Failing MCAT and discouraged

[kg062007]

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Ok, so I took the MCAT recently and Got 10Bio 10 verbal, 5 physical! The sad part is I didnt even study for bio and very little verbal. I spent 90% of the time studying for phy because I knew I would have a hard time. I have a june 21st date. I have all the test material I can think of. Please for those of you who did well on Phy, what did you do. 😕

 

[EBTrailRunner]

Ok, so I took the MCAT recently and Got 10Bio 10 verbal, 5 physical! The sad part is I didnt even study for bio and very little verbal. I spent 90% of the time studying for phy because I knew I would have a hard time. I have a june 21st date. I have all the test material I can think of. Please for those of you who did well on Phy, what did you do. 😕

Was this your first practice test? How long have you been prepping? More information, please...

 

[Desensitized]

Even the best fall down sometimes... get up, practice exam your brains out, and take it again.

 

[flatearth22]

5 on PS suggests you lack a fundamental understanding of the subject matter. Get Berkeley Review books or Nova books and watch some Khan Academy videos on physics and chemistry. If you still do as bad there's always DO and Pod School.

 

[kg062007]

Was this your first practice test? How long have you been prepping? More information, please...

This was the REAL MCAT score. I was studying for 3-4 months or so, but I was also taking 14 hrs. Now I have graduated, unemployed, and basically have all day to study. So If I could have some advice I can attack ps with all I got.

 

[0919mmk]

I took the MCAT twice. The first time I had trouble with the Phys as well. I studied the Examkrackers for 3 months and then took the Kaplan class for 3 months. The second time around, I improved my Phys by 4 points (9 to 13). Just gotta put in the time, and Kaplan did help a lot.

 

[kg062007]

Chad's videos for physics and gen chem helped me bring my score from a 7 to a 10. Definitely do those! He has versions you have to buy access to online or see if you can find the old version in torrents.

They're split into days (i.e. 7 days/folders) with a document of review notes and practice questions for each day/folder.

WHo is Chad? What is his website please!

 

[EBTrailRunner]

5 on PS suggests you lack a fundamental understanding of the subject matter. Get Berkeley Review books or Nova books and watch some Khan Academy videos on physics and chemistry. If you still do as bad there's always DO and Pod School.

This. I'd check out the MCAT forum for tips and a realistic study plan. A 5 is bad, but easy to improve upon. I think if you score considerably higher on your second attempt, you'd mitigate a good chunk of damage caused by your PS score. But don't forget to stay on top of Verbal and Bio - don't let those scores drop while you focus on PS.

What were you scoring on your practice tests, out of curiosity?

 

[kg062007]

(Google is your friend.)

Here is the link to the videos:

http://www.***********.com/videos/MCAT/

And the forum discussing it: http://www.***********.com/forumdisplay.php?34-Chad-s-Videos

He used to have his own website, but his videos became too popular and he needed a bigger server. So he joined forces with ***********. 🙂
(I am not affiliated with either Chad or *********** in any way! lol)

oh, the name is ****** hidden.

 

[marr5577]

Something that worked for me: take an aamc practice test, then spend the rest if the day analyzing the crap out of every single question, including ones you got right. make sure your thought processes were on point, look at trends, common pitfalls...really work hard on analyzing the questions and answers.

After I finished content review this is what I did for a couple weeks leading up to the test. Worked well for me. and I should add, I know you specifically asked about physics, but I used this strategy for all sections and it helped me tremendously.

Good luck bud.

 

[kg062007]

in the **** part, put course saver (no spaces) and it will work. or just google Chad's videos like I did and you'll find the videos on the Course Saver website.

I guess SDN is automatically ***ing out the "course saver" when there are no spaces between the words.

I googled and found him, Thank you 🙂.

 

[littlealex]

You got 10 and 10, so you're obviously intellectually capable of doing well on the test. The MCAT is a beatable test and I think if you study enough, 10 on each section is not out of the question and realistically 12 on each section is achievable (except you may experience some cap w/ verbal).
Talk to people about resources and start over. I agree w/ many others that if your score is a 5 on the section you fundamentally don't understand the topic. You should be able to pull an 8 w/ rudimentary understanding. At your current score level you don't even need to do practice questions. Get a review book and read the physical sciences cover to cover. Wikipedia and google anything you think you don't get.

 

[xroc]

Ok, so I took the MCAT recently and Got 10Bio 10 verbal, 5 physical! The sad part is I didnt even study for bio and very little verbal. I spent 90% of the time studying for phy because I knew I would have a hard time. I have a june 21st date. I have all the test material I can think of. Please for those of you who did well on Phy, what did you do. 😕

I would recommend getting the Princeton Review Physics/Gen Chem book, as well as the big book of practice problems that they have for every subject.

Go through each one of those books until you have the concepts down solid and then do all the physics/chem practice problems and passages in their practice book until your eyes bleed. Make sure you review your mistakes, see what you're doing wrong, and try to improve on that by going back to the phys/gen chem books and reviewing the concepts.

Worked for me! 🙂

 

[Tatiana3325]

Ok, so I took the MCAT recently and Got 10Bio 10 verbal, 5 physical! The sad part is I didnt even study for bio and very little verbal. I spent 90% of the time studying for phy because I knew I would have a hard time. I have a june 21st date. I have all the test material I can think of. Please for those of you who did well on Phy, what did you do. 😕

Sounds like you need some help and its cool that youre being so honest about your mcat score around such a competitive bunch. Can you be more specific about what you had trouble with? It sounds like you're having trouble identifying what you don't know. Although given your score I'm guessing most (2/3) of the physical sciences stuff....har har. Sorry....Kidding.

Anyway I'd like to help. First, what were your final grades in chem and physics courses? Next, have you taken a full year of physics and two years of Chem? Here's a basic question: If I asked you if a particle accelerator could increase the kinetic energy of a gamma ray, could you confidently say yes or no? What about a neutron? The answer to both questions is no. (Although theoretically a neutron can be accelerated in a magnetic field with a very very very strong gradient. For the purpose of the MCAT though, neutrons cannot be accelerated using a magnetic field.) If you didn't know the answers to those questions then you need to study physics. Some Chem classes teach that stuff but it's all physics anyway.

Lets say you know that stuff along with newtons laws, gas laws, etc. I'm guessing that you didn't do well on the problems requiring calculations; because you scored much higher on the other two sections. If this is the case, you need to get some (tons, everything you can find) of practice problems with an answer key and do them until you get them right, all of the time. Seriously, the only way to study for this section is to do problems endlessly. It's going to be really time consuming but things of such importance usually are. Maybe I have high expectations but if you prepare and focus for the entire exam there is no reason that you should get multiple problems incorrect. The MCAT doesn't have new material on it. If you spend a ton of time taking practice tests and making sure you know every possible thing that could be on that test you will do fine. Be hard on yourself. If you can get a 10 on verbal reasoning then you can get a 14. Its like getting an 85% on a test. I mean come on. If you can get an 85% then you can definitely get a 95%. 🙂

If your next test is in June then you need to start studying tomorrow to bring up those scores. You can do it! Feel free to PM me with any questions.

 

[jf1987]

I took the Kaplan course. Got 24 on the first practice and ended up getting 33 overall. I found the practice MCATs to be the most helpful part. They give you nearly 30. I did a fairly large percentage of them.

 

[aSagacious]

Moving to the MCAT discussions forum.

 

[fas376]

I DO NOT recommend Chad's for physics, but I do recommend it for Gen Chem. He is an amazing gen chem and ochem teacher, but he's awful at teaching physics.

 

[Tatiana3325]

I found the way Chad taught physics more intuitive than what I learned in class.

Having said that, I should mention I also supplemented Chad's videos with Princeton Hyperlearning Gen Chem and Physics books and re-took Physics II that semester (but it was a light version of the course and oversimplified compared to the other university I took it at the first time!) But I definitely used some of Chad's strategies for both gen chem and physics on the actual mcat, especially when I was running out of time.

I don't mean to sound rude or anything (I guess it's hard to get tone across in here), but this doesn't have to be that difficult. You'll waste time picking out study systems and freaking out about it. All you have to do is open up old text books, find practice problems online or at the library and actually do them. For hours and weeks. Just like you would in class. But honestly you don't need "official" MCAT practice problems. You have to learn and understand the subjects on the test.

There shouldn't be any new material on the MCAT.

 

[cgk]

You got 10 and 10, so you're obviously intellectually capable of doing well on the test. The MCAT is a beatable test and I think if you study enough, 10 on each section is not out of the question and realistically 12 on each section is achievable (except you may experience some cap w/ verbal).
Talk to people about resources and start over. I agree w/ many others that if your score is a 5 on the section you fundamentally don't understand the topic. You should be able to pull an 8 w/ rudimentary understanding. At your current score level you don't even need to do practice questions. Get a review book and read the physical sciences cover to cover. Wikipedia and google anything you think you don't get.

Can you elaborate on what you mean about "cap w/ verbal"? Are you saying that test takers have an innate threshold of what they can realistically achieve on the verbal section, more so than on the other sections of the MCAT? ie. if you keep getting low scores on verbal section of MCAT, the chances of raising up materially to double digit levels is a longshot?