September 2015 MCAT Thread

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
DAF16

DAF16

Full Member
7+ Year Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2015
Messages
53
Reaction score
22
Members do not see this ad.
Registration for the September MCAT opens up soon, so I thought I would make the thread.
Who else will be taking the test in September?
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
JDWannabe said:
I am going to be a doctor. In my world, there is no need for a plan B. I am driven, determined, and painfully stubborn. That being said, I may be on Benazepril before October 27th hits.
Click to expand...

Oh, trust me, I was like that last year, until I got hit by the reality stick.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I am wielding said reality stick. If I have to go to Mars for med school, I'm going to do it. Maybe I'll meet Matt Damon while I'm there. You have to be optimistic and play to your strengths. Make connections no matter how insignificant it may seem. You may be surprised how far you will go if you believe in yourself and are not afraid to ask for help. You have to be willing to make sacrifices. I hope that you have a good support team, because sometimes that may be what you need to help you get over your hurdles. I believe in you, and I don't even know you.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My numbers and EC's are competitive enough to stay in US and A. I am just a paranoid android about this test because I feel my ideal school will be more receptive to me with a better MCAT score.

But to answer your question, yes. I can't envision myself doing anything beside being a doctor and I plan on seeing this through to completion.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
JDWannabe said:
My numbers and EC's are competitive enough to stay in US and A. I am just a paranoid android about this test because I feel my ideal school will be more receptive to me with a better MCAT score.

But to answer your question, yes. I can't envision myself doing anything beside being a doctor and I plan on seeing this through to completion.
Click to expand...

I really applaud you for that. I'm sure you will become a doctor.. most who persevere do.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
JDWannabe said:
I am wielding said reality stick. If I have to go to Mars for med school, I'm going to do it.
Click to expand...
Solidarity. I have been pursuing this dream for longer than most, and far past what many (including myself) would deem pathetic. But I had a rough start in life, so I try not to be too hard on myself or compare myself to the gajillion perfect premeds I'm competing against.
At least with age comes a little bit of wisdom and a lot of perspective 🙂
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
image.png
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I've been so busy with apps and other stuff lately that it feels like I wrote the MCAT last week but starting today, I've got nothing else to do besides school + worrying about this test. In contrary to what most people say, this test will determine my fate.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
This wait is killing me. I'm hoping I score well enough to apply next cycle. I'm already thinking of backup plans D:
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
HopefulPilot said:
I think the scary thing is realizing I studied as good as I could hope and the test felt like it went welling. So if I get a bad score I'd feel like there's not too much more I could do to improve.
Click to expand...

This is exactly how I feel. I thought I had a good grasp of the material when I was studying and I was hitting the scores I wanted for my practice FLs. Though I didn't think the test itself went as good as I wanted, I'm still optimistic that my performance was good enough, so it'll be terrible if I get a bad score.🙁
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I feel the exact same way.... like, I dedicated a whole summer to this freakin' thing, had satisfactory practice scores and felt I did reasonably well on the real thing. Seriously don't know how I could prep any better for a retake if my score is low... Scary thought :scared:
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
A Brief Essay on the Mental Battle

I can relate to how you are all feeling. I am 28, and a lot of people, whether they think it or have the courage to say it out loud, respond to my medical school ambition with: "You know that is going to be really hard!"

Most of the time people are just immediately reacting, and worried that you will not get to enjoy life or things will be hard for you. Even people who seem discouraging or angry, which I have experienced, often have that reasoning behind their reaction. It is really rare someone is negative just to be a jerk, and even then, that reaction may be coming from their own insecurities or things that they are going through right now.

But the thing is, I have, like all of us, gone through a lot! And I cannot honestly include grauduate school application, which is what this is, despite all our fancy "med school" terminology and acronyms, it is ultimately a grad program, into my categorization of "**** that's hard".

So when someone, including my own inner voice, says "You know that's going to be hard!" I, usually not aloud, answer with, "Have a seat, I'll buy you a drink and tell you a story that'll make you crap your pants."

We all have our version of that story: an illness, an accident, a death, a tragedy, becoming a parent, a relationship...maybe for some of us it was just a matter of waking up each day and deciding to keep trying. Whatever it was, or is, you have to ask yourself: Is this really harder than THAT? Mentally, it is possible that it is, but when it comes down to it, if it is really what you want, would you trade going through that other thing a second time over this?

If it is your dream, and your motive is of pure origin, and you believe you have something, however small, to give to medicine, then why not keep trying?

If you care enough to be on this forum full of kind and intelligent people, and you are honest enough to admit your fears and worries, and self-reflective enough to wonder if you are doing the right things, then, at least in my humble experience, you have something to give, and however hard, I would not want you to give up.

KRS (drbeat14)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
This guy had to use a 50/50 and asked his dad for help on this college edition
 

Attachments

  • image.jpeg
    image.jpeg
    87.2 KB · Views: 94
  • image.jpeg
    image.jpeg
    103 KB · Views: 84
Upvote 0 Downvote
Both dad and son look as if there is either some incestuous ancestry tied in to cause those ******ed faces or maybe they guessed all the questions to that point.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The wording in this article on the front page of SDN is cracking me up! 🤣

"Patients whose physicians worked from midnight to 7 a.m. the night before a daytime operation were as likely to die... as other patients who had the same operations in the daytime from physicians who had not worked after midnight."

Honestly I just see this as a future excuse to wring as much work as possible out of an already-overworked surgeon. "It's okay Sarah, the research says you're not any more likely to kill tomorrow's Whipple if you're on call tonight. Just push through."
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Pediateix said:
I heard med school exams and the boards are easier than MCAT! It's more straight forward compared to MCAT
Click to expand...

According to couple of my friends (1 in a MD school, other in DO), those are more "study-able" and aren't as vague as the MCAT.
I'd love it if the MCAT was in the form of clinical vignettes instead of passages..like they have it in the med school exams. Oh well. Just gotta suck it up and do it i guess.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
11 days until scores for us 9/11 & 9/12 takers.

I honestly don't know if I should start studying for a retake. I got a 73% overall on the AAMC FL but something inside tells me not to be optimistic for a 508. Nothing catastrophic happened during test day either.

I'm even dropping my only class this post-graduate quarter in case I have to study for a retake. I'm about to turn 22 and I feel like I'm in the middle of undergraduate admissions again. Is it normal to feel this way? +pity+

Best of luck to us!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Dreamstoo said:
Just a heads up, it will likely be released before 6pm. I believe the Aug 5/6 scores were released around 8-9am but most this summer have been released around 3-5pm.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the heads up! I'm doing 6pm because I want to be at my computer at 6 and not worry about score not being posted. it's a trick I'm using not to get so obsessive...... Oh yes, I could be very OCD about this... It's already happening
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Pediateix said:
I heard med school exams and the boards are easier than MCAT! It's more straight forward compared to MCAT
Click to expand...

I don't think so. I've heard that it only gets harder. One of the reasons why the MCAT changed was because they wanted to prepare students for their boards. MCAT only has four answer choices, yet I believe the USMLE has more than six choices.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I honestly cannot help but feel so nervous and anxious. I hit a 500 on the last MCAT and I am just praying that this time went better :/

I studied all summer and hit the practice scores I wanted but there is just something inside me that is telling me that I will never overcome this test no matter how hard I try. I am SO nervous to get my score back (September 23 test taker).

Any tips to calm my nerves? Feeling as though everyday I get closer to test score release day I am going to face all impending doom. BLAH.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
So, just to be sure. If you log into AAMC to get my mcat scores, once you log in, you don't see anything, right? My score will be released 13th, but looking at my log in, there is nothing under most recent exams, score histroy, and important dates. Is this true for everyone else?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
HopefulPilot said:
By this point, I'm convinced I didn't break 500
Click to expand...

You shouldn't think that way, especially not when your practice tests and AAMC FL indicate otherwise. For all intents and purposes, you have to believe you got around what you were scoring leading up to the test. I think the outlier people who post averages of 510+ and end up scoring 504> would be doing this board a great service if they gave us feedback on what the heck happened to them (i.e. nerves, cheating on their practice tests, getting really unlucky and landing weakness passages, etc).

Someone on another thread said he spent 3 minutes contemplating voiding a 518. IMO, unless you guessed on over 50% of your questions or 9 passages in a given section was on material you covered but barely knew, you should be okay.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
PagingOrtho said:
I think we tend to feel that our scores exponentially decrease as we get closer to their release date.
Click to expand...
For the April test I didn't care cause I knew I scored far below average and I did. But now I'm nervous too cause it can go both ways again! I didn't track my practice test scores thoroughly. I just wanted 80% correct. And I think it was that during the aamc practice materials but j don't know:/
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
swollcat said:
You shouldn't think that way, especially not when your practice tests and AAMC FL indicate otherwise. For all intents and purposes, you have to believe you got around what you were scoring leading up to the test. I think the outlier people who post averages of 510+ and end up scoring 504> would be doing this board a great service if they gave us feedback on what the heck happened to them (i.e. nerves, cheating on their practice tests, getting really unlucky and landing weakness passages, etc).

Someone on another thread said he spent 3 minutes contemplating voiding a 518. IMO, unless you guessed on over 50% of your questions or 9 passages in a given section was on material you covered but barely knew, you should be okay.
Click to expand...

I've known people that have had this problem, and I also know that they did not get enough sleep and were extremely agitable during the exam itself. By contrast, even though I don't know how I did yet, I can say that I was extremely calm during the test, had excellent sleep the night before, and my body felt prepared to take on the day after working out as soon as I woke up before eating a good breakfast. I did not feel fatigue at all during the test, and I felt a general sense of well-being and optimism both before and after. I did have to speed up my pacing for the last 10 questions in C/P and the last 2 passages of CARS, but the C/P questions were fairly straightforward and did not require a lot of referring back to the passage. The last CARS passages were pretty straightforward. For the final half of the test, I had plenty of time because I paced myself a little better. The pacing issue has happened to me before in AAMC practice packs, but my performance has never really suffered as a result of it. It also helps that I knew all the topics I encountered on the exam fairly well.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Does anyone else feel like their performance improved on the test? Not like getting a significantly higher score or anything.

I felt like adrenaline really helped my performance on the test since it could have gone much worse. I only had ~4 hours of sleep the night before and didn't take a complete full length (I did EK 1,2,4 and the AAMC FL). I did like 3/4 of these tests (timed) and then came back the next day for the last 1-2 sections. I felt no fatigue throughout the test (except for the last part of P/S) and my focus was definitely on point.

I also used EK 101 Verbal and did ~10 one hour timed tests. Didn't really check my wrong answers in EK 101 since I was scoring well (~10) but it sure did help with the "timing nerves" and practice, obviously.

My timing was pretty good except I wasn't able to check my marked questions (I did check a few if I remember correctly).

I had a total of 73% correct on my AAMC FL and my endurance persisted on the real thing despite me not doing one full length in a whole sitting. I did do them timed and I guess the hour or two extra didn't really affect me. I'm in no way fully confident I did well and I'm nervous out of my mind for the 13th. However, the lack of bad things that happened during that test makes me feel better about my performance.

I'm just saying that if nothing catastrophic happened on test day (unfinished questions, frozen in anxiety, etc), you should be scoring around what the predictor states (both of them).

Thoughts? Anyone?

BTW: I don't condone not doing your full lengths completely in one sitting!
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
I read somewhere around sdn that this year, it's possible that we'll be scoring higher than we would've scored if we took the MCAT next year. I even recall someone quoting AAMC stating something along that line.
Probably just speculation. Nevertheless, i'm gonna pretend/hope that AAMC will magically bump us up a couple of pity points for being the guinea-pigs this year 🙂
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz said:
Does anyone else feel like their performance improved on the test? Not like getting a significantly higher score or anything.

I felt like adrenaline really helped my performance on the test since it could have gone much worse. I only had ~4 hours of sleep the night before and didn't take a complete full length (I did EK 1,2,4 and the AAMC FL). I did like 3/4 of these tests (timed) and then came back the next day for the last 1-2 sections. I felt no fatigue throughout the test (except for the last part of P/S) and my focus was definitely on point.

I also used EK 101 Verbal and did ~10 one hour timed tests. Didn't really check my wrong answers in EK 101 since I was scoring well (~10) but it sure did help with the "timing nerves" and practice, obviously.

My timing was pretty good except I wasn't able to check my marked questions (I did check a few if I remember correctly).

I had a total of 73% correct on my AAMC FL and my endurance persisted on the real thing despite me not doing one full length in a whole sitting. I did do them timed and I guess the hour or two extra didn't really affect me. I'm in no way fully confident I did well and I'm nervous out of my mind for the 13th. However, the lack of bad things that happened during that test makes me feel better about my performance.

I'm just saying that if nothing catastrophic happened on test day (unfinished questions, frozen in anxiety, etc), you should be scoring around what the predictor states (both of them).

Thoughts? Anyone?

BTW: I don't condone not doing your full lengths completely in one sitting!
Click to expand...

Same here. The sections were timed, but I'd take a 1-2 hour break between each section lol.
I'd typically be extremely grumpy and easily distracted if I were to get less than 8 hours of sleep, but on Test Day, I had only gotten 4 hours as well and was extremely focused.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Kariim said:
Same here. The sections were timed, but I'd take a 1-2 hour break between each section lol.
I'd typically be extremely grumpy and easily distracted if I were to get less than 8 hours of sleep, but on Test Day, I had only gotten 4 hours as well and was extremely focused.
Click to expand...

AH! Same here! lmao I swear test day brings out the best (in our case) or the worst in people.

​
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

mjo9943
MCAT Advice
Replies
2
Views
2K
Janilla
J
LMAGZ
MCAT Advice
Replies
2
Views
1K
Rachapkis
Rachapkis
S
MCAT Study Buddy Houston
Replies
0
Views
226
scubaanj
S
Lifeanddreams
  • Question Question
MCAT Study Guide
Replies
1
Views
2K
SenatorTractor
SenatorTractor
P
MCAT Prep Advice
Replies
4
Views
3K
BerkReviewTeach
B
Top