How Amanda went from 506 to 520 on the MCAT

Sep 29, 2020

Welcome, this blog post is going to be a Question and Answer session with one of our students who had purchased our course and had drastically improved her MCAT score. We will be covering information about how she studied before, what she did differently after going through our course, and her advice/recommendations for students planning on writing the MCAT

Q1 - Can you tell us how you prepared for the MCAT during your first attempt?

Sure, so yeah first time I wrote it, it was just horrible. The thing is that I spent around 8 hrs per day studying, I purchased some books on Amazon and since I had done well in my premed classes, I figured I can just sit down and figure this test out and prepared for it. Boy was I wrong, because I was definitely not prepared for this exam. The thing that I later realized, is the MCAT is literally not like any other exam that I had studied for in my university classes. It’s 8 hours long (5 hrs for the lucky ones in 2020) but still it’s a pretty long and difficult exam to get through. Also, I figured that by knowing my concepts well enough I could be able to answer any question on the MCAT but the passage-based questions on the MCAT is a real challenge. Overall, I studied and did my practice exams but when it came to actually writing my test, I really bombed it and that showed up in my 68th percentile.

Q2 - What was your biggest struggles when it came to studying?

Personally, I am a student that loves to follow a specific order, that is why I was able to prepare for my uni classes easily because of the course outline that we would receive during the beginning of the semester. When it came to the MCAT, you are basically told a bunch of stuff that you need to know for the test and a few practice exams online. So for me, I really was looking for a more hands on approach when it came to learning/reviewing the content and then having someone walk me through questions and the reasoning behind them. I remember when I was studying by myself, I would attempt a question and if I got it wrong, the justification was not clear enough for me to understand it, which is why I was confused a lot of times. Going through the video explanations in your course really made a difference in my learning and understanding of what was being taught.

Q3 - What did you change about your studying and approach to the MCAT after taking our course?

Well one of the most important things I learned was exactly how to breakdown questions and figure out the correct answer options from it. I think for many students, when it comes to the MCAT they are just confused because either their understanding of the concepts are not strong enough or they do not know how to break down a question. Also, before I had a habit of rewriting my notes and thinking that was studying, but that was completely wrong. Now I realized that active learning is far more important than passive learning. With that said, I focused on actually trying to understand what I am learning, mostly by making stories around the different concepts/theories that was related to me, allowing me to recall it easier. I would also like to mention the importance of mnemonics and making stories out of concepts to be able to remember it easily.

Q4 - How were the lecture videos and notes in the course?

One of my favorite part of the course was definitely the structure. Everyday I woke up and I knew exactly what videos and chapters I had to complete for that day. I was taking the course during my university semester, so balancing everything was a bit difficult. I took the 90 day schedule for my prep, which was just a few hours a day and then once I had completed my exams, I was able to put more time into doing practice questions before my exam. The notes in the course have literally everything you need, you can just print them out and have them alongside you when you watch the lecture videos. I didn’t have to focus on creating my own notes, I just used the notes in the course and instead put more of my time into internalizing the information being taught and making it relatable to me so I can memorize it and understand it.

Q5 - Did you do anything besides the course to help you prepare?

Yes, when I first wrote the exam I realized that I had a lot of anxiety which was one of the reasons I did so poorly at my first attempt. To combat this, I focused on meditation and did it every morning for a few minutes. This practice really allowed me to settle down the thoughts in my head and deal with my anxiety, I would highly recommend anyone preparing for the MCAT to meditate. It’s a great way to get all that clutter in your mind and just relax for a few minutes, I have noticed that it has calmed me down a lot and allowed me to focus for longer periods of time.

Q6 - Do you have any advice for upcoming students?

I would say that the MCAT is hard but totally possible to score well in, given you put in the time and effort to prepare for it well. I purchased a course because it allowed me to have a schedule and someone to teach me how to tackle MCAT related questions, but if you can self-study that works just as well. I would also mention that time management is very important and as students we sometimes just focus on understanding the material, but not only that you must be able to answer the question in a timely manner otherwise you will leave a lot of questions unanswered on the exam. And most importantly, DON’T GIVE UP. When I first wrote the exam and scored the 68th percentile, I was crushed. I had a lot of self-doubt and I was thinking about pursuing something else. But what helped me was my mom telling me to try again, to not give up, and that is very important. This whole journey of becoming a doctor is going to be filled with highs and lows, and you have be able to not give up if you want to become successful!

Check out our MCAT Courses!

We cover everything you need in order to prepare for the MCAT with simple and easy to follow video lectures to practice chapter tests, MCAT exams and more!

All Courses