Need to write the MCAT for a third time

[TRU1243]

Hello everyone,

Long story short, I need to write the MCAT for a third time. First time I wrote was in 2020 in August and I scored a 508 (126,123,129,130). I felt pretty confident that I could improve CARS and the C/P section and get above a 510 (I am hoping to get anything above a 514). But then life got in the way. I was studying for my second MCAT, which I was scheduled to write in July, and I got a concussion a week before my exam. Ended up having to postpone my exam to the end of August and safe to say, August might have been the most stressful/worse month of my life. I ended up being able to reschedule (which was stressful to do given the limited seating) and I wrote this past August. I thought everything went well but alas, I did worse than my first time, getting a 505 (127,124,127,127). Basically, my Bio/Psych sections let me down because I did improve on CARS and C/P.

Now I am preparing to write in March but I am a bit lost when it comes to how I should prepare. The AAMC practice exams are all going to be super familiar so when I do them, they will be inflated (I've got a good memory). The fact that new AAMC practice tests are released more frequently kind of annoys me but that is a different issue.

From what I have read, it seems like the only thing I can do is just do as many practice passages, question banks, ANKI cue cards I can do in the next 3-4 months. The bright side of this situation is that the content is pretty familiar and doesn't take that long for me to review.

Any advice from those who have needed to write multiple times.

Thank you for any advice

[zoxy]

On 11/24/2021 at 10:11 PM, TRU1243 said:

Any advice from those who have needed to write multiple times.

If you haven't done UWorld then do UWorld. It's rather expensive but very fair for the amount of content that's on there. IMO, it's far and away the best prep. Since you've already exhausted AAMC, I'd use UWorld.

Know the Amino Acids like the back of your hand. The prep book content is enough for almost everything except for the Biochem section so I would use additional sources for the Biochem. I personally  used Uworld's explanations and re-read the sections of Lehninger's that were on the MCAT.

Also the pdfs that are floating around the internet are very useful. The lab methods one and the Khan Academy for the Psych/Sosc are worth their weight in gold. Lab methods in particular is super important and isn't well taught in prep-books or university classes and is very high yield.

Also don't get bogged down into memorizing every single bio and biochem fact by using Anki. There's a lot of high yield stuff, like enzyme kinetics, that is more important than those little facts. You're gonna miss little fact questions and you can still get a great score.

For CARS, I felt that most MCAT prep material was poor and their strategies weren't great, even UWorlds. I personally just used the AAMC CARS material and old LSAT tests. LSAT reading comprehension is similar but more difficult. Just do a bunch of them and you'll subconsciously get better and improve your reading speed. Try to do them timed as slow reading speed is something that gets people in trouble with the real MCAT.