How hard is it to increase your MCAT by at least 5 points on your retake?

[seek_advice1]

I have taken the MCAT already but I did not score very well as I got only a 503. During my studies I haven't been completely focused on it because of full time work but also procrastination and bad organization. The MCAT also gave me a lot of stress and some anxiety that led to a low score. During that period I did not study much on AAMC material. I studied mostly on Kaplan and I took 5 FLs. My average in those was 501. Then, I took the AAMC FL1 where I scored 502 and then 503 in the real deal. I have decided to take a gap year to retake the MCAT also because my GPA is 3.5 and the uGPA is even lower.

I am a female latina URM but I think that to be competitive I need to improve by at least 5 points. My goal is to actually get 510+. How hard is it going to be given that I will still work full time?

My goal is to get into a quite good medical school like UPenn, Dartmouth, NYU, Tufts, BU, Georgetown or similar.

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[TwinOne]

I also was working full time when I retook and got from a 508 -> 514. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, to be honest. I would drive to work and on the commute listen to podcasts or youtube videos of content. During breaks at work, I would look at my anki notecards and then after work drive home and listen to more podcasts. Then go home and study for 5-6 hours and do it all again. I would take my practice tests on the Saturdays and then review it on Sunday. It is possible, but it required a lot of being efficient and pushing myself to study. With that being said it is best to understand what went wrong the first time around. This can help guide you to the best method of study for you! For me, it was about changing my mindset.

 

[seek_advice1]

I also was working full time when I retook and got from a 508 -> 514. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, to be honest. I would drive to work and on the commute listen to podcasts or youtube videos of content. During breaks at work, I would look at my anki notecards and then after work drive home and listen to more podcasts. Then go home and study for 5-6 hours and do it all again. I would take my practice tests on the Saturdays and then review it on Sunday. It is possible, but it required a lot of being efficient and pushing myself to study. With that being said it is best to understand what went wrong the first time around. This can help guide you to the best method of study for you! For me, it was about changing my mindset.

Thank you for your answer. How many months of studying did it take you to improve your score? How was your social life/free time impacted during that period?

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

OP: You should find posts by Zenabi90 if you want to be both inspired as well as find out how to see a great increase on your second attempt. It's one of the most impressive turnarounds I have seen at SDN in many years here. You should also join one of the study group text pages by MCATKings. This will keep you inspired by people actively pursuing the same target scores and allow you to bounce ideas off others.

As for how to improve, it starts with an analysis of what went wrong. In short, you must change whatever you did to prepare the first time that did not work while keeping the things that helped. If you do the exact same preparation this time, then you cannot expect to make big gains no matter how much additional time you put in. Way too many people make the mistake of correlating quantity of study time to expected score. It's how you use your time that matters.

More than any other time I can recall at SDN, more and more people are scoring below their goals. Maybe more people are willing to post about it nowadays or maybe the typical study regiment of the average SDN poster has become less useful. I tend to think it's the second case. Since the new style MCAT was released in April 2015, people have gradually gravitated to depending on videos and emphasizing content review. This is NOT working.

Having taken the actual MCAT, you know that the passages give you a great deal of information and that more than anything you must recognize the fundamental concepts in the passage and apply it to new situations. You must figure out how things (like experiments and techniques) work more than knowing their details. This can only be prepared for by doing practice questions that make you think followed by review your answers in detail. You must scrutinize how you arrived at your answer and always work to become faster and more methodical at that. It really is quite simple when you whittle it down: learn to pick the best answer more effectively.

Finding the best answer is the focus of your preparation, and this is not accomplished by watching videos and reading endless content. It is not accomplished by taking copious notes on chapter content. It can only be accomplished by doing practice passages and working through detailed answer explanations on the content of the question as well as strategies for working through the question.

This time, choose your materials based on their answer explanations, because that is where you will see your growth. Read the answer explanations and see if you connect with them. If so, then that is where you need to invest your time.

Good luck this go-around.

 

[TwinOne]

Thank you for your answer. How many months of studying did it take you to improve your score? How was your social life/free time impacted during that period?

I studied for about 2 and a half months for my retake. My social life/free time were pretty much non-existent. I would spend at least 1-2 times a week hanging out with others and workout 2-3 times a week. It was good to still have that free time and social life as it did help destress and brought me back into my studies feeling refreshed and energized, so I definitely think its important but I knew that if I wanted a better score then things would need to be sacrificed.

 

[Altius Premier Tutor]

My first suggestion would be to DISBELIEVE the data from the AAMC on retakes, and anyone on SDN who tells you that 10+ point improvements are unlikely. Among retake students I have tutored, 10-20 point improvements are fairly commonplace. If a student is truly diligent about sticking to the program we outline for them, an improvement less than 7-10 points is almost unheard of. Of course, much of that improvement is because I am basically *forcing* 😉 my students to ramp up their study habits significantly, and to CHANGE their study approach completely. The way I "re-direct" my students is related to what @BerkReviewTeach has suggested above. I agree with him that the overemphasis on content is a DISEASE that seems nearly incurable among premeds. I teach my students to abhor content and memorization, focusing instead on critical thinking, data analysis, and AAMC question/passage trends.

I have said it ad naseum on this forum, but the test only rewards strict content knowledge/memorization on about 10% of the questions. All of the remaining questions will require you to read dense passage information--usually experiments from scientific journals--and apply that information to CRITICAL-THINKING-based questions. The skills you need include the ability to quickly simplify passage complexity into simple summaries/take-homes that are easier to apply to the questions, the ability to interpret detailed figures and graphs (often with multiple experiments/trials/axes), the ability to recognize the purpose behind experimental design, the ability to PREDICT the outcome of a novel situation based on some change (e.g., "What if the researchers had used carbon dioxide in place of oxygen in Step 3?), track and deal with a multitude of acronyms & signalling pathways ...and so forth.

CONTENT REVIEW, no matter how many months you spend on it, leaves you ill-prepared to tackle those kinds of passages/questions and identify the correct answer.

Therefore, if you do plan to retake, you need to 1) Metamorphosize your effort, and 2) Study and practice the exam itself. If you put in a similar, or even greater effort, you are unlikely to see a large point increase. But, if you revolutionize your effort level, study time, discipline, etc., it is VERY likely that you will improve by multiple points. As BerkReviewTeach said, you don't want to do more of what didn't work, so you also need to switch from a content focus to a critical thinking & analysis focus. Good luck to you!

 

[morrisol]

My first suggestion would be to DISBELIEVE the data from the AAMC on retakes, and anyone on SDN who tells you that 10+ point improvements are unlikely. Among retake students I have tutored, 10-20 point improvements are fairly commonplace. If a student is truly diligent about sticking to the program we outline for them, an improvement less than 7-10 points is almost unheard of. Of course, much of that improvement is because I am basically *forcing* 😉 my students to ramp up their study habits significantly, and to CHANGE their study approach completely. The way I "re-direct" my students is related to what @BerkReviewTeach has suggested above. I agree with him that the overemphasis on content is a DISEASE that seems nearly incurable among premeds. I teach my students to abhor content and memorization, focusing instead on critical thinking, data analysis, and AAMC question/passage trends.

I have said it ad naseum on this forum, but the test only rewards strict content knowledge/memorization on about 10% of the questions. All of the remaining questions will require you to read dense passage information--usually experiments from scientific journals--and apply that information to CRITICAL-THINKING-based questions. The skills you need include the ability to quickly simplify passage complexity into simple summaries/take-homes that are easier to apply to the questions, the ability to interpret detailed figures and graphs (often with multiple experiments/trials/axes), the ability to recognize the purpose behind experimental design, the ability to PREDICT the outcome of a novel situation based on some change (e.g., "What if the researchers had used carbon dioxide in place of oxygen in Step 3?), track and deal with a multitude of acronyms & signalling pathways ...and so forth.

CONTENT REVIEW, no matter how many months you spend on it, leaves you ill-prepared to tackle those kinds of passages/questions and identify the correct answer.

Therefore, if you do plan to retake, you need to 1) Metamorphosize your effort, and 2) Study and practice the exam itself. If you put in a similar, or even greater effort, you are unlikely to see a large point increase. But, if you revolutionize your effort level, study time, discipline, etc., it is VERY likely that you will improve by multiple points. As BerkReviewTeach said, you don't want to do more of what didn't work, so you also need to switch from a content focus to a critical thinking & analysis focus. Good luck to you!

for me, my issue was content more than anything. if i dont understand what a word like lets say "kinase" means than it makes it tough to know whats going on in a passage or question. yeah some qs can be done without content knowledge but you need to have a gist of whats going on to answer a lot of qs.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

So, you get the question on a "kinase" wrong the first time you see it. Then you read the answer explanation which explains what a kinase does. That information then sticks WAY better than it would have reading a sentence or watching a video. It certainly doesn't feel good to miss a question, and that can be demoralizing at that moment. But see the big picture; when you see a question about a kinase again, and because you learned from your failure and the answer explanation, that information is embedded in your mind and you never miss that question again. That is the kind of knowledge you need as a foundation for their questions. This approach exposes you to question logic.

The point is that doing passages and then reviewing the questions using a thorough postgame analysis IS reviewing content, just in a painful way rather than a warm and fuzzy way.

Altiustutor hit the nail square on the head when he called the thirst for content review a disease. That is EXACTLY what it is. This idea that you must have all content memorized and on flash cards for repeated review in order to be ready for the exam is not working for most people. I do completely agree with you that if you don't know what a term means, then you will not do well. The cure for that is simple: do more passages on that topic, from multiple sources, so you see the subject matter multiple times, hopefully improving each time.

Good luck!!!

 

[Fat_Albert]

So, you get the question on a "kinase" wrong the first time you see it. Then you read the answer explanation which explains what a kinase does. That information then sticks WAY better than it would have reading a sentence or watching a video. It certainly doesn't feel good to miss a question, and that can be demoralizing at that moment. But see the big picture; when you see a question about a kinase again, and because you learned from your failure and the answer explanation, that information is embedded in your mind and you never miss that question again. That is the kind of knowledge you need as a foundation for their questions. This approach exposes you to question logic.

The point is that doing passages and then reviewing the questions using a thorough postgame analysis IS reviewing content, just in a painful way rather than a warm and fuzzy way.

Altiustutor hit the nail square on the head when he called the thirst for content review a disease. That is EXACTLY what it is. This idea that you must have all content memorized and on flash cards for repeated review in order to be ready for the exam is not working for most people. I do completely agree with you that if you don't know what a term means, then you will not do well. The cure for that is simple: do more passages on that topic, from multiple sources, so you see the subject matter multiple times, hopefully improving each time.

Good luck!!!

How do you improve critical thinking and what’s the best way to review an exam or practice passage?

 

[Shotapp]

The point is that doing passages and then reviewing the questions using a thorough postgame analysis IS reviewing content, just in a painful way rather than a warm and fuzzy way.

This is so true!

 

[Fat_Albert]

My first suggestion would be to DISBELIEVE the data from the AAMC on retakes, and anyone on SDN who tells you that 10+ point improvements are unlikely. Among retake students I have tutored, 10-20 point improvements are fairly commonplace. If a student is truly diligent about sticking to the program we outline for them, an improvement less than 7-10 points is almost unheard of. Of course, much of that improvement is because I am basically *forcing* 😉 my students to ramp up their study habits significantly, and to CHANGE their study approach completely. The way I "re-direct" my students is related to what @BerkReviewTeach has suggested above. I agree with him that the overemphasis on content is a DISEASE that seems nearly incurable among premeds. I teach my students to abhor content and memorization, focusing instead on critical thinking, data analysis, and AAMC question/passage trends.

I have said it ad naseum on this forum, but the test only rewards strict content knowledge/memorization on about 10% of the questions. All of the remaining questions will require you to read dense passage information--usually experiments from scientific journals--and apply that information to CRITICAL-THINKING-based questions. The skills you need include the ability to quickly simplify passage complexity into simple summaries/take-homes that are easier to apply to the questions, the ability to interpret detailed figures and graphs (often with multiple experiments/trials/axes), the ability to recognize the purpose behind experimental design, the ability to PREDICT the outcome of a novel situation based on some change (e.g., "What if the researchers had used carbon dioxide in place of oxygen in Step 3?), track and deal with a multitude of acronyms & signalling pathways ...and so forth.

CONTENT REVIEW, no matter how many months you spend on it, leaves you ill-prepared to tackle those kinds of passages/questions and identify the correct answer.

Therefore, if you do plan to retake, you need to 1) Metamorphosize your effort, and 2) Study and practice the exam itself. If you put in a similar, or even greater effort, you are unlikely to see a large point increase. But, if you revolutionize your effort level, study time, discipline, etc., it is VERY likely that you will improve by multiple points. As BerkReviewTeach said, you don't want to do more of what didn't work, so you also need to switch from a content focus to a critical thinking & analysis focus. Good luck to you!

How do you improve critical thinking and what’s the best way to review an exam or practice passage? (Asked BerkReviewTeach as well since you guys seem to know what you're talking about)

 

[cerebralischemia93]

I personally improved from a 501 to a 510. My AAMC FL#1 score for the first MCAT was a 505 and for the second MCAT my AAMC FL#2 score was a 515 [my real score fell short 5 points in CARS from a 130 to a 125 🙁 ]. I completely changed my study schedule the second time around (used Anki, did a lot more practice tests, remained focused, organized and on top of what I had to do). I think if your willing to make changes, improve and be resourceful there is a potential to improve your score. If I can do it, you can do it! 🙂

 

[tekkenman11]

Hi, I am also a female Hispanic URM. Similar first MCAT score, second score improved by 8 points. If you get a 510-512 you will be in range for Georgetown/Dartmouth/BU but you probably need a 513-515+ for the top schools like Penn, depending on your extracurriculars of course. I also didn’t study too great for the first exam. Second exam, I met with a tutor 1-2x/week (current md/phd student) and studied 20 hours/week. I mostly used Kaplan/EK for content review. Once I had reviewed all content (you should aim to do this 1 month before your test day), I used next step and AAMC practice exams 1-2x/week, simulating real test conditions. I did this all while having a full class schedule and working 20-25 hours/week. It took me 5 months to do content review, plus one month for exam prep using my schedule. You can take less time if you have more time to study, but I could only do 20 hours/week. I wouldn’t take the exam until you are consistently scoring around the score you’re aiming to get on the real test. It’s unrealistic to average a 502 on practice exams for example and then expect to score a 512. Yes, it happens, but it’s rare.

Boston Median is a 518 lol.

 

[On_The_Way_Up]

I personally improved from a 501 to a 510. My AAMC FL#1 score for the first MCAT was a 505 and for the second MCAT my AAMC FL#2 score was a 515 [my real score fell short 5 points in CARS from a 130 to a 125 🙁 ]. I completely changed my study schedule the second time around (used Anki, did a lot more practice tests, remained focused, organized and on top of what I had to do). I think if your willing to make changes, improve and be resourceful there is a potential to improve your score. If I can do it, you can do it! 🙂

Congrats! Which practice tests did you use?