Mcat In Less Than A Week: Help!

[spotsanddots]

Okay, so this is the situation (writing on September 10):

 

Scoring mid to high 20's (27-29) on practice aamc tests. Have been steadily improving over practice tests, scoring higher on each one, but frustrated that I can't break the 30 mark yet (last aamc test 7 got 10 in PS and BS, 8 in VB ---> 2 pts from a 10 in VB, could've gotten higher in sciences if not for silly mistakes). Trying to contain my steadily rising panic. Just finished checking over aamc test 8 (felt this was a harder one compared to the rest so dropped a bit on this one). Plan for the remaining days is to work on science passages in weak areas, redo earlier aamc tests to work on test-taking strategy and review a bit.

 

Any suggestions on what to do? Do you guys think passages at this point is the way to go vs. content review? Should I redo the aamc tests?

 

Want to try to keep this test date but wondering if I should change my test date? Can I improve my score in 5 days?

 

 

REALLY WANT TO SCORE AT LEAST A 30!!!!! ANY HELP IS APPRECIATED!!!

[thsc]

I don't think you should redo the tests. It's not reflective of your performance. The key is to spend a lot of time going through the tests after you do them and go through every single answer and figure out exactly why you got it wrong. It's easy to say 'oh...i'm not sure why i got this one wrong, it was so obvious'. Really nail down why you got it worng, were you too slow? were you careless? is your content weak? Then, write down the reason for getting each question wrong and figure out what you could have done differently to get it correct. Then when you look at your reasons for each section, you'll notice patterns and tackle those issues. 

 

I never did well on the practice AAMCs, and did much better on the real thing than those tests, not because the real thing was easier (it was much tougher), but because I spent a lot of time analyzing my mistakes and figuring out what I needed to do differently to avoid them on the real test. For me, it was not an issue with content weakness. For you, it may be an issue with content, but you really have to dig deep into your mistakes and figure out why you are making those mistakes.