Advice for a plateauing MCAT score, DESPERATE

[sciencegirl1998]

Hello everyone, I'm an undergrad in her senior year. My school offers the Kaplan prep course for the MCAT for free and I paid for the PR course. Despite doing both of these I can't raise my MCAT score above a 504/505. Does anyone have any advice or has anyone been in this situation? I'm switching to self study now with Magoosh videos but I don't know if this help. Any guidance would be helpful!

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[ChymeofPassion]

Kaplan MCAT 504/505 or AAMC Full Lengths? Have you taken the MCAT yet?

 

[pBar]

Could you explain more about what your current study schedule looks like and what you are doing to study? After completing a practice exam, how are you reviewing missed content?

 

[sciencegirl1998]

Kaplan MCAT 504/505 or AAMC Full Lengths? Have you taken the MCAT yet?

yes I scored a 504

 

[sciencegirl1998]

Could you explain more about what your current study schedule looks like and what you are doing to study? After completing a practice exam, how are you reviewing missed content?

writing down the content questions I missed, reviewing those concepts and then doing an AAMC passage about it

 

[pBar]

writing down the content questions I missed, reviewing those concepts and then doing an AAMC passage about it

Are you doing anything for repeated exposure to weak content? It's great to review concepts that you missed, however if their are existing gaps in content knowledge, it should indicate that repeated exposure and reinforcement is of key priority. One such method I would strongly recommend for such gaps is to develop an Anki deck that utilizes all your previously missed exam questions and content gaps. For every question you miss on a practice exam, if you came to an incorrect answer because of a content gap, develop a set of questions that can be asked on the subject area of that question that could be transposed onto a set of Anki cards. Review that Anki deck every single day you study. By doing this you will continuously exposure yourself to weak content areas via timed intervals.

I would further break down your analysis of your past practice exams as well. Look through each question and determine what questions you are missing, not because of content gaps, but because of logical errors or misread passages. Determine what types of fallacies you are committing that are leading you to wrong answers and then develop manageable action plans or test taking strategies that can address those personal errors. While the MCAT does heavily emphasize content, what is more important is test taking skills, and critical thinking. Nine times out of ten, if you are working through a passage based question, if you are shaky on the content, their should be enough context provided in the text to at least narrow your answer down to one or two options.

Lastly, I will suggest taking some practice exams from other companies. Don't feel discouraged by Kaplan scores. Kaplan full lengths are notoriously low-yield content heavy and don't push test takers to pursue experimental reasoning and critical reading skills. If you're still a while out from your test date, I would avoid the AAMC material till you get closer (as it is limited and it will give the closest approximation as to how you will truly perform). I always liked the next step practice exams (1-4), as I found their experimental reasoning questions went above and beyond most companies, however best do your research and see what works well with your budget and time frame.

 

[ChymeofPassion]

writing down the content questions I missed, reviewing those concepts and then doing an AAMC passage about it

Are most of your questions wrong discretes or passage-based. Discretes are from memorized concepts, no way to get around that other than memorization of formulas and facts. Passage-based skills can be improved by doing more passages. Something I did, which worked fairly well, was reading the question first and using that to read the passage. Helped keep me on task. Further, a huge majority of the questions can be answered by just reading the graphs or looking for the buzzwords in the question in the passage.

 

[landy1130]

I was able to improve my score from a 507-->517 and I'll reiterate @pBar's point above. Taking the time to identify why you are getting questions wrong is really important and planning and executing how to overcome those deficiencies is how your score will improve. I began by sorting every question into categories after I took my first practice test.

1. Right answer and correct logic
2. Right answer and wrong logic
3. Wrong answer and correct logic
4. Wrong answer and wrong logic

The goal was to get all #1s of course, reduce the #3s, take the #2s and add them into the #4 bucket because they were inflating my score through luck. Then I took all the #4s (including the #2s) and systematically went through each question and put it into further categories.

1. Lack of knowledge
2. Lack of reasoning/misunderstanding
3. Time

Finally I put together a plan to address the questions/respective categories in each group. At first this took a really long time, but I felt that my studying became more effective and efficient along with having the tangible reward of seeing more #1s and less #4s, which kept me motivated.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

[pBar]

I was able to improve my score from a 507-->517 and I'll reiterate @pBar's point above. Taking the time to identify why you are getting questions wrong is really important and planning and executing how to overcome those deficiencies is how your score will improve. I began by sorting every question into categories after I took my first practice test.

1. Right answer and correct logic
2. Right answer and wrong logic
3. Wrong answer and correct logic
4. Wrong answer and wrong logic

The goal was to get all #1s of course, reduce the #3s, take the #2s and add them into the #4 bucket because they were inflating my score through luck. Then I took all the #4s (including the #2s) and systematically went through each question and put it into further categories.

1. Lack of knowledge
2. Lack of reasoning/misunderstanding
3. Time

Finally I put together a plan to address the questions/respective categories in each group. At first this took a really long time, but I felt that my studying became more effective and efficient along with having the tangible reward of seeing more #1s and less #4s, which kept me motivated.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

That's an awesome way of self evaluating I had never thought of!

 

[deleted804295]

writing down the content questions I missed, reviewing those concepts and then doing an AAMC passage about it

You need a spreadsheet of every single question you missed and what topic it was. If you keep missing that topic you should keep doing practice problems on it. Nothing beats AAMC practice problems but if you can pay for UWorld it has the best 3rd party practice questions.

 

[bdawg0426]

What is your major and what undergraduate coursework have you taken and how did you do in the classes tested by the MCAT, such as Biology, Human Phys, Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry, General Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, and Sociology? What are your scores on each of the 4 major MCAT categories?

 

[PlsLetMeIn21]

Landy's advice is gold. You need to focus on categorizing the answer choices. That is what I did and it helped a lot. The TBR science passages have explanations that do exactly this, which is why I think they helped me so much. I'd highly recommend you do the Nymeria/SDN 100-day plan (click here). It doesn't have to be 100 days (I took longer), but the resources are awesome. I looked at several materials before I started and made a log of what people who scored 510-516 used and what people who score under 500 used, and after all of the time I spent deciding what was best, it ended up being exactly what Nymeria (and KoalaT and Zendabi and etc...) recommended. The TBR books are by far the best option for sciences and TPR coupled with the 300 page doc are great for P/S. I bombed CARS, so I will refrain from putting my two cents in on what to use there.

 

[bdawg0426]

I scored really high on CARS. It all comes down to reading comprehension and learning to focus on the typical questions that are asked. Evaluate your results and figure out what you did wrong. Once my practice tests hit a 130, I stopped working on CARS except as part of a full MCAT practice test.