I got my score back :(

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RamblingPremed

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I got my score back. This is my 3rd attempt with the last being with Kaplan tutoring. Only increased in totality 3 points (495) however, phy/chem increased substantially and so did psych/soc. CARS I missed 7 question and 5 of them I didn’t even get to touch. So that impacted me ALOT! I’m applying to all IL, WI, IN schools. Should I honker down and practice to take it again in September 13? I have already paid and submitted all of my secondaries or should I just leave it as is?

i was averaging 505 during my full length and took a total of 13 exams.

Any advise would be great.
 
Im sorry to hear your score was not what you expected. It can be super frustrating, I hope youre taking care of yourself!

Realistically, 495 is not competitive. Are you applying DO or MD? With stellar ECs, a great GPA, and amazing LORs you may be able to get into a DO program.

September is possibly too late for the MCAT (for MD). Many schools do not accept MCAT scores after a certain date, and many will not wait for new scores and will review your application as is.

If you've already submitted primaries and secondaries, there's not much you can do now. I would wait and accept the likely possibility of having to retake the MCAT and reapply in the future.
 
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Thank you. I’m doing better. Mostly pissed, but that’s okay. I applied to both. I have 3000+ clinical activities with estimated 1500 clinical activities for this year. 200 + volunteer clinical. 140 research. 40K hours working insurance. 80+ spanish translator. 118 special education teacher aide. 50 foster mentor. 70 high school mentor. Etc. yeah, I’ll leave it as it and start working on taking it in January.

I’ll stick to uworld, Anki, and khan academy this time around since I can’t afford another tutor lol.
 
you really do need to go through the thousands of anking cards, most of uworld, and do cars daily to get a good score for md and do, took me half a year with a break from school, if you dont have time or your ECs cant compensate enough then consider caa or pa or dentistry. i never used khan fyi and did well, i think practice problems from uworld is way more efficient than reading, focus entirely on anki and uworld
 
Tutoring, unfortunately, is such a passive process that it often doesn't result in a notable score increase. It seems like it should, but things just don't work out usually. It often results in a false sense of security. Videos can result in this same sense of 'knowing' something when we may not actually know it (Dunning-Kruger anyone?)

You need to grind through realistic questions until it becomes a reflex more than a thought. I'm not sold on the materials you have listed above, because much of your time will be passive absorption of facts and concepts. You need to actively attack realistic questions and passages if you are going to see an increase.

I'd highly recommend you focus on doing every AAMC question you can find, at least TWICE. When you review the questions, try to rewrite some of their questions to make one of the wrong answer choices right. Try to get into the head of the test writer, because that allows you to see their nuances better.

I have heard of students who took AAMC materials and using Claude AI, generated additional study material. This got mixed reviews, but their scores were fairly impressive. So while what they studied wasn't well-packaged and full of pretty videos like the commercial materials, in the end it was effective. And as with all AI endeavors, it is only as good as what you input. You have to know the material to know if the AI output is good.

I want to offer one last chunk of advice with a huge qualifier. Look at previous posts to confirm my opinion here, as I could appear biased. BR materials have feedback at SDN that ranges from "trash" to "gold". Avoid that which is considered trash by most posters, and use the only the gold. I'll leave it to other posters to offer specifics about which of BR's materials are trash and which are gold. If you can find used BR books for cheap (and they can be found right here at SDN classifieds), then you can get a good amount of practice questions with unique strategies for one section of the exam.

Good luck!
 
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