Transcript for:
Mastering MCAT: Strategies and Mindset

so welcome everyone we're going to give everybody a little while to get logged in before we get started e all right as everyone's coming in we're going to go ahead and get started um with our strategies for standardized test and mastering the MCAT um exam and Beyond um so welcome to each and every last one of you on today my name is um Lesean Sturgis I am the assistant Dean for academic advising at the Medical College of Georgia um so we're going to I can still see the numers climbing so we're going to give everyone a few minutes to get logged in um 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 um 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 W and you will also get to hear on the perspective from a firstes your medical student so where we're going in this session is we're really going to Dr one's going to start with a growth mindset a growth mindset is so essential this is something 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 is 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 one's 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 um she'll also give you tangible tools for success and exactly how to um 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 um 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 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 um the next hurdle for admission into medical school and that's the mcap 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 exams that you take before starting residency and even as a resident there's an annual exam that you have to take um 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 some something that though you're at the beginning of this journey you can use an employee 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 um you are set to actually take the mcap um some of you may be taking it at April May June July August September when are you taking the exam or maybe you're taking it next year in 2025 right awesome it looks like most of you are taking it um 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 I 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 um for Dr one as she presents this um 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 um Dr shyvana W she is an amazing amazing amazing medical education learning specialist I call her the best in the business whenever I talk to um anyone about her she is um extremely skilled in this area but more importantly she's passionate about helping students achieve their goal of mastering their ability to conquer um standardized exams particularly those related to the MCAT and board exam so no further Ado I introduce to you Dr W thank you so much Dr Sturgis and uh everyone for attending today and also to the double AMC for having us um here to present to you um I want to kind of frame this presentation as again what Dr stures 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 kind 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 stures can also teach can also talk to this a little bit later too as someone who has um 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 School 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 that help your community will just let you in that does not happen right because they're 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 for everyone but it's also important that you're able to do that with an assessment right so not Perfection but growth and resiliency with an 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 g day go on a scale from 1 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 um 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 stur just referenced referenced it's never going to stop right never going to stop as a 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 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 weeks of medical school it is assumed that that skill is already conquered before you get in okay now let's look at how starting with the MCAT medical schools actually um you know make sure that this skill is in place okay so if you think at if you think about K through 16 education here in America so that is kindergarten through um 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 through 16 exam on the flip side of that medical education exams are not correct answer exams and this includes the mcap 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 incat is difficult or I felt like the incat was tricky and that's not a word I use with students in fact I banned 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 mcap okay it is because thinking in the way of best 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 you're in your 50s and you've smoked two packs of cigarettes um 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 as a 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 a opposed to let's say you're a nonsmoker 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 through6 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 mcap are more likely or less likely doesn't mean they're correct or incorrect and this is a skill you need to have okay now if we look at again right um what happens during this process right where students think about themselves while they're sitting down and 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 things you know um 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 um that probably means that they feel very relaxed when they're taking the exam it probably means that they um 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 um 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 n naturally good at taking exams it does not exist okay 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 um 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 response is kicked in and the flight response is is in hyperdrive right your your mind is like uhoh 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 backseat and I'm going to tell you if you're someone that feels like this or 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 anyway right um 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 uh 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 okay so again this is what Dr stur has talked about a little bit of why it's examined why it's important to conquer the mcap before getting to medical school and this is exactly what she showed you have the MCAT as a Premed then you take step one as a seconde medical student you take anywhere between you know seven or eight shelf exams at the third-year medical student student you take step two um as in your last year of medical school you take step three as a resident and then you have you know um 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 patience in your able to rank things appropriately for the person in front of you um to make sure that everyone's getting really really great Medical Care okay so now that we have kind of um 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 AMC has put out and we are currently working on also revamping this um this um this resource for for you um but this is how to create a study plan for the MCAT and I highly recommend that you go on the AMC 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 um we I also did a webinar with the AMC 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 um 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 um 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 um the double AMC 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 a an outline list it also tells you what work you probably learn 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 with on what is on the MCAT and you can also use it sort of as a check list the double AMC 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 it 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 um I've been coaching mcad and I've been a medical education learning specialist for 11 years now this is probably one of the biggest mistakes that I've CE students make and that it's not carving out enough time and space to actually complete the MCAT right you guys are busy busy busy busy busy busy busy um 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 um 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 um 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 spontan activities from this month to this month however I'm happy to hang out Friday is my day off and I'm happy to do something you know if 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 respons I'm not going to be able to see you guys as much as I've was seeing 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 um that skill now let me talk about some schedule considerations because sometimes I 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 how ever 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 prre dependent and if you have prere so again on that um content guide the double AMC has a listed recommended PRX before you take the MCAT if you have PRX 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 pre-s 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 prere course work so that you're tracking your science GPA and if you have any coursework that you got a uh maybe a low b or you got a C that is an indicator that that information was not learned that information is still in the incat though so you're still going to have to be responsible for it and if you didn't learn it during class maybe um 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 um prere course that has added up over time you're going to need more more time okay schedule dependent if you are very busy on campus or let's say you have a family um let's say that you have 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 um take out time for the 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 PRX let's say you're a non-traditional student let's say you took oim during your sophomore year or something whatever it is the the further away you are from the content um 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 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 studying I would say if you fall into any of these categories you're probably going to need to be closer to that six Monon study time rather than the three month study time because it's going to need to be spread out just really over a long longer period of time um 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 in your oam 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 at a 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 um the diagnostic exam that I would recommend is one of the freeble AMC 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 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 you know 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 wi how do I know if I'm at the review or learning stage 50% is a really good Baseline marker if you are answering a set of questions over a particular topic let's say um whoops sorry about that let's say it's a particular topic about um um uh 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 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 enhanced 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 place 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're bu 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 you know what can we do differently in the future you know 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 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 the that number is somewhere 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 a hundred 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 you're like I've answered so many of these types 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 wi 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 3,500 questions to answer 230 I'm going to say that again you answered 3,500 questions to answer 230 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 in to really kick in that fight response not the flight response if you're answering a significantly lower number of question 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 space repetition so this is not a new uh concept this concept has been around for a very long time and it was first introduced um 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 um at 100% okay now over time of not looking at that data that information starts to fall drastically in terms of um 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 space 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 a m mostly free the the web the um desktop version is 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 um turn it over and uh 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 material so remember 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 Bas line 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 Con 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 want to answer practice questions over that specific topic and you want to review which questions you got correct and review which questions you got incorrect okay then you want to use spaced repetition because any concepts you got incorrect from light and sound you want to 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 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 space 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 cours workk or you could do it in um 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 want to incorporate some fulllength 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 the 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 um our ms1 on the call to um to uh come on camera with me aha there she is um hi and um what we're going to do is do an interview I am going to ask our student a series of questions that she is going to answer and the first question I'm going to have you introduce yourself your name your year um where you're at um in medical school and any career interest you have at this point if known that's good hi everyone hope you're all doing well and learning a lot from Dr Win my name is aluchi I'm a first year medical student at the University of Maryland school of medicine and 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 um for carving out some time for um to speak to everyone today all right our first question is what skills do you think are important to build before taking the MCAT okay let's see that's a really good question um I think before taking the MCAT it's really important to learn like 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 um 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 um and that includes reducing and cutting out negative talk um 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 um 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 thank you what are your thoughts on the mcap before starting medical school so if you can kind of think back to your thoughts um before you started about the MCAT and what are your thoughts on the MCAT after starting medical school right uh okay 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 um and then during taking the MCAT I was very frustrated I think that's relatable um and then after taking the MCAT post that and now I'm med school I actually surprisingly appreciate the mcap um and I told Dr W this one random day um and the reason why I appreciate MCAT is for like a slew of reasons um 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 um I also appreciate how the m cat taught me to feel very calm about challenges um and help me also to like focus and solve for um 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 um and then also I learned to be 100% okay with being wrong and obviously the caveat to 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 um 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 um 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 so thank you yeah that's perfect um segue into my next question so I wanted you to talk a little bit about test taking in medical school and like um 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 um you know just kind of about how um it's important to conquer these skills and especially um 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 um flow and transition right um so let's see I think um thanks to like the MCAT and just like practicing in school and doing all that stuff um I've been really able to like manage my nerves and manage my emotions which is a very hard skill to learn um 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 we have an exam on Friday for instance I'm like I don't know if I'm going to remember this in two days toless 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 um 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 cuz 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 great can you talk a little bit about like how much prac practicing um has been important in medical school and like um 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 um so practice is very very important um a lot of the time is spent uh learning and reviewing so a lot of anky not everyone uses that but a lot of people do and in practice questions I tend to um 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 I you do all this studying the MCAT like I'm sorry not the MCAT the ankey whatever like you're drilling things into your mind you're reciting things like 247 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 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 they'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 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 um 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 um during the exam very calm um and then also you know when I recognize that a question isn't immediately easy uh 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 um you just need to know enough to eliminate the wrong answer choices to hopefully get to a correct answer but that m 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 yeah um 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 I 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 on your list right so it's it's the same thing the same skill you're building and um you know it's just that we don't often talk a ton about it in that way but it's it's kind of like what you were just saying about you know it's not necessarily the the way it was in the textbook right patients we don't always show up to your office in a textbook way yeah yes this is 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 um 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 um 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 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 um 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 um one more um question for you and then we're going to open things up for Q&A to the audience um but looking back on your experience is there anything you wish you would have done differently while studying for the MCAT let's see um I wish I used Ani more when I was studying for the MCAT um at that time I wasn't familiar with Ani and so Dr wi had giv me the idea to you know use a Google doc and so I had it organized in that way but um I use Ani for med school now and it has been pivotal it is the foundation of my studying so wish I use that more um 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 100 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 um and then I also wish during the MCAT uh that I learn 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 scam over it um 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 how to block out noise but I wish I learned earlier all right thank you so much um aluchi for all of your words of wisdom and we have so much um to learn from you as someone who just went through this process so thank you so much um thank you to everyone again for being here um we are going to um now open this up for questions for um myself Dr Sturgis or Uchi and I'm going to turn it um back over to Dr Sturgis uh for this portion thank you thank you both so much um 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 um the talk we will not be um pulling students on live all of the questions that we're going to answer we ask that you please drop in the Q&A um 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 um and we will fill questions there so the first question that I um there been a lot of questions about kind of managing um test taking anxiety um so one of the questions was what advice do you have for those who score high on practice exams but score or much lower on their actual exams yeah that's a great question I can start um with that so um 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 have 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 different environments things like that you also need to examine when you're going over um 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 um doing more practice exams and under timed conditions and um that if this if you are actually a person where your practice exams were way higher than the actual thing again you 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 Uchi 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 clicking wrong answers because you're trying to outsmart the double AMC let me tell you right now you are never going to outsmart the dble AMC 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 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 going to be people there taking a 1H hour exam there may be people there taking a half you know a two or three hour exam so there's going to be movement um 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 there coming to talk to someone here and 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 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 your as you're preparing for your exams um because all of that's going to come in to play the day of the exam then also remember this is not an exam you're expected to get a 100 one you have to sit with the idea that you're going to get questions wrong and that there 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 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 um anything else on that question so there are several questions specifically about the car section of the MCAT um and so the most basic of those questions is do you have any specific suggestions on how to improve on the car section let you start if you have any um suggestions then I can offer a few too sounds good so cars yes I do have a suggestion on that uh I was able to increase my car score significantly after I changed something so at first it was rough but then um 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 um 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 nine the ninth passage you probably won't be able to truly read it might be a pro like a quick skim probably won't be able to really answer the ninth passages like um 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 um 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 um studying and that helped me significantly increase my MCAT score by increasing accuracy throughout the first eight passages um 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 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 happen so like it just helps but it makes it slower so that's my advice um 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 like even when you first start out studying you should be doing one to two cars passages a day now the other thing um in terms of cards 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 pages with students and I can see how maybe you're not the most interested in like King George iiii um 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 uh 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 kind 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 you 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 right 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 Uchi of being um really making sure you're as you're answering what the questions 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 double AMC has a cars diagnostic tool and their package um it's not free but it's mixed in with the uh package that you would purchase for the incat that cars diagnostic tool has suggestions in it for conquering uh cars passages and it is pretty helpful so I would highly recommend that also um as something that can guide you in order to increase your car score it's the double AMC Cars diagnostic tool and there are also passages that you can answer um in that as well all right awesome um the next question how do you combat study fatigue and burn out um 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 um right now most of you are in undergrad or you may be um in a transition point where you're trying to study and work um 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 stud in the evening and studying on the weekends and the same is true during residency um 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 life while you're studying okay because you've got to still feel like you've got purpose and and um 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 got a short time frame you may have to study for eight or 10 hours you know at time frames if you've got a longer period and you're trying to work you may have to work8 hours a day and then come home and find 3 or 4 hours in the evening to also sit down and study but if it means that you need to go to the gym between work at 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 um three or four times a week you need to still find time to do that um so that's my biggest piece of advice is find that thing that it makes you tick and keep that embedded in your schedule yeah another way that that could come out in your schedule too or like um 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 um never do not study seven days a week um 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 going to 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 G not take any days off that also leads to burnout as well so um 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 you're not getting any sleep um 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 um yeah so but I also agree with everything Dr GE just said all right so we'll go on to the next question um this was one that um I know Dr one kind of touched on slightly during her presentation but I've seen a couple questions related to it but how often should we take practice exams or Diagnostics to assess um our study habits and um make changes to improve our score yeah I use a really simple algorithm for this when you're first starting out okay um and you look at everything you have to do you want to start with a diagnostic exam and again I would recommend the double AMC free free unscored exam so the wamc 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 the M 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 your 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 you know you're spending it's not enough time to really see a jump in your score where if you do it in in quarters in quarter increments when you first start out that's a better way to see how your scores improving in 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 it's not going to really move too much um and aluchi maybe you can talk about how many if you remember how many practice exams you took overall um I don't even remember at this point it was a lot I definitely did all of them that I provided I think there's five and then I think I did some of them again because I retook the MCAT a second time um so yeah I did a lot of practice exams and then maybe I did like two or three from like 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 State um 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 um which is an important skill to have also because 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 um how has your studying for the mcap helped your studying habits um for medical school I know you alluded to this a little bit earlier but um how did the habits that you gain during stting for the incat help it helped because um you can ask my you can't you don't know my classmates but if you were to ask my classmates um 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 is asking for help with some like just like a bunch of different stuff so just being calm helps a lot with just like the dayto day so I think the MCAT was just helpful in me just feeling okay with being wrong or okay without 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 cuz that's how able to like show up for everything else that I have to do awesome so um this is one question that um I'm going to go ahead and bring forward but it's we all have to take with the greenest salt and it's um is retaking is retaking the MCAT consider viewed negatively by admissions teams um and I'll start with this one as I serve sorry as I serve on the admissions team for our U medical school um retaking the MCAT is not necessarily viewed negatively if you score low and you need to take it once or even twice again um it's not necessarily viewed negatively there however if you take it in your score drops that's concerning or if you take it and it's consistently the same number um that's not helping you in that situation um or if you take it an extended number of times and traditionally the data that comes from the double AMC kind of puts a cap on three times right like after that it can it starts to be viewed um a little bit more negatively or send to be viewed as um a red flag so I tell students don't take the test unless you've taken the practice test to show you that and 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 um 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 um when give her thoughts on that yeah I agree with what Dr stures 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 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 one 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 aluchi 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 they have patience it's like how did that go you constantly have to re-evaluate 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 and now I hear Dr wi saying I got to do three that's really hard I want to do 3,500 right um again that says hey I'm I'm 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 there's you can talk to your peers you can talk to mentors you can talk to your academic adviser about what you need to do a little bit differently so that's where the red flag comes in you're not a score but a lot of times on the missions 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 your yourself up for Success now another thing I did see and I just want to reiterate what Dr stur just 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 dble AMC msar and seeing what the median MCAT scores were around you know know um for the class the last class I just got admitted to use it as a ballpark you I'm not saying that you can't get in without that exact same score it's IMM median right um 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 um then after that try and attempt again and this is a great follow-up question to exactly what Dr W was just mentioning and this is for yuchi um 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 um I just want to make sure I didn't have any extraneous factors impacting my score um yeah so it was interesting but I feel like I learned a lot about myself as a person um and I felt proud about myself afterwards um and then there was the second part to your question Dr stures yeah it was um how did you know you were ready to take it okay thank you um 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 wi 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 St you can do you've gone over everything a million times you've looked at the physics equations nine time a hundred times maybe you still don't know that last one whatever like you've looked at it a thousand times 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 or 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 W 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 um Uchi said about that full feeling of like I'm saturated I've done everything I possibly could just also again you really really need to understand what your goal score is and um when your practice exams reach that you know around that range that's also a good indicator um that you're ready to take it I think the last thing that I tell students is um you know whether it's the mcap or it's step one it's step two um I kind of have this concept that the knowledge part of it is only 50% of the exam the other half of it is confidence right so you have to um be confident going into the exam you may ask how am I going to be confident confidence comes in prep um proper preparation right like if you prepared you've done all the questions you know you have have um completed the practice test and you've reviewed the things that you were getting wrong um you've learned from those experiences you've taken the feedback that your assessments were giv you and you've pivoted you've studied um and your practice tests have shown you that you're close to your goal score or a score that you um feel like you'll be comfortable with go in with confidence right believe that you're ready um give yourself positive affirmations and essentially kind of get your head in the game right like that 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 um here we wanted to just give everyone you know one minute for any last closing um Reflections or comments um and we'll start with you um let's see my last Reflections and comments are just to keep being great um keep trying your best um 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 um 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 um and I'll let Dr W closes I'll go next um 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 um you mess up on as an opportunity to learn because that's what medicine is truly about and that's what um 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 um but it's also a dedicated opportunity to learn some of the foundations and the fundamentals of medicine yeah I will um remind everyone of what I said earlier no one is born good at this no one okay I don't care if you've met someone they said oh I studied for the MCAT 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 no 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 I have very itty bitty nieces and the amount of time I watch them run into walls and fall and hit their head I'm like how are we all still alive right they 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 this was going to be my day today but each time she's encountering something new and a new challenge it's an opportunity to get better in 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 okay so um 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 that way you'll have access to the slides and um 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 e