494 FL 20 days out :( should I wait a cycle?

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itsallsmiles

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Hi everyone,

I took the sample AAMC and FL #1 and haven’t passed 500 in either. I feel like I have a pretty good application with some unique experiences, the last thing I was hoping could make it was this score which proved to be much more difficult than I thought.

i don’t understand why it’s this bad. I’ve been studying solely for the MCAT since mid May, and even before, during the school year, but it was hard. I went through almost all of TBR along with at least some end of chapter questions from each chapter. I also watched a good amount of Khan Academy and did questions.

I have a 3.7+ gpa so I didn’t feel like my content was lacking THAT much or that it would be this difficult to reach my goal score after this much time.

I just feel so so upset right now and don’t know what to do. Do you guys think it’s possible to improve a lot before July 23? Should I just see if I can cancel my test now and take another gap year?

thank you all
 
Yup, I agree with other posters. Aside from postponing, I suggest you explore why you are not performing well. Anxiety? Not used to standardized tests? Ae you burnt out since you said you've been studying since May and during school year?

Usually a <500 score indicates significant knowledge gaps. Did you do your majors in sciences? I'm not saying arts people would do bad, but just some food for thought.
 
Take a gap year for sure.

What are your practice full length sub scores? Are certain sections giving you more trouble than others?

How many AMCAS qbank questions have you done?

Can you afford to take a comprehensive prep course?
 
I’d take a gap year (I did)
If you can afford it, take an online course. I would steer clear of in person courses. I took the in person Kaplan course and it was some premed student Kaplan paid to basically go through a book with you. Similar to my experience with high school teachers, if you had any legitimate question, they couldn’t answer it and had to “get back with you later”

The online courses are taught by the same people that do their videos and they’re able to answer any questions on the spot in real time and with appropriate knowledge.
They’re also cheaper.
 
itsallsmiles said:
Hi everyone,

I took the sample AAMC and FL #1 and haven’t passed 500 in either. I feel like I have a pretty good application with some unique experiences, the last thing I was hoping could make it was this score which proved to be much more difficult than I thought.

i don’t understand why it’s this bad. I’ve been studying solely for the MCAT since mid May, and even before, during the school year, but it was hard. I went through almost all of TBR along with at least some end of chapter questions from each chapter. I also watched a good amount of Khan Academy and did questions.

I have a 3.7+ gpa so I didn’t feel like my content was lacking THAT much or that it would be this difficult to reach my goal score after this much time.

I just feel so so upset right now and don’t know what to do. Do you guys think it’s possible to improve a lot before July 23? Should I just see if I can cancel my test now and take another gap year?

thank you all
Click to expand...


Too little time to see significant improvement. Take a gap year and postpone till September and use the next 2 months to prepare or take a gap year and test in January.

A sub 500 score indicates significant content gaps along with poor test taking strategies and/or time management issues. These things take time to address.

A couple thoughts:
- Khan Academy is geared towards passive learning which isn’t likely to Substantially increase your content mastery. You need active learning strategies: diagramming pathways from memory, writing summaries/stories of concepts, reactions, and pathways/trends. In short, you need to engage with the material more than taking notes while watching videos.
- TBR is an effective resource not because of their content review passages but because of their passage based end of chapter practice questions. You need to do them in the recommended intervals. Spaced repetition increases retention over longer periods of time.
- while doing practice passages, you need to develop strategies and a systematic process for approaching passages, questions, and answers. If you’re simply reading the passage/questions, you’re doing it incorrectly. This will carry over to test day. The more you reinforce your systems and strategies, the more you can go by habit on the MCAT and reduce the associated anxiety that comes with the high stakes test.
- your last month should be spent using AAMC materials exclusively. No other co pang matches the AAMC. There is a continuity in terms of how they phrase questions, structure answers, and present passages.
 
Im looking into taking a course or getting a tutor. I have a very hard time concentrating so maybe trying to do it on my own isn’t the best. Does anyone have tips on which is better - course or finding a high scoring tutor? Or which company?

Im a science major, I did struggle a bit with science classes. I’d say I got As and half of them or a little more, and Bs in the other half.

ive been dealing with some life stuff lately so I’m sure that’s part of it too.
 
This was me a few years ago. I was impatient and convinced myself I would throw a hail mary the day of the exam. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. LISTEN TO YOUR FULL LENGTHS (especially the AAMC ones). I was forced to take a gap year and then address my first score in several interviews the next cycle. Don't do it. Listen to those advising you and not your emotions at this point. We know you really want it. We know you worked really hard. We know you don't want to wait any longer. With that said, you have to. Do it right the first time. If you can't get your money back, I suggest that you take it and void it. Just actually void it though.
 
I used Kaplan the first time around. They were pretty useless ended up with a 506 and barely got MD acceptances. When I started studying for the MCAT again (was on MD waitlists), I used Altius. It’s expensive and I had to save up money for it. They actually help with standardized test taking. Since that’s where I lacked.
 
GreenDuck12 said:
Too little time to see significant improvement. Take a gap year and postpone till September and use the next 2 months to prepare or take a gap year and test in January.

A sub 500 score indicates significant content gaps along with poor test taking strategies and/or time management issues. These things take time to address.

A couple thoughts:
- Khan Academy is geared towards passive learning which isn’t likely to Substantially increase your content mastery. You need active learning strategies: diagramming pathways from memory, writing summaries/stories of concepts, reactions, and pathways/trends. In short, you need to engage with the material more than taking notes while watching videos.
- TBR is an effective resource not because of their content review passages but because of their passage based end of chapter practice questions. You need to do them in the recommended intervals. Spaced repetition increases retention over longer periods of time.
- while doing practice passages, you need to develop strategies and a systematic process for approaching passages, questions, and answers. If you’re simply reading the passage/questions, you’re doing it incorrectly. This will carry over to test day. The more you reinforce your systems and strategies, the more you can go by habit on the MCAT and reduce the associated anxiety that comes with the high stakes test.
- your last month should be spent using AAMC materials exclusively. No other co pang matches the AAMC. There is a continuity in terms of how they phrase questions, structure answers, and present passages.
Click to expand...

thank you for the advice! I definitely think I didn’t do enough practice problems because I just felt like my content knowledge was so weak so I had to spend time on that. I think it took too long (and is still not enough ? 🙁 )

i think I’ll just go for 2 gap years and maybe take 6 more months to study part time. I don’t want it to be too long that’s it’s ineffective but i really don’t think my mind can handle studying 8+ hours a day I’d rather spread it out if I can. Also I need to start working.
 
itsallsmiles said:
Im looking into taking a course or getting a tutor. I have a very hard time concentrating so maybe trying to do it on my own isn’t the best. Does anyone have tips on which is better - course or finding a high scoring tutor? Or which company?

Im a science major, I did struggle a bit with science classes. I’d say I got As and half of them or a little more, and Bs in the other half.

ive been dealing with some life stuff lately so I’m sure that’s part of it too.
Click to expand...

Companies give their course students access to higher quality and more question banks than is available to the public.

Take the online version of the course. I’ve heard good things about Altius and The Berkeley Review.

How are your CARS scores?
 
MyOdyssey said:
Companies give their course students access to higher quality and more question banks than is available to the public.

Take the online version of the course. I’ve heard good things about Altius and The Berkeley Review.

How are your CARS scores?
Click to expand...

i didn’t know TBR had a course. I’ll look into that thank you.

i honestly haven’t studied CARS too much unfortunately. For some reason I just thought I would be good at it LOL. I did some Jack Weston passages in the middle of my studying and would get 1 or 2 wrong per passage usually. But I’m around the 126 range. I’d probably be able to bring it up a little with more with practice, building stamina especially, and finding the right strategy.
 
itsallsmiles said:
i didn’t know TBR had a course. I’ll look into that thank you.

i honestly haven’t studied CARS too much unfortunately. For some reason I just thought I would be good at it LOL. I did some Jack Weston passages in the middle of my studying and would get 1 or 2 wrong per passage usually. But I’m around the 126 range. I’d probably be able to bring it up a little with more with practice, building stamina especially, and finding the right strategy.
Click to expand...

I believe TBR's course is only in person and only offered at select locations in CA.

Jack Weston is terrible for CARS. Finding good CARS passages (ones that don't teach bent, convoluted or flat out incorrect logic) is difficult.
 
MyOdyssey said:
I believe TBR's course is only in person and only offered at select locations in CA.

Jack Weston is terrible for CARS. Finding good CARS passages (ones that don't teach bent, convoluted or flat out incorrect logic) is difficult.
Click to expand...

yes i just saw that :/ I will look into the ones available online.

Do you have good recommendations for CAR? I saw a lot of mixed reviews about it when looking through forums.
 
TPR has some good strategies. They also have some stupid ones like deliberately not reading a passage.
 
itsallsmiles said:
yes i just saw that :/ I will look into the ones available online.

Do you have good recommendations for CAR? I saw a lot of mixed reviews about it when looking through forums.
Click to expand...

I suggest reading this thread by a company called Testing Solutions in its entirety. It lays out the good, bad and ugly of CARS resources:

I took Testing Solutions’ Bootcamp and followed their guidance on other 3d party CARS resources. They helped.

You’ll get much better CARS materials from companies to practice on if you take one of their courses.

There are some who say actual old LSATs available for purchase on the LSAT website.

The best materials are AMCAS questions. Order all of their materials.
 
itsallsmiles said:
yes i just saw that :/ I will look into the ones available online.

Do you have good recommendations for CAR? I saw a lot of mixed reviews about it when looking through forums.
Click to expand...

What are you using to study for the P/S section?
 
MyOdyssey said:
What are you using to study for the P/S section?
Click to expand...
I decided to use TBR and KA for the sciences.
And just rely on The KA doc and AMCAS resources for P/S.
For CARS I was a bit lost but I will definitely work harder at that these next few months. I’m thinking of getting UWORLD (I originally wanted to purchase it but just felt overwhelmed with trying to complete TBR questions) and will look at the link above !

i think I realize now that I really didn’t have time to do much practice questions even though I planned to because it just took me so long to review content. And unfortunately my content probably still isn’t so good based on my scores. I think I’ll take a good few more month to study. Hope I see better results.
 
itsallsmiles said:
I decided to use TBR and KA for the sciences.
And just rely on The KA doc and AMCAS resources for P/S.
For CARS I was a bit lost but I will definitely work harder at that these next few months. I’m thinking of getting UWORLD (I originally wanted to purchase it but just felt overwhelmed with trying to complete TBR questions) and will look at the link above !

i think I realize now that I really didn’t have time to do much practice questions even though I planned to because it just took me so long to review content. And unfortunately my content probably still isn’t so good based on my scores. I think I’ll take a good few more month to study. Hope I see better results.
Click to expand...

The 300 page P/S outline is good.

UWorld tests content knowledge but doesn’t help with the tough passage based questions. UWorld’s CARS isn’t good.
 
I'm not going to say it isn't possible to significantly increase your score in 3 weeks, but it isn't easy and for most people is way more anxiety than it is worth. I went from a first FL score of 502 to a consistent 511/512 (I know that's not an impressive scored compared to many others on this forum, just trying to show that decent improvement is possible) in about that time through using Khan Academy (I hadn't taken any physics courses so KA was good for learning the basic principals for the first time) and the AAMC Q banks. Everyone learns differently, I have always learned best by taking boatloads of practice questions because I'm much better about remembering things I got wrong (and why they were wrong) than I am memorizing facts from content review resources. If you've been studying since May and have seen minimal improvement then it is probably time to reevaluate why you are having trouble. How is your focus when taking the exam? Are you (understandably) having a lot of anxiety? Is decoding the questions a problem? etc. Don't take the exam until you feel reasonably confident that you can get around the score you want, otherwise you're wasting your time and money (as well as negatively impacting your mental health) for something that will be more manageable at another time.
 
Hi everyone,
I've been talking with some people and they made me consider taking it late august or maybe even early September. Im planning on spending what I need to spend on a good tutor. Some people are saying I may be okay applying then this cycle. Would you guys agree or strongly disagree with this? I would really prefer not to have 2 gap years.
 
itsallsmiles said:
Hi everyone,
I've been talking with some people and they made me consider taking it late august or maybe even early September. Im planning on spending what I need to spend on a good tutor. Some people are saying I may be okay applying then this cycle. Would you guys agree or strongly disagree with this? I would really prefer not to have 2 gap years.
Click to expand...

"Prefer" has got nothing to do with it. Take the MCAT when you have good evidence that you will post an acceptable score. Taking it prematurely and getting a subpar score will simply box you into a situation that is not enviable.
 
Med Ed said:
"Prefer" has got nothing to do with it. Take the MCAT when you have good evidence that you will post an acceptable score. Taking it prematurely and getting a subpar score will simply box you into a situation that is not enviable.
Click to expand...
Thank you I totally agree. I definitely won't take it until my AAMC practice tests are where they should be. I was just making sure if this 'ideal score' is there, comes August, would still be smart to apply?
 
itsallsmiles said:
Hi everyone,
I've been talking with some people and they made me consider taking it late august or maybe even early September. Im planning on spending what I need to spend on a good tutor. Some people are saying I may be okay applying then this cycle. Would you guys agree or strongly disagree with this? I would really prefer not to have 2 gap years.
Click to expand...
Disagree. Your score will be back end of September. That’s too late.
 
itsallsmiles said:
It's my understanding that for this cycle, they will be giving us our scores in two weeks instead of a month.
Click to expand...
Well that changes things. But still, being complete in September isnt ideal
 
So just to confirm, scores back in August are still "on time" for this cycle, but scores back in September are too late? Or is August too late too?
 
glutamine715367 said:
So just to confirm, scores back in August are still "on time" for this cycle, but scores back in September are too late? Or is August too late too?
Click to expand...

not all dates in September are created equal. You’ll be on time if you can get all secondaries completed from mid September to early October.
 
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