Thanks so much for the advice Mister T. I really appreciate it. I'll take the January and see how I feel/if I should void it, and then just start back up studying again. I'll see about my classes as well and maybe try to drop a class or two if I can. It just sucks because a lot of people at my school manage to study for the MCATs with a full class load and do fine on it, for some reason I seem to be the exception to that rule. I can't help but feel disheartened.
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to reply to me and I'm definitely going to take everything you say into account! Good luck to you with studying as well!
You can't compare yourself to others for so many reasons. For instance, you don't know their GPA, their parental pressure, their socioeconomics status, the difficulty of their classes, their interest in studying, etc. etc. etc. And we're all at different levels of physical/emotional/intellectual maturity.
Just remember that this is not a rat race against your peers. Go at your own pace. There are things that you are better than others, and there are other things that others are better than you.
One thing you have to keep in mind that the MCAT isn't an IQ test, you can study for it and you can improve as much as you want (to get as high as the 40s even, there are stories that I personally know of normal people nad on the 30+ mcat thread where people went from low scores to very high scores after enough hard work and shrewd thinking).
Honestly, the exam doesn't test intelligence as much as it does the same **** over and over again.
I studied for about 4 weeks while on a full time schedule and received that 32 and to be honest a lot of the stuff was just high school level chemistry and physics.
My weakest sections were verbal (10) and biological sciences (10) and I lost points on those because I didn't drill enough for verbal nor memorize enough bull**** the days before the exam.
Though a 32 is fine, it's not enough when your GPA is low as mine (3.35), but my argument is that my reasoning skills are a lot better than the average premed and I've taken harder classes, but adcoms don't really give a **** when they'll admit some phys. ed major from CC (no hate to you fellas, you guys did it right lol) with a 4.0 gpa.
It's really just a game tbh.
But anyways, I wouldn't feel disheartened. You need to remove yourself from your fate --- kinda becoming an ascetic. Cold and aloof to your fate --- and you end up like a robot --- just doing everything mechanically and automated.
It's kind of like RNA translation, you're bound to catch some errors here and there, and you have to ask yourself when you got them wrong, was it because you didn't understand the concept being tested or was it something else (like lack of time, difficult question, stupidly worded, something obscure that you didn't cover, etc. etc.)
And yes, it's a good idea to cut as many classes as possible. It's a tiny sacrifice you have to make if you want to minimize your risks. As far as you should be concerned, your gpa is set, you've proven that you can do hardwork.
So you're basically at the break even point, and a lot is riding on your MCAT score. Don't mess that up. The ability to do well on this MCAT is in your hands as difficult as that may seem --- but it takes time to do things.
And don't fret too much about studying again after the January MCAT, you'll get your score in about 4 weeks, so it shouldn't' be too long. Hopefully you find out some good news and can then burn all your books.
Case 1: I guess the best case scenario for you is if you get over a 30 on this MCAT. If that happens, and you continued studying til your score came out, it wouldn't be a big deal because you could just stop. If you do drop the classes, then you won't have them, but that shouldn't be a priority in your plan of attack. And to boot, you'll have more free time to do other things, you know --- to relax, sleep in, meet other people, whatever. Much of college anyways isn't what you do in class but what you do outside.
Case 2: On the other hand, if you **** up on this one, and you continue studying, while dropping 2 or 3 classes (with very low credtits and I'm talking like 6 credits a week) you will have averted a major disaster in many ways, by now having an additional 3.5 months to study (up to 4.5 months if you decide to take it again on June 17th) for the MCAT with almost every day dedicated to studying/exercising (yah I said that you need to not be a fat ass)/relaxing/sleeping well.
Because you seem to have studied once, this review over 3.5 months should be more than adequate in assessing your weak points and whatnot.
Absolute worst case scenario for the May 1, you STILL feel like you ****ed up, you'll get your score out on June 1, and you can then decide with a whole two weeks before the June 17th MCAT comes out whether or not you want to take the MCAT a third time. If **** turns loose on June 1st, at least you can take a week or two break at some point between May 1 and June 17th in case you want a break. In fact, I would recommend it (May 1-May 15th is probably ideal, because that way you can minimize the amount of studying from May 15th to June 1st which is when the May 1st score comes out, and this beats studying a whole month from May 1st to June 1st and hten taking a 2 week break at that point).
But I don't think that will happen if you end up studying for 3.5 months and hitting all your weakpoints. I'm pretty confident on that.
Just make sure to read up on SN2Ed's schedule, purchase any of those books if you have ****ty ones, and read the 30+ MCAT Thread that i told you about before.
Good luck, don't give up, and lurk around the SDN MCAT Forum for motivation/inspiration/support etc.
