We will survive!!

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CoffeeCat

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All right, there have been a lot of depressing posts about people being unsure of their MCAT ability. This thread is for uplifting posts only - post your favorite inspirational quotes, stories that made you want to succeed, or for those who have already taken the MCAT, how you overcame bad practice scores and self-doubt.

Let's hear it for the August MCATters!!

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I took the August MCAT two years ago and I did fine. The important thing to remember is this:

RELAX and HAVE FUN. Just look around the room and say to yourself "I bet half the people here are pissing in their pants and the other half have ulcers. I'm the only normal, well-adjusted person in the room. I will do fine. I may not know the answer to every question, but I bet I know more answers than these poor shmucks."
 
i took the august exam last year and did awesome. I realized its all about your mentality. Just be confident in yourself and be CALM.
 
I had been taking Kaplan for a while and I was having the hardest time getting the scores where I wanted to be.

Then finally, one day I went in to a test and said to myself....SCREW THIS...I am going to take this bull by the horns and throw it bloody on the mat. EVERY time I had a hard question that I was focusing too much on, I would think this to myself. It motivated me. It inspired me. I almost saw myself becoming viscious during the test, skipping hard questions, skipping hard passages....I was beating the MCAT beast and i knew it. . . .Then, right in the middle of the test, I decided to come up iwth my own technique. I stopped reading PS and BS passages. I was so motivated, I went straight for the questions. For about 75 percent of those questions, I found, I hardly even needed to read the damn passage. That bought me time. I would snicker as I realized this little secret and wondered if anybody had even thought of it. The beast was being beaten over and over. By the time i was done with the test, I thought this was the hardest test ever. But I was brave enough to look at my score. If i hadn't done well this time, I thought, there's no hope.

That same evening, I found out my score had jumped from 7, 7 7 to 8, 12, 12. Until then, I had never dared to imagine a 12 for either of the scienecs. I remember calling my fiancee that evening and telling him to pick me up and take me out into the mountains for a ride. That is perhaps the most "FREEDOM" I ever felt in my entire MCAT studies. As I had walked in, I had told myself to remain calm, be free from worries..free from any negative thoughts. I told myself that at the end of it, it's either going to be me or the MCAT b****. You can guess who won. :)

I really want you all to remember and be inspired by the fruits you are going to gain from being a physician, and remind yourselves WHY you are doing this in the first place. Don't think of the MCAT as an obstacle that is going to devour you. Think of it as a respectable challenge, a little puzzle, that you have to solve so you can attain your big dream.
 
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Most of the time you do not need the passage to answer science questions. Soetimes, they would have however comprehension questions. BS is famous for that. Very ofthen they would have different inhibitors actions of which is inhibited by something else and a person would have to follow the logic throughout thje passage.
 
It's just a multiple choice test. The correct answer is given to you for EVERY question; all you have to do is find and pick it.
 
Originally posted by DrLady
Thats right, that the correct answers are given, but its difficult to do that. For me, when i do the science passages, i just get scared looking at the graphs and tables! Somehow, i have hard time comprehending those and answering the questions regarding them.

It is no doubt difficult, otherwise everyone would get perfect raw scores. But the point is to keep it in perspective, especially on those diffcult questions. Only one of the answer choices best fits the data in the table. Rather than trying to answer the question, eliminate graphs that don't fit the data. Graphs come in only a few flavors: linear, exponential, asymptotic, sigmoidal, sinusoidal, and cherry-vanilla.

Focus on picking a best answer, not on a deep understanding of the experiment.
 
Thanks for all of the responses so far! Two of the things that keep me going are 1) it's something that was already mentioned before...that the correct answers are THERE. Every answer (except for writing) has the "right" answer following the question somewhere, it's just a matter of finding it. And 2) one of my fav quotes -

"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?"

Robert Schuller
 
Who sang "I'll survive", back in 70's?

a. bob ross
b. diana ross
c. jimi hendrix
d. "others"


:laugh:
 
in just a few short weeks it'll all be over.
WOO HOO!!!! :clap:
 
Originally posted by djjj08
Who sang "I'll survive", back in 70's?

a. bob ross
b. diana ross
c. jimi hendrix
d. "others"


:laugh:

ummmmmmmmmmm....WELLLLLllll...if the correct answer is always there then I guess it must be "others" as the 1978 original release of "I will Survive" was sung by Gloria Gaynor!!

Diana Ross did release a version in 1995, which frankly was a waste of time considering the original was still better.

Jimi Hendrix has never released a version of "I will survive".

I have no idea who Bob Ross is.

So...if they had a section on Disco on the MCAT I would evidently be much higher scoring...
 
Originally posted by lola
in just a few short weeks it'll all be over.
WOO HOO!!!! :clap:

It's funny...even though I'm behind on studying, I don't at all wish for an extra study week. I can't wait for it to be over!
 
Originally posted by CoffeeCat


It's funny...even though I'm behind on studying, I don't at all wish for an extra study week. I can't wait for it to be over!

Okay coffeecat - two things

1. when i originally tried registering for this thing i made up some random screenname based on the two main things in my life - only to find that the screenname "CoffeeCat" had already been taken....

2. i'm also behind on studying, and with organic going the way it is, it looks like i need to spend time on that so I won't get caught up anytime soon...so I definitely *would* like an extra weeks studying :(
 
Hey are we the same person?!?

I am doing terribly at ochem right now. In fact, I just took a mini-test (for ochem only ) and got a 5! A 5!! However, I am confident that three weeks is enough to grasp the material and there's no way I'd want to put myself through more mcat prep time.



By the way, I used to work at the coffeecat!
 
i have the 2001 pr science wkbk, and i actually found all the explanations to be great. i used kaplan's topical tests last time (for april), and their explanations always seemed to be about half a page long. not to dis kaplan or anything, of course (they are my employer and all) ;)
 
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