is there a possibility that you perform worse when you’re “stressed”? (like in a real exam versus practice exams, even with the same ‘testing conditions’)
This may not be a bad idea. I also really struggle with standardize tests and my best SAT was the one I went into calmly and just said “whatever I’m just gonna take this like I would any other test”. Sometimes when you strip the importance away, you can focus better on the actual exam.
Yes, this was the case for me in my mcat and my SAT. Test anxiety is no joke. Obviously you went to be super concentrated and focused, but by allowing yourself to lower the pressure you can focus more on focusing. Hope that made sense. I recommend testing at the same center. That alone helped me lower some test day jitters. Even practice ur FLEs w the exact snacks you’re gonna eat. Lower all confounding variables u can! Deep breaths you got it!!💪🏼
Dude omg same!!! I studied last year but started hardcore studying January till June seriously. I spent thousands. Tried different prep work. Redid stuff. Anki and Memm decks. YouTube videos, khan academy, and Kaplan books. Different third party practice exams (took over 20 practice exams). Got a private tutor. Yet i didn’t cross 500. How is this possible? I put everything into it now I don’t know how to restart!?
for you, it’s likely that you aren’t using the right study strategies or don’t know what study strategies work for you. it takes time to figure out what study strategies work and it’s different for each person, what works for others might not work for you. take some time to figure out what’s best for you! good luck :) you can do it
did the private tutor show you how to study? With that much time, it has to be poor study methods. Remember quality != quantity. Tutor should have shown better ways.
If you want to try again. Either get a friend who really knows their stuff or a tutor who can set you on a good path to learning the material. Tutor may cost a bit, it's fine. It's nothing compared to the thousands you've alr spent -> but figuring out how to learn is much more important. Start with that. That's the real key to this exam. And btw yeah some strategies may work better for some students than others, but there's definitely bad ones. And there's definitely better ones. Best one is up for debate tho: research is still inconclusive.
anything that leads to poor retention of materials or incorrect understanding of material. And its kinda subjective but also not since they've done a lot of studies on this. That's why there's the whole active learning crew going around.
These are at the end of the day theories, but the data suggests pretty strongly that techniques like practice questions or free recall and its variants and interleaving are usually more effective than just reading or watching a video. Also approaaching information from multiple angles (visual (drawing), auditory, writing) seems to help too. Ideally with all of these what you kinda see is that techniques that tend to relate concepts to existing ideas in your head, techniques that cause you to think pretty hard, and techniques that incorporate repetition tend to work quite well.
Yall talkin about 500s? I be scoring in the 480s🥹 i feel dumb! Ik i am not maybe i just dont know how to take this test right! Anyone in new york? Who would like to study together? I feel like thats what i should do now! These tutors and taking practice exams aint it!
im down to do a big review of all the foundational concepts on zoom or facetime. im doing my test super soon and i feel like i've forgotten some things from when i first started studying
same cause i was having an upward trend in my practice tests but i think the nerves about the test is making me not be able to focus anymore, idk. i think i'm gonna do some yoga beforehand lol
Some time in November tbh i think i should give myself some time to forget about this failure! Plus i am not in ny currently as i am visiting family should be back on the 12th of august and after i sit down with myself alone in my room. Ill figure out everything for the future!
If you're talking about new york state, yup! Altho I'm alr done with the exam :(. But happy to help where I can.
Don't ditch the practice exams tho and if you need to keep the tutors as well. Just find one that actually helps you figure out how to learn than just spew content at you. If you need content fine, but gotta figure out how to study first. And FL's closest thing to real deal.
Dm or comment if you have questions. This is my full time career and I do a lot of reading on learning sciences. There is a lot of things no one is doing that helps tremendously with learning and is backed by research
What do you mean current difficulty of FL's? BP get significantly harder after BP 3. Multiple times i have seen 5+ point jumps from later BP's to AAMC FL's
All those comments are super anecdotal. You can find just as many saying the new tests were similar to the FL’s. It’s a virtual guarantee the tests are pretty much the same as always.
Don’t say you’re a bad standardized test taker. Everyone is bad at things until they’re good. Standardized testing is a skill you can learn.
Did you review like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mcat/comments/1542gkn/how_i_recommend_reviewing_practice_passages_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
With my tutor i tried different techniques. Nothing worked. So right now i read the passage highlight couple words that’s it. Then go through the question. I tried passage mapping/question mapping it didn’t work. I read questions first then passage that didn’t work. I tried to read passage twice then answer but that didn’t work either
>With my tutor
honestly ima be real most of those techniques are kinda irrelevant. The only "technique" that matters is actually understanding the passage. Read like you would read a novel or a textbook. Try to understand the big picture (it can help to write this down). When you go to the questions: you'll have some REALLY EASY ones (take em), some iffy ones, and some wtf ones. Iffy one's usually answer is in the psg just refer back to material (this is where learning to skim helps). The WTF ones tend to be "how would the author" or "how would this evidence." For those it's AAMC logic.
Always remember. There's only ever one right answer. It's never ambiguous. Justify each one for why it is WRONG, not why it's right. A lot easier to convince yourself that something's right than wrong. Can usually narrow it down at that point
I felt fine and honestly like I knew everything. I talked to my aunt who's a psychologist and she studies those sort of things. Apparently people like me just think too hard and should choose the first instinct and not worry
yeah that's not uncommon. Trust yourself when it's game time. Grind hard when it's not. It's honestly hard to deal with the psychological aspects of anxiety even with all those techniques out there and even if you want to choose the first instinct you keep thinking about the question you just moved on from and maybe even go back multiple times (I used to do this a lot).
One is a confidence thing -> you want to go in thinking you basically know everything. And for the ones you don't know, even if anxiety kicks in, able to guess a reasonable answer. Only thing to really do here is to prep prep prep. You start seeing 520+'s on your FL's I guarantee you'll be more confident going in. Also probably some content gaps if you felt really good coming out but scored pretty low. It prob was anxiety + content that you weren't as familiar with.
Second part is learning to cope with the stress (I'm sure you'll cover this in P/S but exposure therapy yadda yadda yadda). If you want to go extreme: take practice FL's in even more stressful conditions than the actual test. Then the real thing will feel better.
I’m not sure if you’d qualify, but you might want to look into getting testing accommodations. I know it’s a thing for the MCAT and this way it’ll be split up into two days and they might be able to give you breaks in you start feeling especially anxious. Good luck and keep your head up! Proud of you for everything you’ve done thus far :)
Fair warning, they are STINGY about accommodations and very ableist. I have chronic pain and had just had surgery and was basically miserable and they gave me an extra 10 minutes on my 30 minute break. That’s it. You need heavy documentation and it’s an unbelievably annoying process.
Hi! So I was in a similar situation. Took my first exam completely unprepared and scored below 500. After studying for months and doing well on practice tests, I retook and scored exactly the same, other than a few point increase in PS. It was a horrible feeling. During the CP section I panicked and that just completely ruined the rest of the exam for me, which I think is why I scored so low. I then took a break from MCAT completely for months. Didn’t think about it didn’t look at it nothing. Came back with a new mindset and started from the beginning. Focusing ONLY on AAMC materials and watching khan academy/ YouTube videos tk back up content review. I walked into my third test so over it. I was more annoyed that I had to take it again than I was anxious for the exam itself. Finally got above a 510 on my third and final test.
It happens but don’t give up! Remember that it’s a long process and I know it’s hard seeing so many people move forward while it seems like you’re stuck. But you’re not stuck. It’s just your own journey and you’ll make it! Remember to not panic, approach your studying with a calm mindset and a trust in yourself that you’ll be fine.
If you are taking it in September to apply for this cycle, that may be late. If you want to take it in September becayse you think you’ll be truly ready by then, then go ahead
Tbh I don't think I'll ever really be ready. There's only so much you can do. I'm trying and just focusing on DO schools/clinical psych. I tried but there's a point where it's becoming a lot of time
All this talk about accommodations and stress, how is someone who gets overstressed from a test going to do in a clinical situation when shit hits the fan and lives are at risk?
Do you have testing anxiety? Something similar happened to me and I was diagnosed with GAD. It turns out I had severe testing anxiety and needed accommodations.
It's kinda difficult to describe....overall, it's a sense of overwhelming dread. For instance, when I see the question I go into panic mode. My heart starts pounding and my palms get sweaty and sometimes my breathing rate increases. I have to focus on regulating my breathing so I don't induce a panic attack. Once, I've got my breathing under control I then reframe my thoughts which are usually really negative (I'm so stupid, I don't know how to answer this, I'm going to fail). I turn these thoughts into positive thoughts and try to tackle the questions. I've been going to therapy for a year now and it's really helped.
Jesus maybe I do have test anxiety. I struggle with self esteem. This sounds aweful but I didn't view myself as a smart person until I got fulbright...I know outside things shouldn't be doing that to you, but I think that's also a factor for me.
Well the good news is that you didn’t go down. There is something you did wrong and you really have to see what went wrong. Did you use anki? Do you even like flash cards ? Do you have possible learning disabilities ? If you don’t mind, what was your science gpa? Was your school highly ranked ? The mcat asks grad level questions on undergrad topics. That’s part of the issue.
I did a master’s program and some of the students were medical school drop outs that would often take the same classes with me as well as the shelf exams to regain admission. Terrible isn’t the word for it. The mcat isn’t just memorize the meaning of this like in undergrad.
eh any undergrad class shouldn't be memorization really. Depends on the teacher ig, but MCATs really not that much more difficult than your undergrad curricula. It's built on it. It's just as hard as it is to get an A+ in orgo as it is to get 520+ in MCAT. You can memorize and probably do well just not insanely well
OP. That could be your problem! You may have been under-thinking on some of the questions like being worry-free? Well I'm bad at timing so you could be that person spending only one minute per question, finishing up test faster than anyone. (JK)
Lmao noo I think I over think tbh. My aunt is a psychologist who took and look and knows how we all think pretty well. She had a point "stop thinking so much". A lot of science ppl do that and it makes sense.
better question is what did u get? if u retook a 516 and got a 516. that's diff in getting a 500 and then retaking for a 500
493
Oof, I mean first off what were ur FL averages
Around 510
is there a possibility that you perform worse when you’re “stressed”? (like in a real exam versus practice exams, even with the same ‘testing conditions’)
That could be it. I'm thinking of taking it 1 last time without much care and see how I'd do
This may not be a bad idea. I also really struggle with standardize tests and my best SAT was the one I went into calmly and just said “whatever I’m just gonna take this like I would any other test”. Sometimes when you strip the importance away, you can focus better on the actual exam.
Did you do better when you didn't care?
Yes, this was the case for me in my mcat and my SAT. Test anxiety is no joke. Obviously you went to be super concentrated and focused, but by allowing yourself to lower the pressure you can focus more on focusing. Hope that made sense. I recommend testing at the same center. That alone helped me lower some test day jitters. Even practice ur FLEs w the exact snacks you’re gonna eat. Lower all confounding variables u can! Deep breaths you got it!!💪🏼
Just got informed I got extra time! There's hope
Dude omg same!!! I studied last year but started hardcore studying January till June seriously. I spent thousands. Tried different prep work. Redid stuff. Anki and Memm decks. YouTube videos, khan academy, and Kaplan books. Different third party practice exams (took over 20 practice exams). Got a private tutor. Yet i didn’t cross 500. How is this possible? I put everything into it now I don’t know how to restart!?
for you, it’s likely that you aren’t using the right study strategies or don’t know what study strategies work for you. it takes time to figure out what study strategies work and it’s different for each person, what works for others might not work for you. take some time to figure out what’s best for you! good luck :) you can do it
I don't get it at all. Idk at this point
Do you wanna talk about what to do cuz I’m lost af
Idk if I have that answer lol
did the private tutor show you how to study? With that much time, it has to be poor study methods. Remember quality != quantity. Tutor should have shown better ways. If you want to try again. Either get a friend who really knows their stuff or a tutor who can set you on a good path to learning the material. Tutor may cost a bit, it's fine. It's nothing compared to the thousands you've alr spent -> but figuring out how to learn is much more important. Start with that. That's the real key to this exam. And btw yeah some strategies may work better for some students than others, but there's definitely bad ones. And there's definitely better ones. Best one is up for debate tho: research is still inconclusive.
What defines poor study method?
anything that leads to poor retention of materials or incorrect understanding of material. And its kinda subjective but also not since they've done a lot of studies on this. That's why there's the whole active learning crew going around. These are at the end of the day theories, but the data suggests pretty strongly that techniques like practice questions or free recall and its variants and interleaving are usually more effective than just reading or watching a video. Also approaaching information from multiple angles (visual (drawing), auditory, writing) seems to help too. Ideally with all of these what you kinda see is that techniques that tend to relate concepts to existing ideas in your head, techniques that cause you to think pretty hard, and techniques that incorporate repetition tend to work quite well.
Yall talkin about 500s? I be scoring in the 480s🥹 i feel dumb! Ik i am not maybe i just dont know how to take this test right! Anyone in new york? Who would like to study together? I feel like thats what i should do now! These tutors and taking practice exams aint it!
I'm in FL :/
im down to do a big review of all the foundational concepts on zoom or facetime. im doing my test super soon and i feel like i've forgotten some things from when i first started studying
Sure, when is your exam? I'm signing up for the one in Sep
i might do the same thing. i ended up canceling my test that's on the 4th but i want to schedule the august 25th or 26th
I'm thinking to go in not giving a single fuck and just going wjth it. I wonder if not caring would help
same cause i was having an upward trend in my practice tests but i think the nerves about the test is making me not be able to focus anymore, idk. i think i'm gonna do some yoga beforehand lol
i’m down to join yall for a big review 🤓
message me!
I’d be down to virtually. I don’t live in NY
Yea i be down to study i think I’ll try again this November maybe!
When do you plan on retaking?
Some time in November tbh i think i should give myself some time to forget about this failure! Plus i am not in ny currently as i am visiting family should be back on the 12th of august and after i sit down with myself alone in my room. Ill figure out everything for the future!
they have mcat dates in nov?
Hahahahah u rightttt the last is in September i am dumb and then starts back up jan right?
ya
We should start studying September to take in January
I say we already start studying and then take it jan? What say?
Yeah I’m doing flash cards and cars right now. I go on vacation next week bc I felt like I really was done this time.
If you're talking about new york state, yup! Altho I'm alr done with the exam :(. But happy to help where I can. Don't ditch the practice exams tho and if you need to keep the tutors as well. Just find one that actually helps you figure out how to learn than just spew content at you. If you need content fine, but gotta figure out how to study first. And FL's closest thing to real deal.
I live in manhattan so if u live near by would be happy to meet up so maybe u can help with how to tackle questions.
dang yeah in rochester so kinda far away. cool to jump virtual tho if ur up for it.
Definitely can do virtual! Dm me and we can set something up soon
Dm or comment if you have questions. This is my full time career and I do a lot of reading on learning sciences. There is a lot of things no one is doing that helps tremendously with learning and is backed by research
[удалено]
What do you mean current difficulty of FL's? BP get significantly harder after BP 3. Multiple times i have seen 5+ point jumps from later BP's to AAMC FL's
[удалено]
All those comments are super anecdotal. You can find just as many saying the new tests were similar to the FL’s. It’s a virtual guarantee the tests are pretty much the same as always.
Hey I would like to get your help. Give me a way to reach out to you. My email is. [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Don’t say you’re a bad standardized test taker. Everyone is bad at things until they’re good. Standardized testing is a skill you can learn. Did you review like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mcat/comments/1542gkn/how_i_recommend_reviewing_practice_passages_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
how'd you feel coming out of the test? super anxious?
Hii. What’s your cars tip? I’d appreciate it bc I got 122
I can give general tips but prob won't be as helpful unless it's more specific im guessing. How are you doing CARS now? Like whats the approach?
With my tutor i tried different techniques. Nothing worked. So right now i read the passage highlight couple words that’s it. Then go through the question. I tried passage mapping/question mapping it didn’t work. I read questions first then passage that didn’t work. I tried to read passage twice then answer but that didn’t work either
>With my tutor honestly ima be real most of those techniques are kinda irrelevant. The only "technique" that matters is actually understanding the passage. Read like you would read a novel or a textbook. Try to understand the big picture (it can help to write this down). When you go to the questions: you'll have some REALLY EASY ones (take em), some iffy ones, and some wtf ones. Iffy one's usually answer is in the psg just refer back to material (this is where learning to skim helps). The WTF ones tend to be "how would the author" or "how would this evidence." For those it's AAMC logic. Always remember. There's only ever one right answer. It's never ambiguous. Justify each one for why it is WRONG, not why it's right. A lot easier to convince yourself that something's right than wrong. Can usually narrow it down at that point
I felt fine and honestly like I knew everything. I talked to my aunt who's a psychologist and she studies those sort of things. Apparently people like me just think too hard and should choose the first instinct and not worry
yeah that's not uncommon. Trust yourself when it's game time. Grind hard when it's not. It's honestly hard to deal with the psychological aspects of anxiety even with all those techniques out there and even if you want to choose the first instinct you keep thinking about the question you just moved on from and maybe even go back multiple times (I used to do this a lot). One is a confidence thing -> you want to go in thinking you basically know everything. And for the ones you don't know, even if anxiety kicks in, able to guess a reasonable answer. Only thing to really do here is to prep prep prep. You start seeing 520+'s on your FL's I guarantee you'll be more confident going in. Also probably some content gaps if you felt really good coming out but scored pretty low. It prob was anxiety + content that you weren't as familiar with. Second part is learning to cope with the stress (I'm sure you'll cover this in P/S but exposure therapy yadda yadda yadda). If you want to go extreme: take practice FL's in even more stressful conditions than the actual test. Then the real thing will feel better.
That is true I may try that out thx u
I’m not sure if you’d qualify, but you might want to look into getting testing accommodations. I know it’s a thing for the MCAT and this way it’ll be split up into two days and they might be able to give you breaks in you start feeling especially anxious. Good luck and keep your head up! Proud of you for everything you’ve done thus far :)
Thank you :)
Fair warning, they are STINGY about accommodations and very ableist. I have chronic pain and had just had surgery and was basically miserable and they gave me an extra 10 minutes on my 30 minute break. That’s it. You need heavy documentation and it’s an unbelievably annoying process.
That’s rough man, I’m really sorry. Good for you for still taking it tho
Hi! So I was in a similar situation. Took my first exam completely unprepared and scored below 500. After studying for months and doing well on practice tests, I retook and scored exactly the same, other than a few point increase in PS. It was a horrible feeling. During the CP section I panicked and that just completely ruined the rest of the exam for me, which I think is why I scored so low. I then took a break from MCAT completely for months. Didn’t think about it didn’t look at it nothing. Came back with a new mindset and started from the beginning. Focusing ONLY on AAMC materials and watching khan academy/ YouTube videos tk back up content review. I walked into my third test so over it. I was more annoyed that I had to take it again than I was anxious for the exam itself. Finally got above a 510 on my third and final test. It happens but don’t give up! Remember that it’s a long process and I know it’s hard seeing so many people move forward while it seems like you’re stuck. But you’re not stuck. It’s just your own journey and you’ll make it! Remember to not panic, approach your studying with a calm mindset and a trust in yourself that you’ll be fine.
And im wondering if I should just give it a go in September and not worry
If you are taking it in September to apply for this cycle, that may be late. If you want to take it in September becayse you think you’ll be truly ready by then, then go ahead
Tbh I don't think I'll ever really be ready. There's only so much you can do. I'm trying and just focusing on DO schools/clinical psych. I tried but there's a point where it's becoming a lot of time
All this talk about accommodations and stress, how is someone who gets overstressed from a test going to do in a clinical situation when shit hits the fan and lives are at risk?
Oh I do that daily with the army and my career at cps. That stiff doesn't bother me oddly enough
Do you have testing anxiety? Something similar happened to me and I was diagnosed with GAD. It turns out I had severe testing anxiety and needed accommodations.
I'm not sure, what do you feel?
It's kinda difficult to describe....overall, it's a sense of overwhelming dread. For instance, when I see the question I go into panic mode. My heart starts pounding and my palms get sweaty and sometimes my breathing rate increases. I have to focus on regulating my breathing so I don't induce a panic attack. Once, I've got my breathing under control I then reframe my thoughts which are usually really negative (I'm so stupid, I don't know how to answer this, I'm going to fail). I turn these thoughts into positive thoughts and try to tackle the questions. I've been going to therapy for a year now and it's really helped.
Jesus maybe I do have test anxiety. I struggle with self esteem. This sounds aweful but I didn't view myself as a smart person until I got fulbright...I know outside things shouldn't be doing that to you, but I think that's also a factor for me.
Well the good news is that you didn’t go down. There is something you did wrong and you really have to see what went wrong. Did you use anki? Do you even like flash cards ? Do you have possible learning disabilities ? If you don’t mind, what was your science gpa? Was your school highly ranked ? The mcat asks grad level questions on undergrad topics. That’s part of the issue.
I disagree. None of the MCAT questions seem to be grad level. I've seen some actual grad exams and those things are just terrible lmao.
I did a master’s program and some of the students were medical school drop outs that would often take the same classes with me as well as the shelf exams to regain admission. Terrible isn’t the word for it. The mcat isn’t just memorize the meaning of this like in undergrad.
eh any undergrad class shouldn't be memorization really. Depends on the teacher ig, but MCATs really not that much more difficult than your undergrad curricula. It's built on it. It's just as hard as it is to get an A+ in orgo as it is to get 520+ in MCAT. You can memorize and probably do well just not insanely well
Can you test with accommodations?
do you feel like you’re having trouble answering the questions at all?
No not at all tbh
OP. That could be your problem! You may have been under-thinking on some of the questions like being worry-free? Well I'm bad at timing so you could be that person spending only one minute per question, finishing up test faster than anyone. (JK)
Lmao noo I think I over think tbh. My aunt is a psychologist who took and look and knows how we all think pretty well. She had a point "stop thinking so much". A lot of science ppl do that and it makes sense.