Freaking out/Crying

Go do AAMC 11 when you feel better and see where you're at. Kaplan and other FLs can be good practice but they usually aren't as indicative of your final score. Everything else is just will power and confidence, good luck.

A lot of repetition... What I did was, I made a notebook of all the info that I didn't really know very well (both facts and concepts). I will read through it a few times every night. It's helped me solidify some things, for sure.

Christ Kid!!

Do you know how many people would kill to get 30s on even practice MCATs??

I know its easy to feel sorry for yourself when you are shooting for 98 percentile but think about the MAJORITY of us that won't ever score that high. You WILL get into medical school with a low 30's score. I know plenty of people with 31's to 33's that got into UCLA and UCSD medical Schools and are doing perfectly fine.

I've been studying for this test for about a year now while delaying my life, NOT because of my PS and BS scores, but because I can't pull over a 7, 8, or 9 on the VR no matter how much I try. It's extremely frustrating, yet I still move on and keep from crying about it.

Seriously try to reconsider such pressure-building personal goals. Anything above a 34 is just by a difference of a question or two anyway so most of this test past the low to mid 30's is LUCK!!

There is always someone out there who has it worse. You will be successful, I guarantee it.

"I know that I can definitely score 36/37+"



People would kill for your practice tests averages, just like someone else has said.

Think of the scientific knowledge like a city. If you were learning about a city, what are the different approaches you would take? It can help a bit to understand the project of building and caring for your knowledge base in this way. Firstly, if you were learning a city, of course you would want to experience the life of the city down at the street level. You would need to spend a lot of time gaining the detailed, articulated understanding of how the city functions, what day to day life is like in the different neighborhoods. At the street level, point A and point B are related to each other sequentially in time. A path goes one way or the other. Likewise, in studying for the MCAT a typical student spends a lot of time within the scientific topics studying each content section in itself, one after the other, mastering mechanics, moving on to thermodynamics, then electricity and magnetism, one after the other, and you need to do this, of course.

However, if you were learning about a city you would also need to go up sometimes and get the view of the city from the tallest building downtown. This is the point of view of the map. From that perspective, point A and B are related in simultaneity. The perspective of the whole gives the experience at the street level a deeper coherence embedding experiences within a network of relationship. Also, every time you see the entire city, it stimulates and reinforces recollection.

My suggestion is that you take ten or twenty percent of your content review and devote it to exercises like reading the table of contents of your review books, skimming through your review books or college textbooks and only looking at formulas, figures, and bold headings. Practice mapping your practice test questions onto the outlines of the topics. Practice outlining physics, chemistry, organic, and biology from memory. Learn to be able to say things like - Solutions, okay, that would be types of mixtures, concentration expressions, colligative properties, heterogeneous solution equilibria.

In other words, I think you may be spending too much time at the street level, within the topics in themselves, and neglecting taking a small portion of time to see the topics from a broader perspective. You need the big, slow cycle through the knowledge, but augment this with faster overview cycles. Augment with a practice of stepping back and doing things like taking a tour of physics from beginning to end, but in just an hour or two. Sit down with a blank sheet of paper and try to outline the disciplines from your memory. You'd be surprised at how hard this is at first, even after spending hundreds of hours studying. When you can do it with ease I bet you will find the retention and accessibility of your knowledge base will be much improved.

Toughen up and lose the pessimism.

It's good to aim high, but u're aiming so high that it's discouraging. Why do u think u can score a 37/38? Do you even know how difficult that is, specially during test day?

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embracethepain said:

Thank you! That is a great idea. Do you think there is enough time between now and Sept 11 for this review method to hammer in the details or was this more helpful for you over a longer period of time? I'm trying to figure out if I should take the Sept 11 exam or postpone to Jan 27 (which is SO far away!). If it took many weeks of reviewing content, I may need to postpone (which would mean 4 more months of studying ahhh).

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You could start this and see how it goes with your more difficult/unfamiliar topics, then move on from there. Something else I do that has helped me is to give myself "pop quizzes" where I take out a sheet of paper and try and concept map on the spot. This could be while waiting for a bus, sitting between classes, or when I'm about to check Facebook and instead suddenly switch gears to mapping. If I have difficulty, I make a mental note and review it later, making sure I at least retain it at that point. Similar idea to JohnWetzel, except I enjoy doing this now right after lectures/readings so I can figure out immediately what didn't make sense. And I quickly skim-concept-map the next day to see what I retained and try and maintain this consistency as time goes on. Practice is key.

In the end, you're never going to go in feeling like you have mastered everything - the best thing you can do for yourself is to relax, because psyching yourself out (or visiting SDN ) will not help your state of mind. Be calm and deliberate about approaching the MCAT (and your practice tests) and ready to tackle what may come.

Additionally, if it's content that's the problem, try doing the EK 1001 questions - those emphasize equations and content moreso than a practice test.

I think you're stressing too hard. Stressing won't help you in any way, it'll only impede your studying. It was probably just one of those days, you know, where things make the least sense. I'm taking the 9/11 test too and my goal is to hit the 38-42 range. I haven't even finished content review yet (which I will complete by this weekend), and haven't taken a single FL yet. So don't worry time-wise. Think about how far that January test would be!! And all this time in the summer would go to waste as you'd have to re-do eeeeverything.

The way I master topics is through cyclic rewriting. First, I take initial intense verbose notes while I'm going through a section/topic. Second, I go through the same topic again, with the same sheets I used before, and add things that I missed / refresh myself on what I've learned and understood. Finally, and I usually do this 3rd step without the book, I reorganize and rewrite my notes on brand new sheets, condensing everything as much as possible, using different colors, making the sheets look real sexy, etc. The sheets I make in the 3rd step usually take a very long time and I'm super precise as to encompass ALL the information from many different subjects concerning that one topic onto the page. (i.e. Carbohydrates, my final sheet would include their structures ochem wise, their digestion and enzymes involved physiology-wise, glycolysis/biochemistry aspect, etc.). These final sheets make it very very easy to review those trouble topics - since you have SO much information condensed onto a few pages.

P.S. Yeah I completely agree writing things by hand helps consolidate information WAY better than typing it up. I've always advocated that fact. But for bio topics...there's just so much information that writing it up by hand could be counterproductive. But for phys/chem/ochem handwriting trumps typing no doubt.

embracethepain said:

How do you guys retain material for long periods of time?
How are you able to read and keep alert for the entire allotted exam time without the words going fuzzy?

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Drugs.