How to improve my MCAT score in 3 weeks?

[andybshaker]

I am taking the MCAT on October 21st--I've been studying for it since late June. I've read through all of the Berkeley Review books twice and started taking practice exams a few days ago. I've taken 2 so far, and my scores are in the low 30s. If I wanted to get my score to 35 (as difficult as that may be), what should I focus on in the next 3 weeks? I have no problem with Verbal, and my weak spot is definitely Physical Sciences. I feel like I am unable to extract the proper concepts from the passages. Also, there seems to be a never-ending list of formulas to memorize, which is challenging in its own right. Any advice would be appreciated!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Afford]

Practice exams and review all questions that you got wrong or guessed on.

 

[Aerus]

If you are done with content review, then do intense reviewing and post-phrasing of your full lengths. Any concepts that you labelled "did not understand the concept" or a similar "content" problem, do a bunch of practice passages related to that. Any subjects where you missed a bunch of questions, do practice problems on that. I highly recommend that you get the TPRHL Science Workbook. It's definitely possible to get your score up to a 35, assuming you aren't at your "peak" yet.

 

[gtbROX]

In my experience, my sciences improved the most during the month before the MCAT.
But this is because I was strictly doing practice tests and drills and reviewing every question and the reasoning for every answer choice (whether eliminated or chosen). At this point, I don't think you should be doing content review. If you do content review, it should be very focused based on what your score report says. Maybe it's different in your case, but in my case, I spent most of my time practicing and found that the practice allowed me to memorize quicker than just reading or other content review.

Also, I'm not sure how you tackle physics normally, but I was lucky enough to have physics teachers that would force students to memorize all unit breakdowns, like what composes a joule, newton, etc. This helped because knowing the end units that the answer should have and the units of the given values can allow you to eliminate wrong answers and calculate/estimate/guess the answer very accurately and quickly. Always seek to eliminate first and then look for correct answers. I probably knew only 3/4s of the equations I should have known going into the MCAT and still did well on PS. And a lot of equations are provided in the passage so make a mental note when you see those. When you practice, you'll know what to look for.