bella92129
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2022
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So I got my mcat scores back recently and had a significant drop from my practice exams. I’m a non traditional applicant (physician assistant currently working in cardiac surgery) so I did had to reteach myself alot of the subject matter with the help of books and online course. I took the first two AAMC about 2 months before the exam and got a 509/512. Then I took some Kaplan and blueprint etc and was getting 512-513 on the last couple blueprints I took. Then I took the last two AAMC exams in the two/three weeks leading up to the exam and got a 515 on FL3 and 519 on FL4. Honestly I was nervous going into the exam because I had historically had a hard time finishing C/P (although I did fine on that front for the last two AAMC exams) but otherwise was feeling pretty good about the exam. I slept fine the night before. I didn’t feel overly jittery walking into it. Then I got some questions in C/P that I struggled with (mostly calculation questions that were just unlike anything I’d seen before) and I think I got progressively more nervous. I was perseverating about a couple questions on the C/P going into CARS and felt pretty down about how I was doing by the lunch break. After it was all said and down everyone kept telling me to trust my full lengths so I was hopeful but ended up getting a 508, with a 124 in CARS. I’ve never gotten below a 127 in CARS and that was early on/I didn’t finish the section. I got a 129 in CARS on my most recent practice exam. All my other sections dropped by 1-2 points as well. Just kind of at a loss - I guess it could’ve been from anxiety. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken any sort of standardized exam or even big exam in general. I was also working full time while studying so maybe that played a role although my practice exams don’t seem to suggest that. I’m planning on retaking but a little bit confused on how I should actually study this time. Should I get a tutor or just review everything and work on stress reducing things? Any insight or thoughts as to what went wrong or what I can do to increase my score moving forward?
