I"m so glad I saw this post tonight, it is super inspiring. I've been "studying" since March 22, but the kaplan class was garbage, and really been hitting it hardcore (20-30 hours per week) for maybe only the past month. My MCAT is on August 2, and I need to hit a 35 to compensate for my poor ugrad gpa 5+ years ago. I have never broken a 32 which was AAMC 7 last Thursday (10,10,12). This evening I took AAMC 3 and got a 31 (11,11,9!) and I was super upset. I'm like 15 days from my test and consistently scoring around a 30. I'm super happy to read your post and for your luck, skill, and achievment. I hope I can reproduce it on test day! I started getting up at 6am this week to prepare my body for test day also. If you have any other tips that would be awesome! GL this cycle!
Glad to hear this! After I took all my practice tests, I always knew somehow my final score would be greater than my practice scores. I desperately searched Student Doctor to see if this happened to anyone, and sure enough, there were a couple instances where this did happen. This really gave me the hope I needed to have that confidence on test day.
As for more tips on the MCAT, man I have a lot haha. I apologize for what I'm about to regurgitate, but I wanted to tell someone before I forget. Off the top of my head:
- Write down all the physical science formulas you have trouble remembering. Before you take the test, put these formulas on your phone or a sheet of paper and review them (depends on the test center whether you can read stuff before the test. If that's the case, then review them before you leave your car or house). This way, the formulas will be in your short-term memory. When you get to that 10min tutorial, dump all those formulas from your brain onto the scratch sheet. As our exam was intensely calculation heavy, I ended up being saved on two formulas with this method.
- I remember there are two 10 or 5 minute periods (for tutorial and exam agreement/confirm your name) before the physical science starts. Use these periods to calm your nerves down. You're usually very anxious before the test, but I found once I sat down, my nerves started to slowly die down. I used 90% of the time in these two periods to calm my ass down even more.
- This sounds really dumb, but it works. Train your bladder. You have no idea what could happen come test day. What I did was during my practice exams, I would drink some source of caffeine (as its a diuretic) then drink like 2 cups of water every break. This made me need to pee near the end of each section. In the end I ended up learning how to hold it in and focus out the urge to urinate. Also, always take the break to go to the bathroom. Unless you've been studying in the desert, 127 Hours style, then everyone is bound to have to go after a while.
- Kind of a repeat of what I said in my score report, but whatever. Don't ever let your test scores ruin your confidence. Three days before I took my test, I got a 30 on AAMC #11. Although I was disappointed at first, I realized how lucky I was to catch these mistakes now then never. After my post-game analysis, I realized the mistake I made. And whadya know, a similar question popped up that I would have gotten wrong had it not been for AAMC #11.
- Like what h2med said, absolutely make sure you go over the topics lists sometime before the test. I never really focused on genes too in detail until the last week when I saw it was on the topics list, but whatdya know, our BS section had a bunch of specific genetic questions.
