Increase mcat by 10 points in 2 months possible?

[ohfiddlesticks123]

I took my first ever practice MCAT exam...chose to do aamc FL 1 to see where I stood (will save other three for closer to the exam). I scored a 500. Does it seem realistic to increase by 10 points in 2 months? I'm taking the march 27th exam, and my goal is to score a 510 but I'm not sure if such a spike is realistic.

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[deleted987519]

I would push the exam back...you only want to take this thing once. If 510 is your goal I would not take the exam unless my average on the AAMC FLs were at least 510. 500 suggests a pretty severe lack of content knowledge and/or reasoning skills and I would be surprised if you could jump 10 points in just two months given the amount of review and practice you have ahead of you.

My two cents.

 

[sevenout]

how has this progressed? I met a guy who went from 493(kap) to a 510(real) in one month. His 493 was with zero hours of studying though.

 

[Cornfed101]

How much will you be studying per day? 10 hours or 3? I increased 10 points in the last 2 months, but that was after content review so I was just drilling FLs.

 

[TwoHighways]

I went up 12 over my last month after only going up 1 point after the first month (only going up 1 point after a month of studying was the most deflated I felt in the entire med school admissions process). Started with a 500 baseline score as well on an AAMC full length. If I could do it over again, I would have prepared another month as I feel I could have done even better. I was probably averaging a good 4-6 hours a day of productive studying in that time frame. Ass in front of a computer time closer to 8 hours a day. It sucked for sure and I’m glad it’s over with. Content review will only get you so far. Only after really hitting the section banks hard did my FL scores improve. Volume of questions and understanding the reasoning for the right answer trumps watching khan academy videos all day.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

Really depends whether you are on the sigmoidal or flat end of the learning curve.

How recently have you done the basic sciences? How much time do you have? What do you think your ceiling realistically is?

David D - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[Detective SnowBucket]

I went up 12 over my last month after only going up 1 point after the first month (only going up 1 point after a month of studying was the most deflated I felt in the entire med school admissions process). Started with a 500 baseline score as well on an AAMC full length. If I could do it over again, I would have prepared another month as I feel I could have done even better. I was probably averaging a good 4-6 hours a day of productive studying in that time frame. Ass in front of a computer time closer to 8 hours a day. It sucked for sure and I’m glad it’s over with. Content review will only get you so far. Only after really hitting the section banks hard did my FL scores improve. Volume of questions and understanding the reasoning for the right answer trumps watching khan academy videos all day.

Have you taken the real deal yet? I jumped 5 points from highest AAMC FL to real deal.

 

[Medical Muse]

It's definitely doable, but a painful process. You need to identify your weakest areas (by doing practice passages) and then focus your studying on those areas. Look for patterns in the questions you miss to see what facts/formulas you don't understand. My last two weeks of studying was miserable and full of physics but my P/S score went up 2 points.
Good luck!

 

[TwoHighways]

Have you taken the real deal yet? I jumped 5 points from highest AAMC FL to real deal.

took it last year.

 

[WindmillChaser92]

It's definitely doable, but a painful process. You need to identify your weakest areas (by doing practice passages) and then focus your studying on those areas. Look for patterns in the questions you miss to see what facts/formulas you don't understand. My last two weeks of studying was miserable and full of physics but my P/S score went up 2 points.
Good luck!

I agree with Medical Muse. I was able to score 8 points higher on the real MCAT compared to my FL1 taken 7 weeks prior to exam date. But, I relied heavily on my "lessons learned journal". Keeping a log of mistakes, guesses, miscalculations, content gaps, helped me to identify patters and areas that needed focusing. Hardest thing for me to do was to trust in my strengths (i.e. quit studying stuff I liked) and really attack my weaknesses. I had to press the "I believe button" and trust that what I was good at I would stay good at, and that let me focus on working on passage dissection, pacing, deciphering figures, and working on areas where I was weaker. When I did content review, I made a P/S study sheet that took the AAMC outline for P/S and just filled it in with my notes. I was constantly adding to it vocab words and things I learned from reviewing tests. Because of that, my biggest gain was in P/S. There is a lot of content and "things" to know it P/S, but the bulk of it is low-hanging fruit that is not going to make your head explode trying to wrap your head around complex stuff. There are nuances to terminology, but it isn't rocket science. Bottom-line: spend plenty of time reviewing your FLs and practice sets because you will get good lessons learned from that, which will help guide your studies.

 

[ohfiddlesticks123]

Thanks everyone, unfortunately am not seeing much of an improvement since Jan 17th (took FL2 today and only went up 2 points overall; I increased in basically everything (but not by much...2 points improvement in c/p, 1 point in psych/soc, 1 point bio/biochem) except for CARS...somehow managed to go down in CARS by 2 points from FL1 127 (which was 82nd percentile) to FL2 125 (60th (!!!) percentile) so I will likely be pushing my exam date back another month. I did all of CARS QPack 1 so I'm not sure how this happened, and CARs was literally my highest section on my first FL!!
The lessons learned journal is something I will emphasize thank you. I think I also have to do more flashcards because I forget things if I don't review again after a few days.
This is very demoralizing to say the least, especially because I've dropped all other commitments since Jan and have been doing nothing else but prepping along with taking one university class.
And to reference what I think my ceiling realistically is, I'd like to think I could at least pull it up to a 508, but now I'm not sure anymore...I feel like I do know much more after a couple of months, but unfortunately my score doesn't reflect this.

 

[WindmillChaser92]

Thanks everyone, unfortunately am not seeing much of an improvement since Jan 17th (took FL2 today and only went up 2 points overall; I increased in basically everything (but not by much...2 points improvement in c/p, 1 point in psych/soc, 1 point bio/biochem) except for CARS...somehow managed to go down in CARS by 2 points from FL1 127 (which was 82nd percentile) to FL2 125 (60th (!!!) percentile) so I will likely be pushing my exam date back another month. I did all of CARS QPack 1 so I'm not sure how this happened, and CARs was literally my highest section on my first FL!!
The lessons learned journal is something I will emphasize thank you. I think I also have to do more flashcards because I forget things if I don't review again after a few days.
This is very demoralizing to say the least, especially because I've dropped all other commitments since Jan and have been doing nothing else but prepping along with taking one university class.
And to reference what I think my ceiling realistically is, I'd like to think I could at least pull it up to a 508, but now I'm not sure anymore...I feel like I do know much more after a couple of months, but unfortunately my score doesn't reflect this.

A 2 pt increase from FL1 to FL2 is not something to be disappointed about. Pushing back a month is not a bad idea if you have a bare minimum score and must reach it. I would imagine it is better to push back a month than to retake the whole thing.
Steady gains - you will get there. Even if you hit a plateau between two tests, that's okay. A steady trend upward is good! Everyone hits bumps in the road and has freak out moments prepping for the MCAT. Mine came 41 days from my exam. I remember it clearly. I sat down with my wife and laid out the reasons why I wanted to reschedule and didn't trust that I could be ready in time. She talked me through all the reasons why I would be ready that I had laid out to her at one point or another. Sure enough, I got back on track and got the results I wanted.
If you have a support, someone you can vent to, use it. Then thank them immensely after the test and pay them back!

 

[ohfiddlesticks123]

A 2 pt increase from FL1 to FL2 is not something to be disappointed about. Pushing back a month is not a bad idea if you have a bare minimum score and must reach it. I would imagine it is better to push back a month than to retake the whole thing.
Steady gains - you will get there. Even if you hit a plateau between two tests, that's okay. A steady trend upward is good! Everyone hits bumps in the road and has freak out moments prepping for the MCAT. Mine came 41 days from my exam. I remember it clearly. I sat down with my wife and laid out the reasons why I wanted to reschedule and didn't trust that I could be ready in time. She talked me through all the reasons why I would be ready that I had laid out to her at one point or another. Sure enough, I got back on track and got the results I wanted.
If you have a support, someone you can vent to, use it. Then thank them immensely after the test and pay them back!

Thanks so much for your comment - it's helping me put things into perspective. Really appreciate the advice and hearing your story, too. Thank you!