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My MCAT Advice


A  month ago (sorry it's taken so long! -- med school), I posted a blog about all the things that I wish I had known when I applied to medical school. In that blog, I promised to go into a little more detail about the things that I did to improve my MCAT by over 35 percentile (like 11 points). So, I'm going to give y'all a short little spiel on the 5 gems that I used to jump my MCAT score.


1. Kaplan Course

I said this in my last blog, and I'll say this again: just take it. Just fork over the money. It's expensive, yes. But it is worth it. One of the biggest struggles that I had with this exam (besides just simply reviewing content) was that I didn't know how to really take the exam in the first place. The small class size of my undergraduate university facilitate higher order thinking and allowed for essay and open-ended question based exams. So, I became very good at explaining my thinking process and ideas behind my answers but not so good at the logic behind multiple choice exams. This class really helped me get behind the logical process of taking a multiple choice exam -- which wasn't even something I had previously thought about. 



2. Routine

I made taking the MCAT a routine. I was scheduled to take my MCAT on a Saturday. So, every Saturday for about 2 months I took the MCAT. I set up on the quite floor in the library and in a cubicle to mimic the testing environment. I wore the same outfit. I made the same lunch. And then I went on with my day. I MADE the MCAT a routine. This took away the anxiety of taking a test. It took away the decision making of what I was going to eat and what I was going to wear. I basically didn't have to do ANY thinking about anything else besides taking the test. I had all my ducks in a row, every single Saturday. And it's scary, but this test basically became a normal for me. 


3. Testing Endurance

Let's be honest. The MCAT sucks. Seriously, sitting there for 7.5 hours in a high stress environment with short choppy breaks where you don't even get all the time you want because you're waiting in line to go through fingerprints and metal detectors. NO. FUN. But like I said, I took this test every weekend. I built up my mental endurance. By doing it over and over, I somehow tricked my brain into thinking that sitting down for 7.5 hours to just straight up think about everything I knew felt normal and wasn't really exhausting. This part made a HUGE difference for me especially when it came to the sociology and psychology section, or the last section of the test. The first times that I took the test, I found myself rushing through the last section, wanting to get out of there as fast as possible, and even falling asleep at times. By building my endurance, I completely eliminated this struggle.



4. VIDEOS

I literally watched allllll the videos. After taking the exams every weekend, I looked at all the topics that I was struggling with and spent the next week watching videos on those topics. Sometimes, I even put the videos on 1.75x or 2x the speed to get through them quicker. Passively reading about the topics wasn't really doing it for me. So, sitting down, listening, and watching someone explain it to me really help solidify things in my mind. This helped for quick recall of topics that I had already been taught in my college classes and needed refreshers on. It also helped with learning things for first order or definition questions, which in turn helped me better understand passages I was reading on the exams.

5. Quick Sheets

When my brain got tired of doing brain things, I wanted to do something relatively mindless. So, I took the Kaplan MCAT quick sheets for each subject and literally just copied down everything. I rewrote and redrew everything on those sheets in pretty colors that I enjoyed looking at, and then put them in a little binder. Then during the week of and the morning of the exam, I just skimmed through them and admired my work. It helped jog my memory throughout the week and wake up my brain the morning of (so that the exam was the first time my brain was stimulated that entire day). --- maybe I can upload pictures of this masterpiece later!


Again, I'm sorry I didn't post this sooner! My first month of medical school has been wild. I hope this helped you! If you have ANY questions, please don't hesitate to email me!!

Happy studying 💛 

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