How do I get beyond 33???? Ah!!!!

[jellybeano]

I've taken almost all of the AAMC FL and some of the Kap FLs...I'm always around 33! It's driving me nuts. What can I do, let me rephrase that, what do I NEED/HAVE/MUST do to get past 33?


Thank you very much! I'd really appreciate any advises.

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[mohad]

step 1: click on sticky for 30+ MCAT strategies
step 2: find all posters that got 34+
step 3: read
step 4: ???
step 5: profit

 

[jellybeano]

I did read some of them but I guess I just need a place to vent? haha...

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

The >33 crowd has the following characteristics.

• Elite Scorers
  1) Confidence in what they know. No matter how weird a passage may seem at first glance, they can correlate it to material they know and understand conceptually.
  
  2) Speed when it comes to getting through question. They don't rush, which can lead to careless errors, but they are time-efficient when it comes to working through most questions.
  
  3) Focus throughout each section of the exam. They don't let their mind drift off on tangents or extraneous information.
  
  4) Practice, practice, practice on the areas they needed it. If you know something well, then you should do one to two passages and move on. If you struggle with something, then you should do all of the passages you can find.
  
  5) Awareness of the exam. They have a realistic perspective of what to expect. They did practice passages with questions rather than a whole bunch of individual questions without a passage. They took enough practice exams to know what the day would be like.

These are the things you need to do. If you can cut down on careless errors, shore up your weaknesses, and maintain a good pace on the familiar material, then you'll improve your score.

 

[muhali3]

PS is the easiest section to improve. Do some solid post-game analysis and see what you're doing wrong. Do you just not know the answer, bad test-taking technique, didn't understand the question...? etc.

 

[jellybeano]

Guess I'm lacking confidence since the score doesn't seem to improve since my first Practice FL...*sigh*
And yea, I also need to review more in depth. I tend to just look over the wrong answers right after the exam. Should wait a day when I'm not so sick of sitting there for 5 hours I guess.

Thanks a lot! I'll find some way to boost my confidence. Any suggestions on that?

 

[mohad]

The funny thing is that if you review content well enough, you will know all the raw facts, but the test loves to make everything so damn confusing, so if you can get past all their tricks, you can do well. My number 1 piece of advice is to not panic. I've come across tough sections that look really rough. I'm thinking of one that involved a redox titration that was on a TPR test I took a week ago. I started panicking because I had no clue what to do, but as I started to read, the passage had similarities to an acid/base titration, but it mixed in electrochem.

Once you come across a passage, think of what the content resembles. Then go from there. Remember your fundamentals. AND DO MATH ON PAPER. No matter how easy it is, you will make a mistake from doing mental math. I have a bad habit of doing mental math, so I've started to write stuff down. I still get occasional questions wrong here and there from mental math, but it is considerably a lot less than when I did math in my head.

I haven't broken 33 yet, but that tip helps me do pretty well on the sciences frequently. I can't offer you verbal advice as it is my weakest subject but the tip I gave above helps me a lot.

 

[whiteshadodw]

The funny thing is that if you review content well enough, you will know all the raw facts, but the test loves to make everything so damn confusing, so if you can get past all their tricks, you can do well. My number 1 piece of advice is to not panic. I've come across tough sections that look really rough. I'm thinking of one that involved a redox titration that was on a TPR test I took a week ago. I started panicking because I had no clue what to do, but as I started to read, the passage had similarities to an acid/base titration, but it mixed in electrochem.

Once you come across a passage, think of what the content resembles. Then go from there. Remember your fundamentals. AND DO MATH ON PAPER. No matter how easy it is, you will make a mistake from doing mental math. I have a bad habit of doing mental math, so I've started to write stuff down. I still get occasional questions wrong here and there from mental math, but it is considerably a lot less than when I did math in my head.

I haven't broken 33 yet, but that tip helps me do pretty well on the sciences frequently. I can't offer you verbal advice as it is my weakest subject but the tip I gave above helps me a lot.

not entirely. go back to all the waves/periodic motion passages in AAMC 3-9. you need to learn how to make analogies in terms of physics. stated another way, learn how to solve problems with what you already know. but the "make analogies" sounds easier and more doable than "problem solving" since 95% of premeds (overgeneralization) don't want to think. honestly, the PS section just becomes a bunch of making analogies with what you already know.

 

[jellybeano]

Great! Thanks for the suggestion. I frequently calculate wrong also and have started writing them down. That also gies for VR...I just did a few by reading and summarizing with a sentence for each passage. It definitely helped the score but I'm not so sure of the time. I will try it 2mr with a timer.

I find myself reviewing my old AAMC cbts with no timer and self diagnosing the second time around--since I didn't do a good job reviewing the first time around. Is that a good idea? Another thing I've noticed from all these AAMC tests is that they all tend to repeat on the subject of the passage. Is that true for the real test also?

Alright thanks a lot for all your responses! I appreciate them very much!

 

[mohad]

not entirely. go back to all the waves/periodic motion passages in AAMC 3-9. you need to learn how to make analogies in terms of physics. stated another way, learn how to solve problems with what you already know. but the "make analogies" sounds easier and more doable than "problem solving" since 95% of premeds (overgeneralization) don't want to think. honestly, the PS section just becomes a bunch of making analogies with what you already know.

Well I haven't taken an AAMC yet, so I can't exactly understand what you mean. I'm gonna take 3 this weekend, so I'll see what you mean after taking that. I hope it isn't too bad...

 

[colberag]

I never scored higher than a 32 on my practice tests (actually only scored 30+ twice). Given, I started taking tests before reviewing all of the material, and I had not taken ANY basic science classes for almost 4 yrs and had never taken physics II.
I ended up getting a 35 on the real thing, even after a night of being woken up at 2am and not getting back to sleep and downing a 24hr energy for the first time in my life which made my heart want to explode.

My point is, it is possible to do better on the real thing than any practice test. For me, the real thing made me focus so much harder and wearing those noise canceling headphones put me in my own little enchanted MCAT world. Just stay confident in your abilities.

And to maintain your sanity after the test, convince yourself that all the really hard questions you think you got wrong were for sure the experimental ones that are not even graded.

 

[jellybeano]

You just made my DAY!!!! Even week!!!! I LOVE YOU!!! haha...Anyways, that's awesome news. I hope I can do the same on my test day. I've done most of my practices at home and maybe that's why they are all the same scores...haha...mindset is really important.

colberag, you are AWESOME! I'll remember what you said and do super duper on my test day...hehe