So welcome everyone. We're going to give everybody a little while to get logged in before we get started. All right, as everyone's coming in, we're going to go ahead and get started with our strategies for standardized tests and mastering the MCAT exam and beyond.
So welcome to each and every last one of you on today. My name is LaShawn Sturgis. I am the assistant dean for academic advising at the Medical College of Georgia. So we're going to I can still see the numbers climbing.
So we're going to give. Everyone a few minutes to get logged in and slowly but surely letting each of you in. So this is an exciting session. This is one that we try and do some form of every virtual fair.
You will hear from myself. Again, I'm assistant dean for academic advising at the Medical College of Georgia. You will get to hear from Dr. Nguyen and you will also get to hear on the perspective from a first year medical student.
So where we're going in this session is we're really going to, Dr. Nguyen's going to start with a growth mindset. A growth mindset is so essential. This is something that I still work with our medical students on as they're preparing for step one and step two.
It's your ability to see. See information and to see a situation as something you can improve on. It's not a stagnant situation. You ever heard the saying that, hey, I'm a bad test taker? No, that's not a thing.
You really have to see a situation as something that you can improve on and that you can change. And so with that, Dr. Nguyen is going to help you reframe the narrative around your ability to be a successful test taker. You have to believe that you can do it before you can actually achieve it. She'll also give you tangible tools for success and exactly how to prepare for the MCAT, what good test taking strategies you should start to use and how you should prepare for the exam. And why is this important?
You know, learning these skills is an essential, essential tool for your success. This test taking is a skill set that you can learn just like suturing. just like a physical exam.
And it's important because you've already, many of you have already jumped the first hurdle of taking the SAT. And if you're here today, you're here because you're preparing to jump the next hurdle for admission into medical school, and that's the MCAT. But these skills are skills that you can employ on every medical school exam, when you take step one, when you take your clerkship shelf exams in your clinical years.
They're essential for step two. All of these are going to be exams that you take before starting residency. And even as a resident, there's an annual exam that you have to take.
I'm board certified in emergency medicine. And every year during residency, we took our annual exam. And then midway through residency, I took step three. And then after I completed residency, I'm now responsible for my board certification examinations that I still have to take.
So the skills you're going to learn today are something that though you're at the beginning of this journey, you can use and employ to improve your success throughout your entire medical career. It's not just during medical school, but even during residency and beyond. These are tools that are going to be essential.
So it's important that you look at this information as a way in which you can improve and in a way in which you can tackle these hard topics. So as we start, it's always nice to kind of know. who's in the room, and where you are along this journey. So we're going to take this opportunity to do a quick poll. We want to see when you are set to actually take the MCAT.
Some of you may be taking it in April, May, June, July, August, September. When are you taking the exam? Or maybe you're taking it next year in 2025. All right, awesome. It looks like most of you are taking it this summer. All right, we're going to, all right, so I'll share these results with everyone.
So it looks like most of you are taking the exam. I'd say about 22% are taking it in May, another 19, almost 20%. So that brings us to about 40% of you. And if we add in those who are taking it in April, about 50% of those participating.
are going to take it before July. So that's helpful to know for Dr. Nguyen as she presents this, to know kind of who's in the room, and then a good chunk of you are taking it next year, or sometime in 2025 or beyond. All right, at this time, I would like to introduce our speaker for today, Dr. Siobhan Nguyen.
She is an amazing, amazing, amazing medical educational learning specialist. I call her the best in the business whenever I talk to anyone about her. She is extremely skilled in this area, but more importantly, she's passionate about helping students achieve their goal of mastering their ability to conquer standardized exams, particularly those related to the MCAT and board exams. So, without further ado, I introduce to you Dr. Link.
Thank you so much, Dr. Sturgis. for attending today and also to the AAMC for having us here to present to you. I want to kind of frame this presentation as, again, what Dr. Sturges was talking about, where we are really, really going to talk a lot about the mindset you need to have. We are going to talk about skills. And then later on, you're going to see how this manifested with a real life first year medical student.
And they're going to talk about. the skills that were built across that period of time and why they're so important. But I want to say something before we get started, right?
Because I know that a lot of you have entered this space in terms of studying for the MCAT with all kinds of different views, right? Sometimes it's positive views, sometimes it's negative views about what this test is and what you're having to do. But I want to set a stage for something that is extremely important. And Dr. Sturgis can also teach.
can also talk to this a little bit later too, as someone who has, you know, been on the admissions committees, is that medical school and the healthcare industry are searching for individuals who display growth, reflection. So you have the ability to either look at data or hear feedback and say, you know what, this has not gone well for me and reflect on what you need to do in order to make changes and also resiliency within. assessment, not perfection, right? That's why even a high MCAT score alone will not get you into medical school, right?
No one's going to look at your application and say, oh, a 521, we don't need to read your personal statement. We don't need to see if you have clinical experience. We don't need to see, you know, that you've done things to help your community.
We'll just let you in. That does not happen, right? Because they're really looking for individuals who have the ability to get themselves from point A to point B. And that path might look a little bit different. different for everyone, but it's also important that you're able to do that within assessment, right?
So not perfection, but growth and resiliency within assessment. So that's going to kind of be the theme that we talk about today. Okay.
There are all different kinds of assessments. The one that you hear the most about, especially within medical education is going to be quizzes and exams, but there's also self-testing, there's journaling, there's self-reflection exercises you can do, there's self-rating scales. Even at the end of a study day, you can say, you know, how did my study day go on a scale from one to five? And if you have a whole bunch of ones and twos in a row, that should tell you that, hey, I need to do something differently so that my actual study day within the MCAT looks different.
Right. There's also feedback from others. How am I doing? And then there's also self-evaluation form.
So when we say assessment, you're, you know. Again, heavily within medical education, that does happen in the form of quizzes or exams, but there's other forms of assessment that you're going to encounter along this journey. And again, as Dr. Sturgis referenced, it's never going to stop, right?
Never going to stop as a physician. You should always be reflecting on how you've done and what you might be able to do differently because no one, at the end of the day, no one is perfect, okay? So let's talk about what the ultimate purpose of the MCAT actually is, right?
So the actual purpose of this exam is to ensure your critical thinking and application skills before you enter medical school. A large part of what a physician does every single day is critical thinking and being able to take those critical thinking skills and apply them to a specific patient that is standing in front of them. Right.
And the more you have this conquered before you get into medical school, that's what the medical school is building off of that ability to critical think. They are not necessarily building that in to teach you that during the first couple of weeks of medical school. it is assumed that that skill is already conquered before you get in.
OK, now let's look at how starting with the MCAT medical schools actually, you know, make sure that this skill is in place. OK, so if you think at if you think about K through 16 education here in America, so that is kindergarten through an undergraduate degree. The majority of those exams that you encounter are correct answer exams, which means if they give you four answer choices, three of them are incorrect and one of them is correct, right? That is a typical K-16 exam.
On the flip side of that, medical education exams are not correct answer exams, and this includes the MCAT. Those are best. answer exams.
This is why, you know, you often hear that, hey, you can't maybe do the same studying that you did for your undergraduate exams and still score well in the MCAT, that you need to switch things up a little bit. Or this is why sometimes you hear students say, hey, the MCAT is difficult, or I felt like the MCAT was tricky. And that's not a word I use with students.
In fact, I ban that from all student appointments. We are not allowed to use the word trick. Because there technically are no tricks. And there is a very good reason why starting with the MCAT up through all of the exams that you have to take, those are all best answer exams.
Meaning all four of the answer choices are somewhat correct. Only one of them, though, is most correct or is the best answer out of the ones that are correct, right? So why is this? Why do medical schools do this starting with the MCAT, okay? It is because thinking in the way of best is the first step of thinking like a doctor.
Best equals more likely or most likely, right? So why do you have to think in this way? This is not how most lay people think, right? But this is how physicians have to think more likely, right?
Well, let's look at a real life scenario. If a patient has a cough, could they have lung cancer? If a patient has a cough, could they have lung cancer? The answer is technically yes.
If you were to look at the symptoms of lung cancer, cough is pretty high on the list. So if anyone has a cough, they technically could have lung cancer. Now, how would a physician rank, right? Because remember we said best.
So it doesn't mean if you have a cough, it doesn't mean you don't have it. However, if you are a heavy smoker, let's say you're... in your 50s, and you've smoked two packs of cigarettes since you were 18 years old, and now you're in your 50s, if you're a heavy smoker, or let's say you work around toxic chemicals, the physician that you're seeing might put lung cancer higher on the list. It doesn't mean you have lung cancer.
It just means that if you work around toxic chemicals, or you've been a heavy smoker for that long period of time, they're going to put it higher on the list. it's going to be more likely that you have it. It doesn't mean you have it. It means it's more likely.
As opposed to, let's say you're a non-smoker, you're in your 50s and you say, I've never smoked a day in my life. I've never been around any secondhand smoke and I'm a teacher. I don't work around toxic chemicals.
It doesn't mean you don't have lung cancer. It just means it's less likely. Do you see how in K-16, they're testing if you know something, where on the MCAT, they're testing your ability.
to critical think about a particular situation. That's why all of the questions on the MCAT are more likely or less likely. Doesn't mean they're correct or incorrect. And this is a skill you need to have. OK, now, if we look at again, right, what happens during this process, right, where students think about themselves while they're sitting down and and this is the skill that's needed.
Right. So sometimes if a student enters this space of studying for the MCAT and they're really good at ranking things, you know. They might consider themselves a good test taker. Like I am a good test taker because I can look at something and I can say immediately if it would be more likely or less likely based on the situation. Right.
That probably means that they feel very relaxed when they're taking the exam. It probably means that they it probably means that they don't get too nervous. It probably means that they feel like they didn't have to study too, too much in order to take the test.
These are some of these intrusive thoughts that people might have if they feel like they're a good test taker, as opposed to intrusive thoughts someone might have if they're a bad test taker or they think of themselves as a bad test taker. They might sit down and immediately start feeling very nervous, right? Or they sit down and their mind goes blank or they sit down and nothing's coming to them right away or they get very confused with what the question is asking them. They might think of themselves as a bad test taker, right? And again, as we heard from Dr. Sturges early on, there's no such thing as a good test taker or a bad test taker because there's no genetic marker.
So for a test taking gene, a test taking gene does not exist where someone says, yes, I was born naturally good at taking exams. It does not exist. OK, however, what you might be perceiving as a good. test taker or a bad test taker is probably some type of anxiety response that's happening in your body.
And this is, I'm only talking about for students who have adequately prepared for this exam, right? An anxiety response can actually mimic your body's fight or flight response, right? So remember when I talked about, if you're someone that's like, oh, I'm a bad test taker, right? And you sit down and you're taking the test and your mind goes blank, that doesn't mean you're a bad test taker. It probably means your body's fight or flight.
The fight response is kicked in and the flight response is is in hyperdrive. Right. Your your mind is like, oh, I'm getting really nervous.
I'm feeling overheated. I don't know what's going on. We got to get out of here. Right.
And all of a sudden you feel your flight response coming on, as opposed to other students might feel their fight response coming on where they sit down. They're feeling a little nervous, but they're like, I'm about to do this. Right.
So we want a little bit of anxiety because we want your fight response to kick in and we want that. flight response to kind of take a back seat. And I'm going to tell you, if you're someone that feels like this, you've been in this situation, I'm going to tell you what you need to do today in order to make sure that your fight response is kicking in and that flight response is not.
Okay. Now this also might come in the form of perfectionism, overthinking questions, underthinking questions where you have academic low self-efficacy, where you think you know, before you even start preparing, you think I'm probably not going to be really good at this anyways. Right.
It can also come in the forms of parental pressure that can also impact test performance that you have a family that's like, you just need to do it. Why don't you believe in yourself? We know you can do it. You're so smart, but you're looking at the screen going, I don't remember how to answer this question. Right.
All of these things are impacting you when you're studying and also when you're taking the test. So This has to be examined and you have to reflect on what's going on. And then it has to be dealt with in a way where you feel more comfortable to move on and you can raise your score.
OK, so again, this is what Dr. Sturges talked about a little bit of why it's examined, why it's important to conquer the MCAT before getting to medical school. And this is exactly what she showed. You have the MCAT as a pre-med, then you take step one as a second year medical student.
You take anywhere between, you know, seven or eight shelf exams as a third year medical student. You take step two as in your last year of medical school. You take step three as a resident. And then you have, you know, beyond, you know, residency exams and certification exams beyond, right? All of these exams are best answer exams.
None of them are correct answer exams. Right. Because of that critical thinking piece, because of that application piece, they really want to make sure that you have that down before you start seeing patients and you're able to rank things appropriately for the person in front of you to make sure that everyone's getting really, really great medical care. Okay, so now that we have kind of the mindset set, right, of what we're going to be thinking about and how we want to approach this, let's talk about some study strategies.
So here is a really great resource that the AAMC have put out, and we are currently working on also revamping this resource for you. But this is how to create a study plan for the MCAT, and I highly recommend that you go on the AAMC website or find this. And I also think our hosts today are going to be sharing a link that's going to help you get started.
I also did a webinar with the AAMC just a few weeks ago. I think it was about a month ago, actually, that talked about how to get started and how to start your prep right using this resource. So that might be a good webinar to go on and use.
And it looks like that just got dropped in the chat for you if you're interested in pulling that document. And this is a good starting point, but we're also going to talk about some starting points as well today. This is also a really great resource in terms of the AAMC, what's actually on the MCAT exam. You do not want to start studying for the MCAT without actually knowing what you're walking into and what's going to be required of you and what's on the MCAT. Not only does this have an outline list, it also tells you what coursework you probably learned this content in.
Now that's helpful because you're going to be able to say, okay, well, if I haven't taken... you know, a second physics course, this is the information I'm still going to be responsible for whether I've taken that class or not. Or if you haven't taken sociology, here's still the information I'm going to be responsible for whether I've taken that class or not.
So you really want to make sure that you're using this outline, you're getting really familiar with what is on the MCAT, and you can also use it sort of as a checklist. The AAMC has it in a PDF form, but also if you sign up for the Prep Hub, you can make a free account. These resources are free and you can actually use it as a checklist.
Okay. So that, that will also be very helpful. Okay. Now let's talk about time management a little bit, right? Because this is probably the number one error that I see students make.
I've been coaching MCAT and I've been a medical education learning specialist for 11 years now. It was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen students make, and that is not carving out enough time and space to actually complete the MCAT, right? You guys are... busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.
There are so many demands made upon your time and space, particularly school and coursework, friends and family. Some of you guys are working, you have extracurriculars, you have passion projects, you're working on your application. So because you are so busy, you have to remember that you have to carve out time and space for the MCAT. This is not something that you can do just.
here or there and expect a really good result. So some of these things need to either be backed up off of, or sometimes you have to learn to say, no, let's say you have a really large family, or you have a lot of friends that love to do spontaneous things with you. You know, this might be a time where you need to have a conversation with them and say, you know, I'm not available for spontaneous activities from this month to this month.
However, I'm happy to hang out Friday. It's my day off. and I'm happy to do something. You know, if we want to do anything or hang out, I need to do that on a Friday night or tell your family, hey, I'm not going to be responsible. I'm not going to be able to see you guys as much as I've seen you in the past.
However, I would love to make myself available for Sunday dinner. That's going to also help you step away from this process, get recharged. And it's also going to let your family and friends know, hey, I'm not ignoring you, but I had to make some decisions because this is something that I need to do for myself. This is also one of the best ways To improve as a test taker, devoting more time to building your skills as a test taker is definitely the number one thing you can do to improve that skill. Now, let me talk about some schedule considerations because sometimes I see students, they'll Google, how much time do I need to study for the MCAT?
Or you talk to a friend and you say, well, my friend studied for three months. I'm going to study for three months. However, you have to remember that you're going to need more time if you fall into any of these particular categories.
So some of this is prereq dependent. And if you have prereqs, so again, on that content guide, the AAMC has a listed recommended prereqs before you take the MCAT. If you have prereqs that you haven't completed, you're going to need more time because you're going to need more time to teach yourself that information. That's just going to be a given, right? So if you have prereqs that haven't been completed, again, you're just going to need more time.
If you have a lower science GPA, so it's important that you're keeping track of how you're doing in your prereq coursework so that you're tracking your science GPA. And if you have any coursework that you got, maybe a low B or you got a C, that is an indicator that that information was not learned. That information is still on the MCAT, though. So you're still going to have to be responsible for it. And if you didn't learn it during.
class. Maybe you had a professor and there was parts of it that weren't taught very well, or maybe there was parts of it where you got really confused, or maybe you were really sick for a particular number of lessons. You're still responsible for that information.
If that happened for more than one prereq course, that has added up over time. You're going to need more time, okay? Schedule dependent. If you are very busy on campus, Or let's say you have a family.
Let's say that you do a lot of volunteer work in the community or you're a mentor or you tutor elementary school kids. You are going to need more time for the MCAT. None of these things are going to fall within a three-month time where you think you're going to study for three months and be able to put up a successful goal score.
It is not going to work, right? Because, again, you're busier and all of these things are going to take out time for the MCAT. Let's say if you're also getting your application together and you're trying to also complete application pieces, you're going to need more time.
It's also content dependent. If you are further away from the MCAT, let's say you're, I mean, from your prereqs, let's say you're a non-traditional student. Let's say you took OCHEM during your sophomore year or something, whatever it is, the further away you are from the content, the more you're going to have to make up some of that distance and probably do a lot more review for that.
So again, if you're someone that has read prior advice or you've talked to someone and they studied for three months, you have to make sure maybe they didn't have any of these things going on and they were able to devote 40 hours a week to study. I would say if you fall into any of these categories, you're probably going to need to be closer to that six month study time rather than the three month study time because it's going to need to be spread out just really over a longer period of time. to study. Okay. All right.
Let's look at the concept of review versus learning. So I hear students all the time use these terms interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Okay.
Review means I knew this at one point in time and I need to brush up on it. That's what review means, right? I previously learned it.
So again, If you got a low B in your OCHEM class, there are parts of that that you did not previously learn, right? Because it came out on the exam that that information wasn't previously learned. You're not in a spot of review.
Review means I knew this at one point. I just need to brush up on it. Learning means I don't know this.
I need to learn it. So again, as you're going through, and I do recommend. that you take a diagnostic exam.
The diagnostic exam that I would recommend is one of the free AAMC exams. It is the unscored exam. So it is the exam that's not going to give you a three-digit score.
It's going to give you a percent correct. That exam is a really, really great starting point. Number one, it's free. Number two, it's part of the official material. And number three, it matches up with the content outline to give you a really good idea.
of what information just needs to be reviewed. Like, okay, I did know this, or I took a really great educated guess, I need to brush up on this, or what information you just flat out missed. I don't remember even learning this at all. That tells you that you're in learning mode.
And again, the more learning you have to do as opposed to review, you're going to need some additional time. If you missed all of the questions for light and sound, that- area is not at review. That area is at learning. Okay. So make sure you have a really good understanding of what's review and what's learning.
Now you might say, Dr. Nguyen, how do I know if I'm at the reviewer learning stage? 50% is a really good baseline marker. If you are answering a set of questions over a particular topic, let's say, oops, sorry about that. Let's say it's a particular topic about...
amino acids, right? And you get below a 50%, that probably indicates we're at the learning piece of that. We're not at review, we're at learning.
As opposed to... If you do amino acids and proteins, and let's say you get like a 65%, that means you're probably at the review phase, right? And we probably just need to do some flashcards.
We need to do a bunch of questions on that and we can get there. Okay. But 50% is a good baseline because that's half. If you're not getting at least half of the questions correct in any one topic area, that topic area needs some significant love.
Okay. All right. Let's talk about retrieval practice. Now, retrieval practice is the art. of recalling concepts from memory in order to enhance learning, strengthen connections, and increase the chances that you'll be able to recall it in the future, okay?
This is also just a fancy term of, you know, a fancy way of talking about practice questions and employing some spaced repetition, right? Retrieval practice, though, is the best thing you can do in order to boost your MCAT score, right? So recalling concepts from memory.
to enhance learning and it absolutely increases the chances that you'll be able to recall it. Okay, so let's talk about the concept within MCAT of content versus practice. Okay, so what are we seeing in this in this picture right here?
If you look closely, this is a picture we don't often see it but it is well known right that if you play some kind of sports this particular one is football that at a certain point in time, especially if you're playing at a higher level, you are going to be watching film. And why are you going to be watching film? Because you are building your knowledge base twofold.
You can watch film from what your own team did. And if you're watching film for what your own team did, you're watching film to see what you did well and what did not go well, what mistakes were made, what should we have done different. What can we do differently in the future? What did we do that was really good that we want to repeat more of, right?
You're watching film to build knowledge. And that's how you want to think of your content. You're doing that to build your content knowledge in a particular area.
However, you can't just sit and watch film all day. You have to actually, at some point, go out on the field and practice. So what you're seeing in the classroom what you're seeing in the book, what you're viewing on videos, you have to also put it into practice. And if you think about it, a football team, I'm a big football fan.
They do this all the time. This is very standard, right? They do watch film and then they go out and run drills and they practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. Both of these things have to come together in order to have a successful attempt.
Okay. So When we talk about practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, how many practice questions do you need to complete before sitting for the MCAT? So think of a number right now.
Think of a number in your head. How many practice questions do you think you need to complete before sitting for the MCAT? We'll do a quick drum roll.
Okay. I suggest to students that that number is somewhere around 3,500 practice questions. Okay. Now, I'm going to take you back to the beginning of this presentation when I talked about building your skills as a critical thinker, building your skills as someone who's able to take a set of data and apply it to a question.
You are only going to be able to be way more comfortable doing this at this rate, at this number. If you only do that 100 times or 200 times or 500 times. There's no way when you sit down for the MCAT that you're going to feel comfortable to do it at the level you need to do while sitting for that exam.
3,500 is going to ensure that you're more comfortable, that your fight response is going to kick in more. Why? Because you're like, I've answered so many of these types of questions. There's nothing they can throw at you that you haven't seen at this number. There's nothing, right?
And I tell students all the time, they say, Dr. Nguyen, how do I know if I'm answering a bunch of practice questions? How do I know I've covered everything? And I say, well, you answered three thousand five hundred questions to answer two hundred and thirty. I'm going to say that again. You answered three thousand five hundred questions to answer two hundred and thirty.
Aren't those good odds that you've seen everything? Those are fantastic odds. You could take those odds to Vegas and win some money. Right. Those are fantastic odds.
So. that's going to make you more comfortable. It's going to build up your stamina. It's also going to really kick in that.
fight response, not the flight response. If you're answering a significantly lower number of questions than this, it's very possible that that flight response can kick in at that rate. Okay.
And again, 50%, you constantly have to assess yourself, re-evaluate yourself. Where am I in relationship to the 50%? If it's below 50%, you got to go back and watch some more film.
You got to go back in the classroom, right? And again, if it's above that, you're, you're, able to continue on in practice. Okay.
Now, when we talk about review, what we're talking about is spaced repetition, right? Remember I talked about retrieval practice, spaced repetition. You can't just learn something and then say, oh, I learned it. I looked at it one time.
It's in my brain. I never have to worry about that again. That's not how this works.
You are going to need to also constantly review. And this is called spaced repetition. So this is not a new thing.
concept. This concept has been around for a very long time. And it was first introduced in terms of what's called a forgetting curve, right?
And so if we look here, when you first learn something, I'm not talking about something that you've known for a long time, but when you first learn something, of course, that information is going to be in the form of immediate recall at a hundred percent. Okay. Now, over time of not looking at that data, that information starts to fall drastically in terms of your retention of it. So after 20 minutes of not looking at that information again, we're about down to 60%.
If you start to go around nine hours and you haven't looked at that information again, now we're below 40%. Down here, right, we see where days have elapsed. And if days have elapsed without you spiking your memory and looking at that information again, Now we're down to probably about 20%. However, when you see the information again, it'll spike it up back to immediate recall. And then that line starts to flatten out more, right?
This is the whole concept of spaced repetition. And there are electronic ways that you can do this and keep track of this. Probably the most popular one is Anki, which is mostly free.
The desktop version is free. free of it, where it will keep track of things you're about to forget and say, hey, you're about to forget this and it'll show it to you. But there's other ways and there's other free resources that you can use to do this. You just have to make sure in addition to practicing a lot that you're also reviewing, especially if you're going to be studying over the period of six months, there's no way you're going to remember, you know, if you start now in April, there's no way you're going to remember, you know, something in late June. If you just look at it one time.
So you have to make sure you're reviewing quite a bit. Okay. So let me put this all together for you.
And then I'm going to, we're going to turn it over and we're going to talk to our MS1 student who's on the call. Okay. Let me show you what a daily study plan can look like with everything that I talked about and incorporating everything. Okay. So the first thing you want to do is start out and you want to learn or review, right?
Remember, those are not the same thing. Learn or review any. areas that are kind of registering below 55% using your study materials.
So remember, you're going to take that diagnostic exam to start out with, and you want to see any areas that are below either 50%. 50% is a good baseline, but you can also look at things that are below 55%, and you want to make a list of those things that you need to learn and review them, right? So you can pick one topic that's below either 55% or 50%, okay?
Step number two is... Then you want to answer practice questions over that specific topic. And then you want to review your corrects or incorrects. So let's just say light and sound.
For instance, I did light and sound. It came in at a 46% for light and sound. I watch videos or I read in my textbook or I look at my class notes going over light and sound and I get a really good idea of light and sound.
Then I open up my question bank or my materials, whatever you're using. Khan Academy also. which is free and you still have access to that, that has really great questions over light and sound and passages over that. You wanna answer practice questions over that specific topic. And you wanna review which questions you got correct and review which questions you got incorrect, okay?
Then you wanna use spaced repetition because any concepts that you got incorrect from light and sound, you wanna make sure that you're reviewing those daily. Now, if you do this, right? And I do light and sound today and I'm reviewing the incorrect.
concepts that I got from light and sound from now until I take my test six months from now. Do you think you're going to know light and sound? Absolutely. You're going to know light and sound, right?
Because you constantly reviewed it. So this is the cycle. When you get done with step number three.
Then you're starting all over again. Now you want to pick a different area. Maybe we pick amino acids. Maybe amino acids was at a 36%. Again, I'm going to review, learn amino acids.
I'm going to answer practice questions over that. I'm going to put it in my spaced repetition to review it daily over and over and over again. Okay. Now this is like a daily plan that you can do. So let me show you an overall plan.
And this is going to also incorporate when do you do practice exams? So this daily plan, you can keep cycling through. However, when you reach a spot where you've maybe gotten through about half of the coursework, or you could do it in quarter amounts, right? So when you get through 25% of the material, 50% of the material, 75% of the material, and 100% of the material, then we wanna incorporate some full-length practice exams, right?
So you can see after 25% of covering this material and doing my daily review, How is that now manifesting itself in a full-length practice exam? So that's step four. When you get done with that full-length practice exam, then you want to review that practice exam.
And again, you start back all over where you want to note any areas below 55%. Let's say you don't have any areas below 55%. Now we can bump it up and say, okay, what areas do I have below 60%? What areas do I have below 65%?
What areas do I have below 70%? What areas do I have below 75%? You want to keep moving that bar for yourself until you reach up around your goal score.
Okay. So this is what this is going to look like. And it's absolutely in, in the beginning, you're going to be doing more of that daily study plan, but closer you get to your exam, when you're doing practice exams every week, then you want to move and repeat this cycle over and over again.
Um, because that's. what's also really going to help you in terms of, again, moving towards your goal score. Okay.
All right. So now I'm going to invite our MS1 on the call to come on camera with me. Aha, there she is.
Hi. And what we're going to do is do an interview. I am going to ask our student a series of questions.
questions that she is going to answer. And the first question, I'm going to have you introduce yourself, your name, your year, where you're at in medical school, and any career interests you have at this point, if known. That's good. Hi, everyone.
Hope you're all doing well and learning a lot from Dr. Nguyen. My name is Aluchi. I'm a first-year medical student at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore City, and I'm currently interested in anesthesiology.
Great. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for being here. We all know medical students are extremely busy.
So thank you so much for carving out some time to speak to everyone today. All right. Our first question is, what skills do you think are important to build before taking the MCAT?
Let's see. That's a really good question. I think before taking the MCAT, it's really important to learn the internal stuff.
So learning how to believe in yourself. So that means like trusting in your ability as a student, as a learner, as a test taker, and just like answering questions, like just, you know, working on the mental, because I think the exam is more of just a mental thing than anything else. And that includes reducing and cutting out negative talk. And negative talk is something that actually can introduce a lot of self-doubt when you're taking exams. So in order to be successful in the MCAT, I would also work on blocking out the noise of self-doubt.
So that you can, one, be healthy while you're studying, but also so you can like zone your mind 100% into the task at hand. Instead of thinking about, oh, I'm a failure, I'm not going to pass. Like you can actually like pay attention to what you're doing.
And another thing you can work on before taking the MCAT is learning how to read with purpose and intention. So looking for key words and making sure you understand the true purpose of the question at hand. Thank you. That was a great answer. What are your thoughts on the MCAT before starting medical school?
So if you can kind of think back to your thoughts before you started about the MCAT and what are your thoughts on the MCAT after starting medical school? Right. OK, so honestly, before taking the MCAT, I was really intimidated by it.
And that was because of like SAT struggles I had from high school. And then during taking the MCAT, I was very frustrated. I think that's relatable. And then. after taking the MCAT post that and now med school, I actually surprisingly appreciate the MCAT.
And I told Dr. Nguyen this one random day. And the reason why I appreciate the MCAT is for like a slew of reasons. One of the reasons I appreciate the MCAT is because of the confidence that I've gained from being able to get through the MCAT. So for me, it's not just about the score, to be honest, but it's more of the fact that I was so dedicated and I was focused and I was motivated and I was organized for however long that I was in that period.
And all those character traits make me feel really proud about myself. So I appreciate that confidence boost. I also appreciate how the MCAT taught me to feel very calm about challenges.
and helped me also to like focus and solve for a question at hand. So those are some skills that I use like every single day in medical school, just being calm in the face of a challenge because every single day there's something new. And then also I learned to be 100% okay with being wrong.
And obviously the caveat to that is to being wrong before the exam or the test. So I see it now as an opportunity. to be right on the test. So the MCAT really just helped me to change my mindset about being wrong when I'm practicing or when I'm studying because before I would see it as like, oh my gosh, I'm failing. I'm getting all these questions wrong.
But now I see it as an opportunity to get it right in a month or right in two weeks when I take the exam. And so that's like the biggest thing I got out of it, just being calm when I'm wrong and seeing it as right later on. And then one more thing that I appreciate about the MCAT now, post taking it, is just the process of elimination and the power that that has.
I don't need to know everything. Only God up in heaven knows everything. I don't put that pressure on myself to know everything.
I just need to know a lot or enough and then use that to eliminate things that are wrong and then reason to figure out the right answer. And I use that again every single exam in medical school. Thank you.
Yeah, that's perfect. segue into my next question. So I wanted you to talk a little bit about test taking in medical school and like what that's been like for you. Has that been surprising in terms of like how much you guys are tested and things like that? And like why, you know, just kind of about how it's important to conquer these skills.
And especially as you are nearing the end of your first year of medical school. which means that then you're going to start thinking about your next standardized exam, which is going to be your board exam. So can you talk a little bit about that flow and transition?
Right. So let's see. I think thanks to like the MCAT and just like practicing in school and doing all that stuff, I've been really able to like manage my nerves and manage my emotions, which is a very hard skill to learn. But thankfully, that's like improved a lot.
And so I'm trying to like just stay calm because every time I'm studying for something new, like have an exam on Friday, for instance, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to remember this in two days. I'm just topless of like in a year from now for that exam. But I try to just stay calm because that's really like where our power comes from. So, yeah. And then just also adjusting to new situations and being dynamic.
So however it is that I'm studying now, it's working, but I might have to change that up. for um step or I might have to change it up for the next block because every block is different but just being able to believe in myself and letting history speak for itself because in the past I obviously have been successful enough to get to this point so just trusting in that ability that I was able to do it before I can do it again now um and so that's just like the energy I'm trying to keep up all the time um in medical school and I hope to continue into step where it's going to be like the biggest exam I've taken in my whole lifetime but we shall see you Great. Can you talk a little bit about like how much practicing has been important in medical school and like whether it's practice questions or practice simulations that you guys you guys do? And yeah, can you talk a little bit about like practicing in med school?
Right. So practice is very, very important. A lot of the time is spent learning and reviewing. So a lot of Anki and everyone uses that, but a lot of people do.
And then practice questions, I tend to apply them the last week leading up to the exam. So like this week right now. I am doing a lot of practice questions and they're so imperative because you do all this studying, the MCAT, like, I'm sorry, not the MCAT, the Anki, whatever, like you're drilling things into your mind, you're reciting things like 24 seven all the time. And then you get to the practice question, it asks you a question and you get it wrong. And then you read the explanation why, and you're like, oh, I know that.
It's just like the way they word the question. It's just not how you study it, obviously. So when you're studying, you're reading a sentence about a fact, like a fact, like the sky is blue.
But then the way they word the question, they're not obviously giving that to you. So practice questions are so important because they help you to be able to contextualize all the information that you've learned. But if you don't do enough practice questions, when you get to the test, you know all this stuff, but you don't know like the context in which you're going to ask you. You don't know how to shape what you've learned into answering a question or applying it.
So I do a lot of practice questions the week leading up to an exam where I know I've learned as much as I possibly can. And now I just need to fill in holes and really just like apply what I've learned. That's great.
So what skills do you think you built during the MCAT that are going to be useful in terms of you being a future physician? Right. Okay. So I think I mentioned this before, but the getting my nerves down and just being able to manage my emotions, at least for the duration of the exam, as soon as the exam is over, I can scream or whatever I need to do.
But during the exam, very calm. And then also, you know, when I recognize that a question isn't immediately easy, I don't panic. I just recognize, okay, let me take my time, really read this and make sure I completely understand what they're asking me. Because a hard question isn't necessarily that you don't know the answer. It's just that the way they worded it, it's not as straightforward as you and I would word a question.
So just breaking down that question, making sure you understand it. so that you can apply whatever knowledge you have to at the very least eliminate options. So you don't necessarily need to know the answer. You just need to know enough to eliminate the wrong answer choices to hopefully get to a correct answer. But that means, you know, understanding what the question is asking.
So it just goes back to that always. Yeah. And if you think about that as a future physician, right, you brought up a really good point that. As a patient, we don't know what you guys need to know. Half the time we're talking, we're just talking, talking, talking, talking, talking.
You're listening for certain clues that then you're responsible for putting together and applying it, right? So we don't, it's not this nice, neat package, right? When a patient comes to you and we're talking to you, that's why you're asking more questions. That's why you're probing.
So if you think about it, it's kind of the same thing that you're talking about. As we're talking, you're eliminating, right? Remember when I was talking about if a person has a cough, it doesn't mean they have lung cancer or don't have lung cancer. It's just as we're talking and I say, oh, yeah, I work in a coal mine, you know, that might in your brain, you might put it a little higher on your list, right?
So it's the same thing, the same skill you're building. And, you know, it's just that we don't often talk a ton about it in that way. But it's kind of like what you were just saying about, you know, it's not necessarily the way it was in the textbook, right?
Patients, we don't always show up to your office in a textbook way. Yeah. Right.
Because everyone's so different. Right. And you've probably seen that.
I don't know. Have you interacted with many patients so far where you've seen that where it doesn't always show up like in the nice, neat package? Yeah, it's honestly one of the most jarring things as a medical student because we are. being very intentional with studying and making sure we know all that they're telling us.
And then you see a patient, which we do see, there's something called practice of medicine at our school. And I think a lot of schools have go to a hospital, actually engage with patients, do a history, practice, physical exams, all that stuff. But yeah, like patients will present and they're talking and I'm hearing them. And then afterwards, we talk to our preceptor about it. And the preceptor would say what it is.
And I'm like, oh, I didn't think about that because we learned it's exactly this, this and this. But people are so dynamic. Human beings aren't like exactly the same.
And so that's honestly one of the hardest parts so far, just being able to recognize things won't look exactly as how I studied them. Yeah, absolutely. And so, again, it kind of goes back to really paying attention and just eliminating to get as close as possible. Then you can really start honing in on exactly what it is.
Great. One more question for you, and then we're going to open things up. or Q&A to the audience.
But looking back on your experience, is there anything you wish you would have done differently while studying for the MCAT? Let's see. I wish I used Anki more when I was studying for the MCAT.
At that time, I wasn't familiar with Anki. And so Dr. Nguyen had given me the idea to, you know, use a Google Doc. And so I had it organized in that way. But I use Anki for med school now and it has been pivotal.
It is the foundation of my studying. So I wish I used that more. I also wish during my MCAT studying period that I knew earlier.
that I don't need to master everything immediately. Because at first I felt this pressure, like as soon as I study or review something that I should know it right here, right now, I should be able to answer a hundred questions about it and get all of them right. But eventually I learned that I don't need to master things immediately.
This is a process. My test isn't tomorrow. It's not next week. It's not next month. Like I have time to master this.
And so just removing that pressure allows you to work better, you know? And then I also wish during the MCAT that I learned how to block out the noise way earlier. Obviously, I've talked a lot about how I do now. But before, like in the beginning of my studying, I didn't know how to do that.
And not blocking out the noise made me skip a lot of questions or not even skip the question, but like skip keywords, skim over it and just. silly mistakes simply because I was just so in my head and not actually paying attention or focusing 100% on the question. So I did learn eventually how to block out noise, but I wish I learned earlier.
All right. Thank you so much, Aluchi, for all of your words of wisdom. And we have so much to learn from you as someone who just went through this process. So thank you so much.
Thank you to everyone again. for being here. We are going to now open this up for questions for myself, Dr. Sturgis or Oluchi, and I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Sturgis for this portion. Thank you. Thank you both so much.
These sessions are always so informative and several students have a lot of questions. So I do want to just give a little bit of guidance as it relates to the Q&A portion of. the talk.
We will not be pulling students on live all of the questions that we're going to answer. We ask that you please drop in the Q&A section. So raising your hand isn't going to get us to call you in, but just place that in the Q&A section and we will fill questions there. So the first question that I, there have been a lot of questions about kind of managing test taking anxiety. And so one of the questions was, what advice do you have for those who score high on practice exams, but score much lower on their actual exams?
Yeah, that's a great question. I can start with that. So that might be an indicator of a couple different things.
Right. So it could be an indicator that when you were at home relaxed, you were. thinking about the questions in a very different way.
Right. Um, and when you then got to the actual exam, again, your, your flight response might've kicked in a little bit more. So here's what I would say, um, to that. So, um, I think that you need to practice more, right? So I would do more practice under time conditions and make sure you practice like in different.
areas, right? We can get really comfortable being in like one environment, one location. So I would suggest that you kind of move around to different environments, things like that.
You also need to examine when you're going over. So I'm just going to say like, if you're practicing and then you're, let's just say you're practicing in like a question bank and then your practice exam is lower, right? So again, I would suggest that you're again, doing more practice. practice exams under timed conditions and that.
If you are actually a person where your practice exams were way higher than the actual thing, again, you don't have the ability to see what you got right and what you got wrong on the actual one, but you do need to go through and examine how the day went and how your thought process was. Sometimes I have students, and Aluchi mentioned this many times, being in control of your emotions. where you got to the real thing and all of a sudden you think, oh, they're trying to trick me and I'm going to outsmart them. So now instead of actually paying attention to what you're being asked, you're sitting there clicking wrong answers because you're trying to outsmart the AAMC. Let me tell you right now, you are never going to outsmart the AAMC and it's not needed.
No one's asking you to outsmart anyone, right? Your task at hand is to sit down, read the passage, read the question, and give an answer that the question is asking. That's your only job of the day.
If you're doing anything other than that, you have a high probability that you might be clicking the wrong answer. The other thing is sometimes I see students get in and they start doing things that they didn't do in practice. For instance, I had a student who, when I said...
what did you actually do on test date that this score fell so much? And what I was able to deduce is that they had changed a lot of their answers for no reason at all. They just said, I felt like I was getting a bunch of questions wrong. So I changed the answers. And I'm like, you felt like it?
That's an emotion, right? So again, that tells me that we're not in control of our emotions. We're not thinking logically, that was not the task at hand.
So I really would sit down and examine how test date went. If you did anything. differently than you did in practice, that's probably what happened, which is why that score did not turn out the same.
You changed, something changed, either you changed, something changed, your strategy changed. You didn't do the same thing you were doing at home. I don't know if anyone else has any suggestions.
I think that's an excellent answer. Another thing that I tell students to take into consideration is remember when you're at the testing center, there are going to be people there taking a one-hour exam. There may be people there taking a two or three-hour exam.
So there's going to be movement in that testing room while you're testing. So I tell students, go to a library, sit in an area where there are people moving around around you. So, yes, it's still a relatively quiet, but you may hear the librarian coming to talk to someone. They are coming to talk to someone here. You have to be able to manage that additional noise.
So taking a practice test under those conditions is helpful. Also, go ahead and think about what you're going to eat. Right.
Like. the morning of your exam, what's your breakfast going to look like? What's your lunch going to look like? Do you need more protein?
Like what's, if you have irritable bowel, that's a real thing. If your anxiety tends to make you have to go to the restroom, think about that as you're preparing for your exams, because all of that's going to come into play the day of the exam. And then also remember, this is not an exam you're expected to get a hundred on.
You have to sit with the idea that you're going to get questions wrong. And that there are going to be things that you may not know that day. And you have to be able to not let that knock you off your game, right?
And you've got to be able to keep your head in the game, even though you're like, I didn't get that right. Or you may have an entire block that is full of things that are your weak areas. You can't let that throw you off. You got to be able to shake that off, get back in the game for the next block and keep it moving.
Anything else on that question? So there are several questions specifically about the CARS section of the MCAT. And so the most basic of those questions is, do you have any specific suggestions on how to improve on the CARS section? Alicia, I'll let you start. If you have any suggestions, then I can offer a few too.
Sounds good. So CARS, yes, I do have a suggestion on that. I was able to increase my CARI score significantly after I changed something.
So at first it was rough, but then I started, I don't know if this is what Dr. Will will say, but I learned this method, which is basically where I prioritize making sure I really understand the passage. So that means I'm like taking my time reading the passage. And then when I get to the questions, I have to contextualize every single question. And this does make me a bit slower.
So the point of this is to increase your accuracy. And then you will probably not be able to answer the ninth. I think there's nine, right?
The ninth passage, you probably won't be able to truly read it. It might be a quick skim, probably won't be able to really answer the ninth passages like questions properly. But the odds are if you really like prioritize accuracy in the first eight passages, which means going a bit slower, that you probably got most if not majority of them correct.
So that the ninth. passage where you like guess because you didn't have any time to like dedicate to it it would even out that you did really well on that section so that's like a strategy that I learned towards like the last two-ish months two three months of my MCAT I'm studying and that helped me significantly increase my MCAT score by increasing accuracy throughout the first eight passages and just to like delve a bit deeper into the contextualizing each question which is what kind of makes it slower also is so if I read a question for the car section, I will then make a sentence out of it. So I turn that question into a statement. So if they're asking like, when did Bob fall off of the tree?
I will make that into a statement of Bob fell off the tree when, and then read answer A, Bob fell off the tree when, read answer B, Bob fell off the tree when, read answer C. And so that really just helps with like confusing yourself less because I find with cars, it's just like, sometimes it's, that's the hardest section for me at least. to really understand what they're asking you. So if you put it into a sentence, then you're able to clearly see like, oh, Bob did not fall off the tree when the car hit him. Bob did not fall off the tree.
Bob did fall off the tree when this happened. So like, it just helps, but it makes it slower. So that's my advice.
So my advice is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. I mean, you really have to be doing CARS practice daily. And I would say, you know, depending on where you're at, at, like even when you first start out studying, you should be doing one to two CARS passages a day.
Now, the other thing in terms of CARS is, you know, you're not going to be interested in every single passage that you're reading, but you have to make yourself interested, right? So I'm not always, you know, I will sometimes do CARS passages with students and I can see how maybe you're not the most interested in like being George III, but... But if you are good at kind of imagining the passage as a scene in your brain, like I'll think of like a Game of Thrones type scene or like, you know, a movie I've seen or, you know, something like that to make it the most interesting piece of material I have ever read in my entire life.
I mean, I get into it. What are the characters doing? Oh, no, he did not think that that was going to work, you know, and I really get into it and I put myself in the passage. That is what is commonly referred to as engaged reading, right? Because if you're bored while you're reading it, and we know this for everything, it's probably going one ear and out of the other.
Again, the first time you're reading through the passage, you don't have to pick up everything. What's most important to pick up is the gist, the tone, arguments that are being made, right? Um, when, um, you know, when opinions are switching.
These are the things, and then if they ask a more specific question, that's when you need to go back over to the passage. But I definitely agree with Oluchi of being really making sure you're answering what the question's asking and also being extremely, extremely literal about what the question was asking. But all of this comes with practice.
The other thing is the AAMC has a CARS diagnostic tool in their package. It's not. free, but it's mixed in with the package that you would purchase for the MCAT. That CARS diagnostic tool has suggestions in it for conquering CARS passages, and it is pretty helpful.
So I would highly recommend that also as something that can guide you in order to increase your CARS score. It's the AAMC CARS diagnostic tool, and there are also passages that you can answer in that as well. All right.
Awesome. The next question, how do you combat study fatigue and burnout? I don't mind starting with this one.
This is something that you really have to learn to balance throughout your career, right? Because remember, right now, most of you are an undergrad or you may be in a transition point where you're trying to study and work, but then you're going to find yourself in medical school where you're trying to be in school all day and study at night. And then.
Once you get in your third year or your clinical year, you're going to be working all day and trying to study in the evening and studying on the weekends. And the same is true during residency. So one of the things I tell students with regards to preventing burnout is still stay true to the things that make you you. Right.
So if you enjoy music, if you enjoy nature, if you enjoy going to church, if you enjoy Sunday dinner with your family. Whatever those few things are that you really enjoy that make you tick, that, you know, make you happy, bring you genuine joy. You have to keep those embedded in your life while you're studying. OK, because you've got to still feel like you've got purpose and and, you know, you're still yourself. But you're going to have to work hard, too.
Right. So you have to be able to. This is where that work life balance starts to come in.
Because we're not going to sit here and tell you you're not going to have to. If you've got a short time frame, you may have to study for eight or 10 hours. You know, it's time frames. If you've got a longer period and you're trying to work, you may have to work eight hours a day and then come home and find three or four hours in the evening to also sit down and study. But if it means that you need to go to the gym between work and home so that you still feel like you're yourself, do that.
If it means that you need to devote to cooking dinner. Because cooking is something you love and you're passionate about three or four times a week, you need to still find time to do that. So that's my biggest piece of advice is find that thing that it makes you take and keep that embedded in your schedule. Yeah. Another way that that could come out in your schedule, too, or like is taking off one day a week.
Right. So we would never, ever, ever, ever, ever promote studying seven days a week. That also leads to burnout and misery and like never going outside and seeing the sun. Right.
So. Never, do not study seven days a week. The most six, right?
But you also need to have a day off each week and just build that into your schedule. And if you can make sure you have things planned for that week, maybe that's when you go run errands or go to appointments or you tell your friends and family, hey, this is the day I'm gonna be available. Then you have a whole day off to recharge. But studying seven days a week, especially sometimes students will say, well, my test is coming up. So, you know, I'm not taking any days off.
That. That also leads to burnout as well. So, and like pulling all-nighters, these are not things that are going to help your score.
In fact, they're probably going to hurt your score. So you're not getting any sleep. So don't, anything that you wouldn't like normally do, and now all of a sudden you're going to start doing and it's going to be weird.
We do not recommend you to do that. Yeah, so, but I also agree with everything Dr. Ostrich just said. All right, so we'll go on to the next question.
This was one that I know Dr. Wynn kind of touched on slightly during our presentation, but I've seen a couple questions related to it. But how often should we take practice exams or diagnostics to assess our study habits and make changes to improve our score? Yeah, I use a really simple algorithm for this.
When you're first starting out, okay. And you look at everything you have to do. You want to start with a diagnostic exam. And again, I would recommend the AAMC free unscored exam. So the AAMC has two free exams.
One is unscored and one is scored. Take the unscored one for your diagnostic exam, right? Then when you get through 25% of your material and your practice questions, right? So if you look at, if you say, okay, this is everything I need to get done. When you get through 25% of it, then take another diagnostic exam.
When you hit the 50% mark through it, take another diagnostic exam. I mean, take another practice exam. When you hit 75%, take another practice exam.
When you hit 100%, take another practice exam. This is so that you're strategically allowing yourself enough time. to review, learn, and practice in between diagnostic exam. I mean, in between practice exams. If you're just starting out in the beginning and you're doing one every single week, how much information did you actually cover in like five days?
You're spending, it's not enough time to really see a jump in your score where if you do it in quarters, in quarter increments when you first start out, that's a better way to see. how your score is improving and jumping. So right when you start 25%, 50%, 75%, when you hit 100%, that's probably when you're going to be ready to move into then taking one every week, because it means you've gotten through 100% of your content review.
Remember, you're not just doing content review, you're doing content review and practice questions. But when you get through 100% of your content review, now you've seen all the material, then switch over and do a practice exam every week. But until then, until you've covered all the material, it just doesn't make sense to keep doing them because it's going to be like, are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Are we there yet? And your score is just inching up. It's not going to really move too much.
And maybe you can talk about how many if you remember how many practice exams you took overall. I don't even remember at this point. It was a lot. I definitely did all of them that are provided.
I think there's five. And then I think I did some of them again because I retook the MCAT a second time. So, yeah, I did a lot of practice exams.
And then maybe I did like two or three outside sources. I was just looking for a bunch. But do as many as you can, especially when it's like leading up to like your test date.
And I feel like from each one, I just felt like I was learning how to be a better test taker for the real day, which is an important skill to have. also. It's not just about the information.
Of course, it's like I said, a mental thing. So yeah, I did as many as I could. A lot.
Awesome. Alicia, this question is for you. How has your studying for the MCAT helped your studying habits for medical school? I know you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but how did the habits that you gained during studying for the MCAT help? It helped because you can ask my you can't you don't know my classmates, but if you were to ask my classmates, I typically am just very like.
calm about exams and questions and stuff like that because even if I get it wrong I really do see it as like okay I'm not going to get this wrong on the exam I'm going to get this right when I see this again um so that's how I take it so that helps a lot with just like the mental because in medical school there's just a lot happening you're not just like learning the information and there's like a lot that they're throwing at you there's like uh physical exams there's um all these different like sessions that they make you do. There's extracurriculars that you're involved in. Your mom's calling you, your sister's asking for help with some, like just like a bunch of different stuff.
So just being calm helps a lot with just like the day to day. So I think the MCAT was just helpful in me just feeling okay with being wrong or okay with not knowing everything because I trust that I will eventually know it. So I just keep going back to the mental, just because that's what keeps you going.
If you like lose it mentally, then you- can't study because you're out you're sleeping or you're like not able to focus and then like you're done for so I'm just really making sure that I like prioritize um just making sure like I'm okay and I'm well because that's how I'm able to like show up for everything else that I have to do awesome so um this is one question that um I'm gonna go ahead and bring forward but it's y'all have to take but the green is salt and it's um is retaking Is retaking the MCAT considered viewed negatively by admissions teams? And I'll start with this one as I serve, sorry, as I serve on the admissions team for our medical school. Retaking the MCAT is not necessarily viewed negatively if you score low and you need to take it once or even twice.
Again, it's not necessarily viewed negatively there. However. If you take it and your score drops, that's concerning. Or if you take it and it's consistently the same number, that's not helping you in that situation. Or if you take it an extended number of times.
And traditionally, the data that comes from the AAMC kind of puts a cap on three times, right? Like after that, it starts to be viewed. a little bit more negatively or seem to be viewed as a red flag.
So I tell students, don't take the test unless you've taken the practice test to show you that in the data shows you that you're actually going to score where you're ready to score. Okay. So can we say what every medical school across the country is going to view and how they're going to view that we can't. Okay.
However, we can say that If you're not ready to take it, it's in your best interest to postpone it or to not take it and use data to make that informed decision. And I'll let Dr. Nguyen give her thoughts on that. Yeah, I agree with what Dr. Sturgis has said. I also sat on and off of an admissions committee for eight years.
And one of the things of I just want to say how like as I sat on and off for eight years and. a lot of the conversations we had surrounding multiple attempts, right? So if we were seeing multiple attempts where your score moved one point up or a couple points down, a couple points up, or it kind of stayed the same, that's more of an indication that you weren't either, A, reflecting about what you had done in between attempts.
You did one thing. It didn't go well. You sat down again and did the exact same thing, hoping for a different result. So that can be a red flag in terms of moving into medical school, because you need to come into medical school ready to take feedback and ready to constantly reflect on what has gone right and what has gone wrong. Every single day, you're going to have to do this.
You're going to have to reflect on it. Malooch, you could probably talk to this of like, you're constantly being graded and assessed on. everything you say and do, right? Even when you're meeting with standardized patients, they have patients. It's like, how did that go?
You constantly have to reevaluate yourself. Okay. So if we're looking at your application.
And either a I'm thinking you did not self reflect. You didn't say, okay, what do I need to do differently? You just did the same thing.
I'm going to be a little bit nervous that you're going to get into medical school and not have that self reflection skill. Or someone told you what you need to do different. And you don't take feedback well. And you didn't take their feedback and you did the exact same thing that you did before because you're thinking, well, it's hard or you know what, what they're saying is hard.
I know that I did 500 practice questions and went to go take it and I didn't get a good score. Now I hear Dr. Wynn saying I got to do 3,000. That's really hard. I want to do 3,500, right?
Again, that says, hey, I might not be able to take feedback as well as I need to, right? It's not even just advice you're hearing from us. There's things that you can read on blogs.
There's great YouTube advice. You can talk to your peers. You can talk to mentors. You can talk to your academic advisor.
about what you need to do a little bit differently. So that's where the red flag comes in. And you're not a score, but a lot of times on the admissions committee, we're looking at maybe what behind the scenes means of the score.
Not always, but this, I'm just sharing my experience of what some of those conversations were. Again, you probably know people that got in with all kinds of different scores and that's great. We're just trying to make sure that anyone on this presentation understands and how to set yourself up.
up for success. Now, another thing I did see, and I just want to reiterate what Dr. Sturges said is, how do I know if I'm ready? That cannot be an emotional decision.
Or I feel, I hear students say, well, I feel like I wasn't ready. And I'm like, we shouldn't be feeling, we should not be using our emotions as a marker of success. It needs to go back to your data.
What does your practice exam score say? How close or far are you away from your goal score? And that goal score can be dependent on where you'd like to go to medical school.
You can get a good idea by looking at the AAMC MSAR and seeing what the median MCAT scores were around, you know, for the class, the last class. I just got admitted to use it as a ballpark. I'm not saying that you can't get in without that exact same score. It's a median. Right.
But it needs to be based on data, not emotions. Take all the emotion out of it and say, am I actually able to apply what I know? Yes or no.
Or do I not know enough? And that's why I can't apply it. Yes or no, right?
And then you need to fix those things. And then after that, try and attempt again. And this is a great follow-up question to exactly what Dr. Nguyen was just mentioning.
And this is for you, Luqi. How would you say that your overall experience with the MCAT was? And how did you know that you were ready to take it? Uh, overall experience with the MCAT, it was a time, you know, definitely a time.
I think it was one of the healthiest times ever in my life. I was so organized. I was very like, by the book, I wake up at this time, I'm eating right, XYZ, I'm sleeping enough.
I just want to make sure I didn't have any extraneous factors impacting my score. Yeah, so it was interesting. But I feel like I learned a lot about myself as a person and I felt proud about myself afterwards. And then there was a second part to your question, Dr. Sturgis.
Yeah, it was. How did you know you were ready to take it? OK, thank you. I mean, the test date was coming up, so I had to take it.
But let's see how I knew I was ready to take it was I feel like I had done everything I could possibly do. That's what it was for me. Like Dr. Wynn knows.
I did X, I did Y, I did Z. I did A, I did B, I did C. Like I did it all. So at this point, there's nothing more I can do.
I just need to pray, eat right, sleep right, and show up. So when you feel like you've exhausted all your materials, you've done all the studying you can do, you've gone over everything a million times, you've looked at the physics equations a hundred times, maybe you still don't know that last one, whatever. Like you've looked at it a thousand times and maybe that one thing isn't sticking with you. That's all you have, just show up.
be your best. And that's what it is. Medical schools will look at it and they'll like you. They won't like you. Eventually you will become a doctor.
So that's how I took it. And that's how I knew I was ready when I was just like, this is all I've got in me. So.
Dr. Nguyen, do you have any advice on how you tell, what you tell students to know that they're ready? Yeah. Again, in addition to what Oluchi said about that full feeling of like, I'm saturated, I've done everything. possibly could. Just also, again, you really, really need to understand what your goal score is and when your practice exams reach that, you know, around that range, that's also a good indicator that you're ready to take it.
I think the last thing that I tell students is, you know, whether it's the MCAT or it's step one, it's step two. I kind of have this concept that the knowledge part of it is only 50 percent of the exam. The other half of it is confidence.
Right. So you have to be confident going into the exam. You may ask, how am I going to be confident?
Confidence comes in proper preparation. Right. Like if you prepared. You've done all the questions.
You know, you have completed the practice test and you've reviewed the things that you were getting wrong. You've learned from those experiences. You've taken the feedback that your assessments were giving you and you've pivoted. You've studied and your practice tests have shown you that you're close to your goal score or a score that you feel like you'll be comfortable with.
Going with confidence. Believe that you're ready. give yourself positive affirmations and essentially kind of get your head in the game, right? Like that's the other piece. You've got to go in ready to conquer the exam as well.
So as we're kind of wrapping up, we're at the end of our time here. We wanted to just give everyone, you know, one minute for any last closing reflections or comments. And we'll start with you, Oluju.
Oh, let's see. My last reflections and comments are just to keep being great. Keep trying your best.
And just stay confident. Talk to yourself nicely. Yeah, that's my biggest thing.
Talk to yourself nicely. Be nice to yourself. You're working very hard. And you are very smart. Don't compare yourself to other people.
We're all on our own journey. Everyone has a process. So be nice to yourself. I'll let Dr. Nguyen close this. I'll go next.
I think my closing comments would be don't be afraid of failure. Don't be afraid of messing up, getting things wrong. I tell students to look at every incorrect question, everything that you mess up on as an opportunity to learn because that's what medicine is truly about. And that's what your admissions committees are trying to assess your ability to do.
Can you really learn and pivot? Or are you going to get super down on yourself and stuck? So don't do that. Look at it as an opportunity to learn, grow, improve, and enjoy learning. So, yeah, the MCAT is hard, but it's also a dedicated opportunity to learn some of the foundations and the fundamentals of medicine.
Yeah, I will remind everyone of what I said earlier. No one is born good at this. No one. OK.
I don't care if you've met someone, they said, oh, I studied for the NCAT for one week and I got a 520. They had skills built prior to that. So no one is born good at this, right? We all know no one. Okay. You can build these skills.
It's a skill set. If I wanted to learn how to play the flute and I picked up the flute today, I would not be good at it. That's okay. If I kept practicing and learning and striving and reflecting. and assessing and asking questions and practicing, I would get better at it.
That's how anything in life works. All of us learned how to walk, right? We were not good at it when we first started. And I have very itty bitty nieces.
And the amount of time I've watched them run into walls and fall and hit their head, I'm like, how are we all still alive? Right? But you know what? They got back up and they just did it again.
Everything you are good at right now. has taken practice and reflection. That's what this is, right? So it's not about going into this.
And again, as we keep saying, getting down on yourself, it's about saying, okay, I don't have it now, but I'm so glad that I just got these questions wrong because now I know what I need to work on. You have to think of this as an opportunity and everything's going to be an opportunity. They call it practicing medicine.
for a reason. It's not called all-knowing medicine. It's called practicing medicine. Dr. Sturgis has been a physician for a long time, and every single day she goes to work, she's still practicing. She's still going to encounter things that she's never seen before, like, oh, this is kind of new, right?
Like, didn't know this was going to be my day-to-day. But each time she's encountering something new and a new challenge, it's an opportunity to get better and practice. No one is all-knowing, okay? And again, The more you practice and sit down and build this skill, the better this is going to go.
Again, thank you all so much for joining us today. This is going to be posted and you can feel free to watch this back. And then that way you'll have access to the slides. And we definitely hope we said something today that was encouraging to all of you.
And keep your head up. You can do this. Happy studying. And we hope you have a great rest of your day.
Thanks, everyone. Bye.