Well, my age peers who were trads are done with their residencies by now. So if I had been as on the ball as those of you who are trads are, I would have started medical school ten years ago instead of now, and I'd be a practicing physician today instead of a rising M1. Point being, we all do things that we regret, and the longer we live, the longer the laundry list of stupid decisions we've made becomes.
😉 One item at the top of my list is doing a 14-year-long MD/PhD that I could have done in half the time.
😛 I'm not saying that I'm unhappy with how things turned out in terms of my life in general or my MCAT score in particular. But if I'd been wiser ten years ago, I wouldn't have had to re-take the MCAT two years ago at all, you follow me? So yes, there are definitely many things that I would do differently if I could do it all over again, even with studying for the MCAT. Hopefully some of you will learn from some of the things that I wish I had done differently. That's why I'm telling you about them.
I got a 34 the first time. I know I posted my score report in this forum at some point, although the search function isn't working right now so you probably won't be able to find it. I think it was in the Aug. 2004 scores thread. I joined SDN in Oct. 2004 the night that scores came out. I don't think I went to bed at all that entire night.
😛
Your other question is difficult to answer. I'm sure it's a mixture of a lot of factors. I've always done reasonably well on standardized tests, although never at the kind of level that would predict my second MCAT performance. My SAT and GRE scores were both about 1400, which is a good score, but not anything to write home about. Lots of people score much higher. Ditto for my first MCAT score.
So what was different this time? I think the main thing is that I really studied like my life depended on it. I know that now it is common for students to take prep courses for the SAT and GRE (heck, I've taught some of them
😛), but when I was in high school 15 years ago, people really didn't take Kaplan or study for the SAT period. I can't remember anyone doing that. When I was in college, my ex wanted to take the GRE and apply to grad school, so I went with him and took the test too in case I decided to apply to grad school. Again, no course, no studying. For my first MCAT, I self-studied like I said, but not hard-core. For the second MCAT, I was there doing those Kaplan homework assignments alongside my students. They'd complain about how much HW we had, and I'd tell them to stuff it, because I was doing it all too on top of prepping the lessons.
(A few of them took the real test in the same room with me also, which was kind of surreal for us all since I had just been teaching them the previous week.
😛 )
And now we'll never know, because I'm never going to take the d*** thing again. Two years ago when I got my scores, some people actually asked me if I was going to re-take, you know, to try to get a perfect score. I was like, are you CRAZY??? I'd probably go down!!!
😱
