Advice on keeping a cool head in the face of a hard question...

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Lifeblood_20

Neuro PGY-1
7+ Year Member
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During FLs, when I get stumped on a question, I'd flag it and come back later, but whenever I do that I start doubting myself for the next couple questions, and if hard questions (even if they aren't really hard but I'd perceive them that way because I had lost confidence) keep coming I'd just start freaking out. Any tips on moving past tough questions without panicking/freaking out?
 
What helped me with this was realizing that I wasn't aiming for a perfect score (although if you are, I definitely do not want to discourage you from that)! And actually, even if you are aiming for a perfect score, you can still miss questions in every section and get a perfect score on the MCAT. So what that allowed me to internalize was that it was going to be okay if some questions were hard for me and if I missed them, because that was what I expected. With that mindset, I didn't get flustered when I came across difficult questions, because even if I missed them, I would still be okay if I did well on the easy/medium ones. And that's where you want to focus. Getting a solid MCAT score depends on how well you do on the easy and medium questions. If you get a majority of those right, I think you're solidly in the 510 range and then I am sure you can also get a few of those very difficult ones as well. So, what helped me and might help you is to think that it's okay to miss a few questions or have difficulty with a question, this is a very difficult exam after all! What you want to avoid though is letting it affect you after the fact and then missing some of those easy/medium questions that you would otherwise get correct. Missing those questions is what will make it hard to very well on the MCAT and not so much missing the very hard ones, as those are designed with that idea that most people will miss them. I hope that helps and if you have any other questions, please do reach out!
 
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