Please Help me!

[seas06]

Let me start by saying that I graduated in 06 and now work in finance, I was a pre-med back in college but for a few (serious/good) reasons i unfortunately couldn't go to med school right away and took a job on wall street... i work somewhere ~70hrs a week (no weekends though!) and am now taking a TPR course every night after work. The course has been going on for 3 weeks and I am signed up for May 23rd exam (I can delay that if need be as I already took this exam once 3 yrs ago (with no prep because i was stupid) and did terribly) so i really need to do well, I was an engineering major, went to an IVY and my GPA is Very high, so MCAT is my only hurdle right now...

My problem is; I just took my first diag MCAT 4R and I got a 23... P9 (disappointing) V7 (pretty impressive given that i only read 4/7 passages) B7 (terrible) ooh I also took the exam while at work (it was a slow day on friday and i thought i'd take advantage of it!) but needless to say I would get called in to do sth in the middle of test!

My question is: Is it possible to come back up from that score to a 30 in 2 months? Do you guys have any suggestions?

I have been reading so many posts on here and can't believe how many helpful people are on these forums! You guys ROCK!

One thing I really would like to see is if anyone has managed to tackle this exam while working in banking!

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[tncekm]

It looks like your VR will be strong if you can just speed it up, so no worries there. And, for BS just keep reading, and PS just memorize and a do a few problems. You'll do fine in 2 months. Its a lot of information and takes a lot of time to "sink in" if you're not familiar with it all.

Don't worry too much, especially considering the 23 was while working.

 

[Vihsadas]

In all honesty, with your schedule it is going to be difficult, but it is still possible. I'm assuming your GPA is OK, so you only need to get about a 32 right? If that's the case, that should be do able in 2 months.
One thing that you are going to have to figure out is how to take full length exams without any interruptions whatsoever. That is really important. It's going to take some serious mental resolve to do nothing but work/study in order to do well, and your weekends are going to have to be study/testing marathons for the MCAT.
Have you seen 'technique' threads and posts that are in the forum? Look in the 30+ MCAT tips thread for bozz and Dr JD's posts. There is also some great advice from the early mods of this forum who are much smarter than I (in the stickies).
And here is a post of my strats.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=6297063&postcount=37

 

[BloodySurgeon]

It looks to me that you have a lot under your hands right now. Working full-time and taking the mcat is more burden than it sounds. There are a lot of things to asses here.

1) Will you continue working full-time during these two months?

2) How many hours will you spend on mcat studies?

3) What diag test did you take?

4) When would you like to apply?

These are important questions I need to know. Try taking a full-length test in a test-like condition when you have the time and energy. You may already be at a 30, but you'll never know unless you take another test as it was intended to be. If, however, the test seems to be on-par of your most recent score... I can tell you this:

First, if these scores are part of your Princeton Review Diag score.... they are actually quite impressive. TPR deflates your scores, whereas kaplan inflates a little. A 7 on VR (which I have a hard time believing since you only finished 4/7ths of the test) is equivalent to 9 or 10 on AAMC (using my practice scores as a comparison). Even if it was currently at a 7, your issue seems to be more of a timing issue than a reading issue. This is the easiest to correct and may have some correlation to your tiredness at work and the likes.

Anyways... what your most concerned about, the sciences, are not that hard to improve on. But, it will take a lot of time for practice and studying which you may reconsider taking time off from work or doing part-time (which I know will be hard from your line of work). Since you were an engineering major, I'm gonna take a crap shot and assume your strength will lie in physical sciences. Depending on how familiar you still are on the content, I think if you just go through the quick basics and do TPR science workbook, you should be fine. Bio on the other hand... will take a little longer, but I also just think you forgot all the content. There are a lot of memorization in bio and if you spent time reading through the princeton bio review book you should be a lot better off. However, a little forewarning, TPR review book is a bit too detailed for the mcat. So keep that in mind. I also suggest keeping a notebook for your notes here and there so about every so often you can refer back to it.

The problem is, I am reluctant to give more advice b/c those four questions I asked earlier are not answered and I need you to explain what were your difficulty while taking the test. Did you feel that you did poorly b/c you forgot that "one" formula? was it too convoluted? Please be a bit more detailed and I will come back to this forum and return with more advice.

 

[seas06]

Thank you guys SO SO much for responding!

You are right Vihsadas I would be delighted with a 30! (a balanced one that is) My GPA is 3.7 overall and 3.9 in my major, and from what I hear from my pre-med advisor my recommendations are some of the "best she has ever seen" (I really don't like talking about myself!)

BloodySurgeon:

1) Yep I will be working full time during this time...

2) After work I go to class however i am meeting up with my teachers on teh weekends and studying ahead of schedule and should be able to finish the content in 3 weeks. but i am open all the weekends

3) The test was the AAMC 4R

4) ideally, this year but I am realistic about the fact that I might not be ready to take MCAT on time this year and have to postpone it another year.


I am planning on going over the test I took tonight in greater detail, but as you guessed for example I couldn't remember formula about EM and circuit stuff so i missed a passage on that because we have covered it, or random questiosn on mirrors and brain and kidney!

 

[tncekm]

If you've got a year, you'll kill it But, I'm sure you can get it done in the next couple of months. It will be hard, but you can do it considering it appears your weak areas are usually the easiest areas to bring up.

 

[BloodySurgeon]

Once you go over your test, post which subjects are giving you trouble and why (i.e. forgot formula, i don't understand separation experiments, etc.). After that, I think you will need to devise a well planned out schedule which you are confident of finishing (so be realistic) and will feel prepared. I would recommend that you do a quick brush up on physical science review, finish the science workbook, do the bio review book, and all the aamc tests by the end of two months. This is a very impacted schedule so you probably can't finished all of this so you may want to pick and chose which areas to concentrate on. I don't know if the science workbook includes bio and o-chem... but I would highly recommend doing bio problems from full-lengths because they are much different from individual problem sets and allow you to critically think the right way. Also, I would recommend doing 2 passages of VR before you go to sleep everyday so you won't lose your touch.

Also EVERYTHING is possible, it is up to you to make it a reality.

P.S. I know a few ibankers who pulled it off... but they were pretty intense.