Thank you!!! I'm going to try it out and try to study for 10 hours per day. Then I'll take an AAMC practice... and figure out if I need to reschedule or not. 🙂
Hey, man. I am usually all for people who are gung ho about hitting the books and passing insurmountable odds, but your situation gives me the feeling that you should reassess where you are.
3.5 weeks? Based on what you've said, that's not enough time. From the sounds of it you're going to need to evaluate not only how you are taking practice tests, but how you are studying. Something is not clicking when you are reading the material.
I think your 10 hour goal is a fools errand. It will just stress you out unnecessarily. I think you should strongly consider pushing your exam back to the latest September date and start from scratch.
I would also strongly recommend using something other than EK for your studying. I have been using Berkeley Review and they are amazing. I wouldn't be getting very good scores if it weren't for BR. I initially tried with EK, but they assume you know too much ahead of time. BR walks you through the basics in an easy to follow manner. Not that it makes studying easy, but it makes it easier to understand what you do and don't know as you are going along. BR is also very good about pointing out important concepts.
Ok, now your more serious issue. You need to learn how to study more effectively. It sounds rough, but if you are getting 4's after you read a section you are not picking enough of the material up. If you were having those issues in just PS sections I could see it being a math issue, maybe a conceptual issue, or trouble digesting the complexities all at once, but because you are also having those issues in Biology, which EK does a pretty good job with, it has to fall on your studying technique.
The best thing I can tell you is to read the material actively. Don't fall into the trap of passive reading with this stuff. Your brain should hurt when your done. It takes work and it is much much slower than just reading the material and calling it a day. You need to think about the material. What does X mean? How does it apply to Y? What happens if I add Z? It is very important to analyze what you are reading.
I'm going to give you an example, because I think this is extremely important for you to get, otherwise you will waste more time studying inefficiently:
(This is the first thing I turned to in EK Bio, which you said you have)
In the EK Bio book on pg 45 there is a picture of chromatin. On that picture there is a lot going on, first you can see the DNA in loose strands, then it is wound around histones to form a nucleosome, which forms part of chromatin fiber, which is part of a supercoil within the chromosome, and ultimately leads to chromosome. (or you could look at it the other way and work your way from a chromosome to a double helix.)
Ok, now ask yourself, what is so important about this that they would dedicate 3/4 of a page to a picture of it? Now ask yourself what the hell is happening? Well, DNA is coiling and uncoiling. Ok, why is it coiling and uncoiling? What benefit does that offer DNA? Then think about how it would benifit the DNA to be supercoiled and in a chromosome - it makes it more stable, it's a safer means of cell replication and DNA seperation within the cell, etc. etc. Now ask yourself why the DNA would want to be uncoiled? How about for replication. Now think ok, if the DNA has to be uncoiled for replication, but coiled for cell replication what stages of mitosis are you going to find each type of DNA density? S phase would most likely be? Yep, uncoiled for synthesis. And during M phase the DNA would most likely be? Yep, supercoiled.
This was just a quick and dirty example and something you are probably familiar with, but I used it to illustrate a point. You must be thinking about what you're reading, otherwise it is meaningless and you will forget it as soon as you turn the page. Synthesize new material into old material you already know. How does it relate? What is a real world example? Or just plain, what the hell are they talking about (this is when you pull up your trusty friend google).
Start doing this now and see how it works for you. But do yourself a favor and push back your exam. It's not worth it to just roll in there and take it if you're not ready for it. It can make a retake twice as stressful.
Good luck though, man. You can get those scores up, but be realistic with yourself.
Here is a great quote for you:
"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result"
-- Albert Einstein
