 

[HCHopeful]

My exam is in 3 weeks too. Despite all the practice I've been doing, I don't even feel ready. Since I haven't taken the exam yet, I don't really have an advice but since it seems we are sorta on the same boat..score-wise and study schedule-wise, I was wondering if you guys think reviewing the AAMC tests and SAs and understanding the concepts you missed will help boost the score. I started doing that for TBR passages as well and it seems the content gaps from my review get filled by reading the explanations and understanding the "why" part. As for VR, I don't know what to say about that one because I'm almost done with the EK 101 passages and the last few passages are not consistent with my overall score so I'm nervous about that too. I'm almost done with my TPR VR too. My plan for the next 3 weeks is to spend time practicing passages and giving 3-4 hrs a day to reviewing the content..really get my formulas and key concepts down. Oh and take the AAMCs.

Like what @HCHopeful says, confidence and concentration are important. Right now, my confidence has been slipping and I'm not sure if it's because I've been doing harder passages/topics I'm weak on or because I'm still lacking. Whichever may be the case, hopefully, I'll be confident on the test day. Rock the test or die trying, right? lol

Truthfully, I've never been very good at reviewing my TBR passages. Don't get me wrong, I look at the ones I missed, but I don't keep a ledger of why I missed and how I can make them better.

As far as confidence goes, take two AAMC's and then re-evaluate where your confidence should be. With TBR it's so easy to get overwhelmed and feel as if you are in completely over your head. Once you take an AAMC, you will breathe a sigh of relief and see how much "easier" it is. I only mean easier in that your brain won't have to work nearly as hard to go through the passages. They are generally more straightforward than TBR.

Thank you!! I definitely need to work on that. Best of luck to you too! May I ask what your plan is for studying these next couple weeks? I've heard to do practice test after practice test but i'm not sure if I should be doing them every day or every other day. Already in freak out mode!

Since I'm in school at the moment, I'm just going to take practice exams whenever I get the chance. I'm taking AAMC #9 on Saturday to really determine if I'm ready for October 21st since it's more similar. Otherwise, I'm going back through each chapter of TBR and completing the last phase and reading over my notes basically every day. I've considered trying to cram a bit of Organic in, but I just don't see it helping this close to test day.

 

[lumberjack89]

in freak out mode!

Same here - with only 3 weeks left it feels like there's almost no time to get anything done! From here on out I'm mostly going to be taking full lengths every few days and reviewing my errors with a little bit of content/flashcard/weak-area review scattered in between.

 

[Thyr0id]

Same here - with only 3 weeks left it feels like there's almost no time to get anything done! From here on out I'm mostly going to be taking full lengths every few days and reviewing my errors with a little bit of content/flashcard/weak-area review scattered in between.

what did you make flashcards for? I was never good at making flash cards but 3.5 weeks out from this exam they may help. I agree about TBR, my god , doing those passages I felt like god when I got them all right and then like crap when I got them all wrong. They were some doosies. Some questions were insane, but ended up taking the FL#3 and saw how much easier it was comparedto TBR.

For me being 3.5 weeks out, I am doing practice passages, attempting to improve my Orog/Physics scores by doing more passages in that area, maybe rereading some orgo/physics stuff, and then read books to help with verbal (lol). Good luck.

 

[lumberjack89]

what did you make flashcards for? I was never good at making flash cards but 3.5 weeks out from this exam they may help.

I'm not a huge flashcard guy myself, but after reading through this ( http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...ints-in-2-months-—-the-spinach-method.988678/ ), I realized they might be a good way for me to commit various pesky formulas/constants/concepts/whatever to memory.

There's a lot of little errors I keep making, like accidentally transposing a constant from one side of a formula to another, or not remembering which term is squared, which amino acid is this or that, and so on. They are also helpful for various little things in orgo and bio, like hormones and their respective glands, particular named reagents/reactions, etc. When you realize that a single question can take your score up or down an entire point if you're riding the line, I just can't let little stuff like this get me, and maybe the flashcards will make sure it doesn't happen.

 

[Thyr0id]

I'm not a huge flashcard guy myself, but after reading through this ( http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/how-i-raised-my-mcat-score-by-10-points-in-2-months-—-the-spinach-method.988678/ ), I realized they might be a good way for me to commit various pesky formulas/constants/concepts/whatever to memory.

There's a lot of little errors I keep making, like accidentally transposing a constant from one side of a formula to another, or not remembering which term is squared, which amino acid is this or that, and so on. They are also helpful for various little things in orgo and bio, like hormones and their respective glands, particular named reagents/reactions, etc. When you realize that a single question can take your score up or down an entire point if you're riding the line, I just can't let little stuff like this get me, and maybe the flashcards will make sure it doesn't happen.

hmmm thanks ! I dug up my old flashcards for hormones back when I took A and P and im using a reaction sheet for orgo to put those on flashcards. Hopefully this helps!