What do I do? Not improving :(

[7ec13]

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My MCAT is in a week, and I've been doing full lengths since the end of June. I saw a jump in my scores at the very beginning, after reviewing all the material again when I finished the TPR course, but since then my scores have plateaued. It's very discouraging, cause I'm going over the tests afterward, and reviewing areas that I'm weak in, but still not seeing any improvement. Right now I'm scoring 31/32 (took AAMC 11 today and got 10/10/11) which doesn't seem high enough for many schools (I'm Canadian, so there's a limited number of schools that I've applied to).

So I guess my question is, have I basically reached my best? I haven't seen improvement since the beginning of July (except for a random fluke on AAMc 5 where I got 37), despite reviewing and practicing. Is it possible to raise my score at all? Because this constant plateau is really discouraging and I'm wondering if it's even worth it to keep studying so hard...

 

[shaboobly]

content plateau? maybe you should understand why you get a question wrong instead of just checking or correct or not. if you score around the same every time, there is something you keep doing in every test, whether it be stupid mistakes or over analyzing a question.

 

[7ec13]

content plateau? maybe you should understand why you get a question wrong instead of just checking or correct or not. if you score around the same every time, there is something you keep doing in every test, whether it be stupid mistakes or over analyzing a question.

That's the thing. I AM reviewing the explanations to see what I did wrong. Sometimes I understand why I've done it wrong, and sometimes it's a small math error (not that often) and sometimes I just have no idea how they got to that explanation. Sometimes I just don't understand the passage, so I've done lots of extra passage practice. But I really thought that by now my scores would have gone up, at least a little.

 

[picassoo]

I had my first MCAT area/nightmare yesterday too: / It almost feels like a bad joke, I was close to opening my scores and then I woke up. I'm just going to do something fun this weekend to take my mind off of everything. What is everyone up to? Also, is anyone signing up for a retake? Because I think I am tomorrow....I don't want to sign up for one after scores come out, because I feel that spots will be taken up super fast.

 

[shaboobly]

I had my first MCAT area/nightmare yesterday too: / It almost feels like a bad joke, I was close to opening my scores and then I woke up. I'm just going to do something fun this weekend to take my mind off of everything. What is everyone up to? Also, is anyone signing up for a retake? Because I think I am tomorrow....I don't want to sign up for one after scores come out, because I feel that spots will be taken up super fast.

i took it on 5/19 and am retaking on 8/4

 

[gtbROX]

Are you getting the same topics wrong or different ones? If you're getting different ones wrong, be sure to also read and do example problems in the chapter of your review books relating to that topic.

 

[BABSstudent]

My MCAT is in a week, and I've been doing full lengths since the end of June. I saw a jump in my scores at the very beginning, after reviewing all the material again when I finished the TPR course, but since then my scores have plateaued. It's very discouraging, cause I'm going over the tests afterward, and reviewing areas that I'm weak in, but still not seeing any improvement. Right now I'm scoring 31/32 (took AAMC 11 today and got 10/10/11) which doesn't seem high enough for many schools (I'm Canadian, so there's a limited number of schools that I've applied to).

So I guess my question is, have I basically reached my best? I haven't seen improvement since the beginning of July (except for a random fluke on AAMc 5 where I got 37), despite reviewing and practicing. Is it possible to raise my score at all? Because this constant plateau is really discouraging and I'm wondering if it's even worth it to keep studying so hard...

Don't just worry about the score, find out why you are getting questions wrong. I found that I improved my score by finding out why I got the question wrong. One of my biggest problems was switching from a correct answer to an incorrect one. I decided to quit switching my answer until I was 100% sure the other one was correct and not just a gut feeling and I raised my score 2 points. I also found that I constantly missed "NOT" type questions. I would instantly pick the first true one and ignore the true right (the wrong) answer. I started to focus on finding those questions and raised my score another 2 points. That raised my score 4 points, with no content review.

Of course you will also have content issues when you take the test. If you get a question wrong, review the stuff in your books. There is a reason why you got it wrong. Don't be easy on yourself for this process.

In short, I raised an average practice score of 28 to an average practice score of 33 by analyzing the questions.