Diagnostic 28....What next?

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ZooeyGlass

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It's definitely possible. My first diagnostic was a 23 and I ended up with a 35 on the real MCAT after a month of hardcore studying. The more practice tests you do, the better you'll be able to perform on the real one. Good luck!

First off, I am scheduled to take the 5/22 exam, and have been studying 25-30 hrs/week for about 65 days (I graduated in May 09 and work full-time). I have been using primarily TBR for BS and PS, supplemented with EK1001 for Verbal. I finished a thorough reading of all TBR sections, along with 2/3 of the passages (all untimed) earlier in the week and took my first full length practice test this morning....

PS8 V10 BS10

I haven't started reviewing why I missed certain sections, where I am weakest, etc. But I wanted to see if SDN could weigh in on a realistic goal considering my timeline. Is breaking a 35 impossible? I have a solid GPA, respectable volunteering, plenty of shadowing, clinical experience, and nice letters of recommendation BUT I am interested in some very competitive schools.

Thanks in advance for the help and input.
 
First off, I am scheduled to take the 5/22 exam, and have been studying 25-30 hrs/week for about 65 days (I graduated in May 09 and work full-time). I have been using primarily TBR for BS and PS, supplemented with EK1001 for Verbal. I finished a thorough reading of all TBR sections, along with 2/3 of the passages (all untimed) earlier in the week and took my first full length practice test this morning....

AAMC3 PS8 V10 BS10

I haven't started reviewing why I missed certain sections, where I am weakest, etc. But I wanted to see if SDN could weigh in on a realistic goal considering my timeline. Is breaking a 35 impossible? I have a solid GPA, respectable volunteering, plenty of shadowing, clinical experience, and nice letters of recommendation BUT I am interested in some very competitive schools.

Thanks in advance for the help and input.

You really need to go back and look at what you were missing, especially in PS. If you are done reviewing your TBR books you may want to think about going back for a 2nd time through becuase it sounds like a decent bit of the review isn't sticking with you. After doing TBR passage did you go back and review what and why you got things wrong (I'm finding this to be the most important factor in my studying).
 
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Yeah, I looked carefully at why I was getting the TBR passages right and wrong. I can almost always eliminate 2 of the answers, and then I find when I miss a question it usually comes from not being able to recall a simple fact (ie. hydroboration is anti-markovnikov). Maybe I need to focus more on content? Re-read, make notecards rather than practice passages?


Make notes of what you missed then review the topics you missed. I believe most of the MCAT vets on here live by "The more passages the better" as long as you are reviewing them.
The simple fact recollection also is something I don't "write off". If I got it wrong I got it wrong, there is some reason it isn't sticking and I need to figure out why.
Heck I've even taken something as simple as, marking the wrong answer because I was already looking at the next question and made myself restudy a concept I knew forwards and back.
 
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