hi everyone my name is caroline and welcome to today's video today i will be sharing my study schedule and timeline for a 100th percentile mcat score i'm currently a senior at columbia university i'm a double major in biology and medical humanities i wanted to really just provide some direction out there i know that this entire process can be very long very challenging i'm here for you and there's a whole community that's here for you so please don't feel alone regarding my score on the mcat i scored a 527 out of 528 and i got 132s in chemical and physical foundations of biological systems which i'll call chemistry or physics biological and biochemical foundations of living systems which i'll call the biology section psychology social and biological foundations of behavior which i'll just call psycsoc or just psych and then for the critical analysis and reasoning skills or cars section basically the reading section i got a 1 31. usually the mcat is taken the winter or spring of your junior year if you're planning to matriculate directly from undergrad into med school if you're taking a gap year one gap year two gap years or more gap years apply this schedule as you will whenever you have time to study for the mcat is probably when it's a good time to prep for it and then take it initially my plan was to take it the winter or the spring of junior year things kind of shifted around and i eventually took it actually earlier than i thought i took it in september of 2020. this is just to show that mcat studying can either be very rigid you can set a very strict schedule for yourself or you can kind of move the dates around as you feel like you're ready yeah just adapt this to whatever month range works for you so my month range i'll say it was end of may to the end of august was my studying time so june july august three months-ish so usually mcat studying if you watch other videos or if you read online you'll see that mcat studying is divided up into three sections so you'll have content review you'll have third party exams and then you'll have aamc exams or the official practice exams i will just divide mine into two sections so content review and self-studying and then the second section would be hard prep so practice exams and question banks i spent one and a half months doing content review and self-studying i'd say six plus hours a day definitely the hard sciences you should take beforehand but because i didn't have a solid plan going in i had not taken organic chemistry biochemistry psychology or sociology you don't necessarily need to take all the recommended courses beforehand they are definitely helpful but you can self-study if you want and are able to dedicate the time so i think time was a huge factor the materials that i used were the kaplan seven book set so kaplan comes out with also other test prep companies so kaplan princeton review i know exam crackers they come out with these sets these mcat sets that i feel like are pretty useful for learning the material whether it be reviewing it or learning it for the first time i thought that the kaplan set was sufficient for me it was because it was the set that my friend was selling so i it was just what was available to me and i thought that it did a pretty good job i content reviewed by prioritizing the least familiar material to the most familiar so i started studying psych first it just sounded like the most fun the most introspective thing to study first i did a pretty passive studying technique i just hand wrote my notes it did help me remember i feel like maybe just like the act of writing and rereading what i did help me remember but there's also this thing called anki which is a more evidence-based technique to help you memorize things at the end of the summer that that's what i was using to study for psych social was the anki deck it was very very good the things that you don't remember the flash flashcards that you don't remember they will test that more often and the ones that you do remember they'll test you still but then kind of space it out a little a little bit more because you already know the material after studying psyc i tried to study organic chemistry using the books but it was way too difficult so i kind of had to switch up the technique and i just use youtube to study for organic chemistry my savior for this subject was ak lectures highly recommend his whiteboards are the are the neatest whiteboards you'll ever see diagrams are beautifully drawn not only for pre-med classes or mcat classes i feel like he has so many videos on just science in general that are very very helpful so i started out trying to do the kaplan books the questions after each chapter i found that they weren't the most helpful i feel like they tested very niche examples that kaplan emphasized in their books but weren't necessarily emphasized on the mcat itself so i stopped doing those so that was for the sign sections and then for cars i did jack weston and khan academy so khan academy actually had a series where they were partnered with the amc the official mcat company so i kind of relied on that a little bit more these third-party resources are useful for testing your reading speed testing your test taking speed maybe even learning more vocabulary and new vocabulary i feel like the most representative ones are definitely going to be the car's questions from the aamc themselves [Music] so all of july and august i spent doing practice exams and question banks it might feel very tedious to take these practice exams over and over again try to treat it like a game it might not feel like a game at every moment but learning this and doing the practice exams and reviewing them can be quite fun taking the exams taking the practice exams is the easy part the more difficult part is reviewing the practice exams it would often take me longer to review the exams than to take the exams so i basically dedicated cycles of three or four days so i would take the exam review the exam the next day it would often take two days to review the exam entirely and then i would do also questions from a question bank so the resources that i used were blueprint next step exams for third party resource i bought the six exam set they have a six set i think they have a 10 set i feel like the six was enough for me especially because i didn't have time to finish all 10 and i think that the first six are probably the most representative and then i along with the book set kaplan gives i believe three free practice exams so i use those a lot of these test prep companies introduce you to their strategies or to their questions by giving a free resource at the beginning so princeton review also had a free exam so i used that i also used uworld i really liked their question bank their question bank was really good it is subscription based so you basically buy a subscription for three months i believe three or more months i bought the three month one they basically give you very mcat style questions but then their answers and responses and explanations to the questions are really good [Music] so whenever you do a question even if you get it right review it review it to make sure you know the concept the most gains are made from this hard prep practice exams and review is crucial so i'm just going to emphasize again that reviewing the exams is very necessary and what you're improving when you are doing this is your stamina sitting for a seven plus hour exam is very difficult um but what's necessary is just simulating testing conditions so you want to make sure that you not only have stamina but your during covet times you're able to take this test with a mask so whenever you're doing practice exams wear a mask i want to also say that before taking any practice exam take a diagnostic exam so this diagnostic i took before constant review so early may it was a half-length diagnostic exam and i got a 506. after that you want to set goals for what you want to improve your score to so i set a very arbitrary goal i said 528 just because that was the full score i didn't necessarily know about like this idea of 520 plus or 525 plus so i just said 528 and i feel like that just motivated me to study more after content review though i took another exam from kaplan this was their full-length one exam so i took this early july and i got a 508 so i only really improved two points five days after that i took a princeton review one their full-length demo and i got a 507 so 506 507 508 i thought i was in that range and then on july 17th i took my first aamc official exam a lot of people save their official exams to the very end i thought of doing that but i was also like i want to see what i actually would get so i took the first full length and i got a 5 17. compared to the previous one just six days before that was a 507 so i kind of was feeling a little bit better 5 17 from the official test and then i just kept taking exams and then i took the amc official exam early august so this was one month into exam practice um and i got a 521. yeah so after the 521 i was thinking i could probably take this earlier than winter or spring of junior year so i was thinking okay maybe i'll take it fall of junior year so maybe september so i registered for an exam date in september but i wanted to keep practicing so i then alternated for the next month i alternated blueprint and amc official tests amc also offers a sample test so that kind of is an additional one to their four other official tests so i got 514 on blueprint 520 on amc official 517 on blueprint and then 525 on amc official full length 3 then 512 and then 526 on the amc official full length 4. so this was getting close to the target score um but then afterwards i had already bought the full length from blueprints i was like might as well take it because you already paid for it so 5 18. so then i just took another kaplan exam full length 3 and i got a 521 um and the 521 kind of was a good sign i think for kaplan to get a 521 you can probably add a few points to that just to make yourself feel better because i feel like uh the amc equivalent will be a little bit higher i also treated the aamc question bank as a practice test i would just make a google doc or a spreadsheet and add everything new that i learned from each question and then later when you're still studying and you don't know something you can just control f and find it and makes it a lot easier so reflecting back on the study plan something that i would have changed is i would have used anki earlier instead of relying on passive review and just like handwriting my notes um it was really really helpful for the psych section and i also found some anki decks on organic chemistry and recognizing molecules but i didn't find that too helpful so i'd say really just using the psycsoche deck for that is really good also some advice for actual test day because i set my test time to be 6 30 a.m i knew that i had to wake up at like 5 30 to be able to get there on time and so i started waking up at 5 00 a.m the week before so starting the week before i woke up at 5 00 a.m consistently the day of testing actually worked out well i didn't feel too tired or anything like that i also highly recommend bring something to eat during my breaks during my last break i was pretty hungry so i just had my granola bar um some people say that it's helpful or it's useful to eat the same breakfast as you would the day of the exam starting a week before i don't necessarily think that's too necessary i feel like it is an extra precaution that you could take but just don't eat something that you know that you're allergic to don't eat something that you could potentially be allergic to the day of the exam you don't want to risk anything also i'd say even an extra precaution is don't use any new lotions or skin care products or makeup materials because you don't know how your skin is going to react i know that's super extra precaution so yeah please just adapt this to whatever your needs are i know everyone's circumstances are different especially when it comes to you know prepping for exams people say to stay away from reddit and sdn but sometimes when when you don't have a good explanation for a specific question you'll see people explaining it online and that's actually really helpful and seeing everyone just studying and being on reddit and sdn it just makes you feel less alone makes you feel like you know there are other people studying so yeah i hope this helps please remember to adjust whatever you need take what is helpful neglect and reject what is not helpful from this video know that you're going to do great it takes time it takes practice but you're eventually going to get where you want to go so with that this is going to be the end of the video stay tuned for more pre-med med school apps mcat potentially videos and i'll see you guys in the next one 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