Should I cancel my test?

[Lolaaa]

Hi guys, so my exam is on Jan 21 and I'm not sure if I'll be able to achieve +510 score by then. First TPR FL 493, then studied for 2 weeks and scored 504 on Blueprint FL1. Currently, I've been doing UWorld everyday(so far I did 300 questions) and Anki. Do you guys think I can reach the 510? I cancelled my exam many times in the past cuz I wasn't ready and I've been dragging studying for so long which makes me on the edge of a burn out Any advices would be really appreciate it.

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[deleted1079620]

You need to take an AAMC full length practice test and decide based on that score. If you’re not getting anywhere in the range of 512-515 on practice tests, it’s highly unlikely you’ll score a 510 on test day. Nerves will usually lead to a 2-5 point drop from practice scores alone.

 

[Lolaaa]

You needs to take an AAMC full length practice test and decide based on that score. If you’re not getting anywhere in the range of 512-515 on practice tests, it’s highly unlikely you’ll score a 510 on test day. Nerves will usually lead to a 2-5 point drop from practice scores alone.

That's true, thanks for replying! Do you think I should take an AAMC FL next week or is it too early? I was gonna take a third party practice test next week

 

[deleted1079620]

That's true, thanks for replying! Do you think I should take an AAMC FL next week or is it too early? I was gonna take a third party practice test next week

Whenever you want, but in order to assess how you will perform and an AAMC exam (the MCAT), you should use AAMC FLs.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

I recommend taking one per week until test day. There's 5 AAMC full length exams so I'd start doing them by next week, starting with the sample test.

Kevin W, MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[ScrubswithnoSleeves]

That's true, thanks for replying! Do you think I should take an AAMC FL next week or is it too early? I was gonna take a third party practice test next week

Definitely take the sample test asap, and take it in testing conditions. 8 am in close to complete silence (i dont remember what time it was lol). The AAMC FLs are the ONLY metrics you should use to predict your performance. 504 is not bad for January testing date. My score on the AAMC FLs went up dramatically each exam.

Take the sample and review it heavily. I usually took an exam, then went over it briefly that day, then just relaxed and did my anki. Then I would spend as long as I needed reviewing each section. I think I usually took 4 days after each exam for review and do extra practice, but for the first one I spent an entire week. on the review days, I also did a bunch of practice questions in the relevant section. Reviewing gets easier after each test because 1. you get less wrong and 2. you know what mistakes to look out for. Also, don't be afraid to take the tests more than once. Just don't get too excited when you destroy them on your second go haha.

For scheduling the remaining tests, you want to make sure you don't take too long of a break between your final one and the real deal. On test day, it should be muscle memory at that point. there were 4 FLs when I took the exam, so I spread them out over 4 weeks with my actual exam being 6 days after the fourth exam.

 

[Lolaaa]

Thank you all for replying! that was really helpful

 

[Lolaaa]

Definitely take the sample test asap, and take it in testing conditions. 8 am in close to complete silence (i dont remember what time it was lol). The AAMC FLs are the ONLY metrics you should use to predict your performance. 504 is not bad for January testing date. My score on the AAMC FLs went up dramatically each exam.

Take the sample and review it heavily. I usually took an exam, then went over it briefly that day, then just relaxed and did my anki. Then I would spend as long as I needed reviewing each section. I think I usually took 4 days after each exam for review and do extra practice, but for the first one I spent an entire week. on the review days, I also did a bunch of practice questions in the relevant section. Reviewing gets easier after each test because 1. you get less wrong and 2. you know what mistakes to look out for. Also, don't be afraid to take the tests more than once. Just don't get too excited when you destroy them on your second go haha.

For scheduling the remaining tests, you want to make sure you don't take too long of a break between your final one and the real deal. On test day, it should be muscle memory at that point. there were 4 FLs when I took the exam, so I spread them out over 4 weeks with my actual exam being 6 days after the fourth exam.

This might be unrelated to the thread but I would appreciate to hear your advice. So I always have trouble in calculations questions like dividing and multiplying numbers with sig figs for chem and physics. I spend alot of time trying to do long divisions and multiplying numbers with 4 digits for example. Do you recommend any practice or a method I can follow to improve?

 

[ScrubswithnoSleeves]

This might be unrelated to the thread but I would appreciate to hear your advice. So I always have trouble in calculations questions like dividing and multiplying numbers with sig figs for chem and physics. I spend alot of time trying to do long divisions and multiplying numbers with 4 digits for example. Do you recommend any practice or a method I can follow to improve?

Yes absolutely. Idk what materials you have, but the Kaplan physics and math book (the most valuable book in the series IMO) goes over this in detail. I am also sure there are tons of methods doing this online

For the math, you should be strategically rounding all of the numbers during calculations. So you glance at the answers and look at how similar the answers are. if the answers are wildly different, you can round super heavily during calculations. For example, I see the answers are 8.533, 102.098, 1233.766, and 0.555, I can round the numbers they give me tremendously and just go with the closest answer. IE the question asks 192.776x6.390, I can just do 200*6 = 1200, and bam. Obviously it will be notably more complicated, but this just demonstrates this method's efficacy in saving time.

There are tons more strategies they teach in that Kaplan phys and math book so check it out. It's the last few chapters in the book. You can definitely find these books online for free if you don't have them/ want to pay for them. I used a website that had them all on there, but I have lost that to time, unfortunately.

Finally, after making sure to incorporate those strategies, the answer is to do a f@ckload of practice problems. You just start getting a gut feeling for what the answer should be. I wish I could still do mental math as I could do on the MCAT. I took stats the semester after taking it and could literally do the problems in my head bc it was multiple choice.

Edit:
last thing. I had trouble with doing this, but you also need to get good at identifying questions that will simply just take you too much time to be worth doing on a first pass, flagging them, and skipping them. This was really tough for me lol, but you gotta do it. Chances are if you think its too hard, so will the other test takers, and they will either waste time doing it and miss out on easy Q's or just get the question wrong. Remember, you don't need to outrun the bear (MCAT), you just need to outrun your friend (the other test-takers).

Feel free to reach out. I am happy to help. Sorry for the late reply as well, I am just not that active on here anymore and SDN stopped sending me emails for some reason.

 

[Lolaaa]

Yes absolutely. Idk what materials you have, but the Kaplan physics and math book (the most valuable book in the series IMO) goes over this in detail. I am also sure there are tons of methods doing this online

For the math, you should be strategically rounding all of the numbers during calculations. So you glance at the answers and look at how similar the answers are. if the answers are wildly different, you can round super heavily during calculations. For example, I see the answers are 8.533, 102.098, 1233.766, and 0.555, I can round the numbers they give me tremendously and just go with the closest answer. IE the question asks 192.776x6.390, I can just do 200*6 = 1200, and bam. Obviously it will be notably more complicated, but this just demonstrates this method's efficacy in saving time.

There are tons more strategies they teach in that Kaplan phys and math book so check it out. It's the last few chapters in the book. You can definitely find these books online for free if you don't have them/ want to pay for them. I used a website that had them all on there, but I have lost that to time, unfortunately.

Finally, after making sure to incorporate those strategies, the answer is to do a f@ckload of practice problems. You just start getting a gut feeling for what the answer should be. I wish I could still do mental math as I could do on the MCAT. I took stats the semester after taking it and could literally do the problems in my head bc it was multiple choice.

Edit:
last thing. I had trouble with doing this, but you also need to get good at identifying questions that will simply just take you too much time to be worth doing on a first pass, flagging them, and skipping them. This was really tough for me lol, but you gotta do it. Chances are if you think its too hard, so will the other test takers, and they will either waste time doing it and miss out on easy Q's or just get the question wrong. Remember, you don't need to outrun the bear (MCAT), you just need to outrun your friend (the other test-takers).

Feel free to reach out. I am happy to help. Sorry for the late reply as well, I am just not that active on here anymore and SDN stopped sending me emails for some reason.

omg thank you so much! that was so helpful! 😊

 

[HouseJC]

For full disclosure, I am not an MCAT god. Got 512 (129/127/128/128), so take my advice with a grain of salt, just my .02.

I agree with the above posters. AAMC has 5 tests (sample + 4 FLs), so with roughly about 6 weeks left, it's a good time you start taking the FLs in the very near future (maybe even this weekend). You want some wiggle room in case life happens or you get tired due to burnout/fatigue during the last stretch of studying. The FLs have immense value, as when you review your tests, track where you go wrong to avoid making repeat mistake(s). Normally, I wrote my tests on Saturday morning (test conditions), chilled at night and reviewed thoroughly on Sunday. After I saw where I was making mistakes and where I had knowledge gaps, I targeted those sections with more UWorld and Anki. Rinse and repeat.

Not sure if you bought other AAMC materials, but figured be safe and sorry and recommend that you complete the section banks for all sections. CARs Question Packs 1 and 2 are also gold, but the question packs for the sciences can be skipped (assuming you are doing decent there).

Last but not least, I don't think it matters the order that you write the mock FLs in. Some Reddit users say that certain FLs are harder than other ones, which I respect. But on test day, you will have no clue what questions/topics will show up, so might as well grab the bull by the horns.

Good luck!

 

[Lolaaa]

For full disclosure, I am not an MCAT god. Got 512 (129/127/128/128), so take my advice with a grain of salt, just my .02.

I agree with the above posters. AAMC has 5 tests (sample + 4 FLs), so with roughly about 6 weeks left, it's a good time you start taking the FLs in the very near future (maybe even this weekend). You want some wiggle room in case life happens or you get tired due to burnout/fatigue during the last stretch of studying. The FLs have immense value, as when you review your tests, track where you go wrong to avoid making repeat mistake(s). Normally, I wrote my tests on Saturday morning (test conditions), chilled at night and reviewed thoroughly on Sunday. After I saw where I was making mistakes and where I had knowledge gaps, I targeted those sections with more UWorld and Anki. Rinse and repeat.

Not sure if you bought other AAMC materials, but figured be safe and sorry and recommend that you complete the section banks for all sections. CARs Question Packs 1 and 2 are also gold, but the question packs for the sciences can be skipped (assuming you are doing decent there).

Last but not least, I don't think it matters the order that you write the mock FLs in. Some Reddit users say that certain FLs are harder than other ones, which I respect. But on test day, you will have no clue what questions/topics will show up, so might as well grab the bull by the horns.

Good luck!

Thank you so much! I'll def start taking those AAMC tests

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

If you want to do well on the MCAT, and are willing to put the time in, then you need to do way more practice questions than what you've done. Plan to do the following:

5000 to 6000 practice questions from your review books/materials
800 questions from AAMC materials (not counting FLs)
2300 questions from 10 FLs

The best average scores I have seen over the years come from people who do and review 8000 to 10,000 practice questions. I had a student a couple years ago improve from a 502 (her first time she took a course and studied the review books and watched her course videos) up to 517 (using a question-based review and she asked for explanations to any questions she didn't understand). He improvement reflects how important it is to do questions and learn from them.

 

[Lolaaa]

If you want to do well on the MCAT, and are willing to put the time in, then you need to do way more practice questions than what you've done. Plan to do the following:

5000 to 6000 practice questions from your review books/materials
800 questions from AAMC materials (not counting FLs)
2300 questions from 10 FLs

The best average scores I have seen over the years come from people who do and review 8000 to 10,000 practice questions. I had a student a couple years ago improve from a 502 (her first time she took a course and studied the review books and watched her course videos) up to 517 (using a question-based review and she asked for explanations to any questions she didn't understand). He improvement reflects how important it is to do questions and learn from them.

Thank you for replying. Yes, I do realize that the more I do questions, the better I get. The only thing is that my time is limited like I wouldn't be able to do all UWorld questions by the time my exam comes up. I've done however Princeton's workbook questions (I think they equal to 200) and I've done AAMC section bank and Q pack (except for CARS). I know there's always the option of postponing the test to March but I'm trying to not delay it anymore. I'll be taking my first AAMC FL tomorrow and see if there's a chance for me to do well in Jan.

 

[JimKimSlim]

I think it's doable. When I took my AAMC FL's, I started with 512 at FL1 and ended with 520 at FL2 (8-point increase). The key here is that you absolutely HAVE to review your mistakes between exams thoroughly. Learn from your mistakes, review questions that you got right but felt confusing, and definitely use Anki for memorization-heavy contents (pentose phosphate pathway, orgo synthesis techniques, etc).