MCAT Mastery

[00:00:00.100] - Speaker 2
Hello, hello, and welcome back to the MCAT Mastery podcast. I'm Pooja, one of your co-hosts for today. I am 22 years old, turning 23 this year. I've worked at the company for almost three years now. It's wild. I'm a third-year medical student at UBC in Canada. I'll give it away to my other amazing co-host, Austin.

[00:00:23.120] - Speaker 1
Hi, everybody. My name is Austin Lent. I am also 22, like Pooja. And unlike Pooja, in this coming school year, I will be actually starting medical school at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. So I feel like that's one cool thing is that we are the same age and we are in very different places in our medical journey. It's always a cool thing to point out just because it doesn't matter what age you are when you're on the journey to medicine and whatever time that is, whatever age, that's the time for you.

[00:00:54.100] - Speaker 2
I would completely agree. My closest friends in med school are 34, 35. My students, a lot of them are in their 40s. Wherever you are in your journey, if you feel too old, too young, just the right age, know that as long as you feel like it's the right time for you to partake in this path, it's an amazing path to be on. We're grateful to have you. Medicine needs you. We don't have enough doctors no matter where you're located. And so thank you so much for choosing to pick a career that serves people and give yourself to a life of selfless service. And so today we're here to talk about the bane of our existence, stagnant It scores on the MCAT. Oh, my gosh. I remember how frustrating it was when I took it, and man, I'm so excited to get into it.

[00:01:39.180] - Speaker 1
Yeah. So I guess I'll start off with a little bit about my MCAT journey and my experience with stagnant scores, unfortunately. So my journey started off a little, I would say, unique in that I was planning to take the MCAT December of 2020, and then there's this big pandemic that started coming around called COVID-19. Went home for spring break, like many of you here in school at the time, and then didn't go back for the rest of the year. And I said, I was thinking about it, and I realized that I'm going to have this time at home. I'm going to be home from late March until mid August, that this is the time to grind out the MCAT. I'm never going to have such time where I can just focus on that. I soon learned that there were a lot of other things that I was also focusing on at the time that caused some stress, but we'll get there a little bit later. But I started studying once the semester ended in in the middle of May, and I saw pretty continuous growth at first. I started off, I think, around a 504 on a half test from Kaplin.

[00:02:39.900] - Speaker 1
And I got... Every test was two or three points higher until I got about like 511, 512 region, about a month or so before my exam. And that's when the panic set in of, Oh, my God, am I plateauing? Am I going to get above this score? What do I do now?

[00:02:58.460] - Speaker 2
I remember feeling exactly the It is wild. I feel like we're the same person. For those of you who don't know, this is our first time meeting, and it's like we're the same human. It's weird because we're the same age and COVID hit. We were both in sophomore year. In Canada, the middle of February was still the middle of classes, so no spring break yet, or middle of March or whatever. So the school shut down, and I went home to Toronto, and I had the exact same mentality. I was like, Oh, my gosh, the world is a big disaster. And this is a very tiny silver lining type, but we have all this time. All of my responsibilities had been stopped. I didn't have to go volunteer or work anywhere. School was sketchy. I was like, Well, this is as good a time as any to study for the MCAS because as Austin said, we'd never get this type of exam time again to really just focus and just do it without anybody else or anyone else demanding our time and our energy and our resources courses. I did the same thing. I started studying in the middle of April.

[00:04:06.380] - Speaker 2
That's when Canadian semesters and exam season ends. I gave my exam at the end of June. For me, what my studying looked like was that for the first month and a half, I read all the Kaplan books. I studied nine hours a day, six days a week. For three hours, I would hit up one chapter. I hit three chapters a day of the Kaplan books. I don't know. I'm the type of person that just reads it and processes it and thinks about it like one big puzzle. I'm not the type of person who writes it down or really reads it or watches any videos or stuff. That's just not really my vibe. But it did make some summary sheets of topics. I use the end of chapter summaries just to go back to. I'm I'm a big speaker. As you all figure out, I'm a very talkative human being, so I like listening to the sound of my own voice on podcasts. I made summary sheets, and then for the last month, I did 15 practice exams. I did 3 Kaplan, 10 Blueprint, and I promise you, fingers on my heart, the only AMC stuff I used was two AMC exams, the first one and the third one, from the two weeks before and the week before my exam.

[00:05:14.220] - Speaker 2
I don't know why I chose the first and third. I just thought it'd be different if it wasn't the first two. So I just randomly did that. But yeah, I started off right after content around a 506 range. I got myself to a 5: 10 range. And then afterwards, I was pretty stagnant for a solid month. And I could not figure out what was going on. I was so frustrated. I don't know about you. I guess, I don't know about you, Austin. I felt like I didn't belong in medicine at all. I wasn't good enough to be there because I was so used to being good at stuff that when I couldn't crack the MCAT, I just felt like a failure.

[00:05:46.340] - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a very existential moment where you question everything you've ever known, everything you ever will do, want to do. And it's just all this time, all these questions are circling around you. Is this right for me? Am I ever going to be to be able to get the score I want to? So many questions, so many things going on. So yeah, Pooja, just like you. I say our first difference so far is that Pooja loves hearing the sound of her voice, apparently. I do not. This is a nice step outside my comfort zone for me, but that's a good thing that we have some differences. But yeah, I'm pretty similar that I do like reading Kaplin books. That was big for me. But I also am someone who likes hearing it. So that's why I also like supplementing with some like Khan Academy videos or the Kaplin videos that they had. But yeah, you're really bold. Only two AMC exams. I'm not going to say what you should do, but our listeners, I would recommend doing all the AMC exams if you can, if you have the time to.

[00:06:44.200] - Speaker 2
Okay, okay. I do the same thing. I do also recommend the AMC exams, low key. I don't recommend the way that I study. It just happens to be that I did it.

[00:06:52.260] - Speaker 1
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, though, because for me, at least, I took a shortened MCAT exam because of COVID. So the AMC did not have a shortened Kaplan did. So we'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one, Pooja.

[00:07:03.740] - Speaker 2
That's it. Thank you, Austin. But yeah, I don't know. I find that the MCAT was such a crazy journey and that I felt, especially with COVID, there was such a sense of unknown. The world was a big unknown. This exam was a big unknown, and then not getting any better made me feel even bigger of an unknown of like, what would I do? I remember that I find the MCAT, and I didn't expect it going into studying, was such an existential crisis. I was like, What do I do? Why am I even here right now? I want to be a doctor. I want to help people. But there are millions of smart people out there who says that I'm good enough to actually do this compared to the next smart guy, my neighbor or whatever. I'd sit there and I would try my best and my scores would never go up. I'm like, If I can't even problem-solve this, how am I supposed to problem-solve my future patient? How am I supposed to be there for them if I can't even figure out some seven-hour written exam? That's That's not going to kill somebody, but I promise you as a doctor, you might one day.

[00:08:03.680] - Speaker 2
I don't know, it just freaked me out that I might not be good enough and I might not be what my patients needed me to be, which I found was really hard on me just to have to face that, that I might not be ready and it might not be what I'm destined to do. So it's just a lot to deal with.

[00:08:21.660] - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's definitely a bit of an ego hit, too, especially if I think as a generalization, we tend to avoid generalizations, but a lot of pre-med students are people who stood out in high school and college in their classes. Even if you're someone who worked really hard, you probably saw the results of that. Probably aren't a lot of times in your life where you had any failure or you worked really hard for something and maybe you didn't get it. For me, at least, this was definitely, I think, the first time that I had to take that ego hit and realize what's going on. And for me, the first thing that helped me realign myself on this journey was that I found it very helpful to take the step back and realize that, okay, this test is super important, and it is probably along with your GPA, the biggest statistics, things that are going to get you in the door for medical school. But it's not who I am as a person. This is not the end all be all of me or any really reflection on who I'll be as a medical student, as a future physician, that this is just a test.

[00:09:28.220] - Speaker 1
And while there are parts that are helpful and skills that I'll learn from it, this is not the doctor test. It's the pre-med test to get you into medical school. And for me, that was just a way to de-escalate things, get back to ground zero, and stop spiraling out of control into existential dread about everything in my future and who I will be, was be, will be, were, everything like that.

[00:09:55.640] - Speaker 2
I find it fascinating that, I guess we approach it from two very different perspectives is. I remember when I was going through the same existential crisis, what I found really worked for me was taking that same step back, but then coming to the conclusion that this is a pre-med test, and that's very different from a university test. I'm no longer a university student. I'm a future doctor. Not everybody can, nor everybody should be a doctor. There's only really a subselect of people who have that caliber, that drive, that grit and the heart that it takes to really do medicine. It's not for everybody. Otherwise, everybody be doctors and we'd have literally nothing else on the planet. I remember taking that step back and going, Okay, this isn't like any university test I've ever conquered. It's not the type where you memorize a bunch of facts, throw them up on the page, and then forget about them the next day. It's the exam that a doctor would take. It's one where you have to know all these types of disciplines and put them together for a passage, and you never know what you're going to be asked.

[00:11:00.000] - Speaker 2
All the stuff you studied might be totally irrelevant to that specific passage. It made me really think about what it's like for, especially family doctors who are treating their patients on a day to day basis. I'm a third year medical student. I've had two years, two solid years of being in family medicine clinics. And I'll tell you, it's a wild time. A patient will be like, I have shortness of breath. And you'll be like, Okay, how's your heart? How's your lungs? I know I studied this in med school. And low key, that's not at all why they're there. They're actually super anxious. They're really depressed. They haven't left their house in a month. You're the first person they're seeing in a month. It's a whole can of worms that you weren't expecting. Someone might be like, Oh, I have a broken arm, but actually, can you deal with this big medical emergency I have that I just forgot to tell you until I'm walking out the door two seconds later? You're like “Oh, my God, please come back into the room. I got to talk to you about this thing I wasn't expecting.” The whole beauty of medicine is that there's so much you need to know I went through medical school and it was like wild amounts of information, even compared to the MCAT.

[00:12:04.940] - Speaker 2
But it prepared me and didn't prepare me at the same time. You walk into a room not knowing what you were going to see. When I was in a position of the pre-med taking this exam and I got these stacked in scores, I was like, imagine what it be like to be a doctor and have to know all this information and treat the passage like a person. I don't know what I'm going to read. I don't know what I'm going to get. I might expect some types of questions, but they might not be the ones that are actually asked. And a doctor has to be able to remember all this information, put it together, think critically, and still approach the passage with kindness. And so I think I took all these feelings of being inadequate and fueled it into instead viewing it as an opportunity to grow. There's a reason that as a pre-med, I wasn't already a doctor. I needed to grow and I needed to learn. So I decided to take on the mindset where I really just took a look at myself and really focused on the beauty that is being able to learn more and able to really prepare myself to go into medicine and go into medical school fully ready to serve patients and have the best possible mind and set of skills to do that with.

[00:13:09.540] - Speaker 2
But I think I love the fact that Austin and I did it so very differently. But we both got to the same endpoint. I don't think it really matters how you approach the MCAT. At some point, you're going to get this existential crisis of, are you good enough? Should you be here? What do you do? And yeah, you can go, I don't know. I was never a Reddit user. Was you a Reddit user, Austin?

[00:13:31.040] - Speaker 1
I was not personally someone who was going through our pre-med for everything, but sometimes I did go on there for some advice. But I think our conversation right now shows that everybody is unique, has their own learning style, their own studying style, their own test-taking strategies. Some things might work for some people and they might work for others. They might work for you, too, but everybody's unique. Going back to Reddit, you find this person, Oh, perfect. 528. This is how I got. I went from a 123 in cars to a 132 in three weeks. And that might work for them. And you try it, and maybe it helps you, maybe it doesn't. Everybody has to figure out what works for them and what doesn't. So for me, saying that the MCAT is not the end of everything, is not the measurement of who I am. That worked for me. But for Pooja, it was more of a growing opportunity that this is preparing me for the future. So if I want to be in the future, how can I set up now. Two totally different takes, but we both ended up successful where we wanted to be.

[00:14:35.900] - Speaker 1
And pretty soon I'll be a medical student, and who just third year, killing it, it sounds like. So everybody, you'll get there, but you might take a different journey.

[00:14:44.780] - Speaker 2
I would totally agree. I think that the first step when you're getting these types of stagnant scores is to recognize the position that you're in. I promise you, no matter what the inside of your head is saying, you're not dumb, you're not stupid, you deserve to be here. You're going to feel dumb, I guarantee it. I think almost, I swear, there's like 1% of people who don't at some point, but most of us do feel dumb, feel inadequate, feel not ready, feel not deserving. It is very normal. But that doesn't mean it's right. That's just your fear talking and you're scared because you care, because it matters to you, because you want to be here so very badly. And so when you recognize the level of love and care and passion and determination you have, then you're able to ground yourself in whatever mentality of the MCAT that works for you. But I would definitely recommend, no matter how soon your MCAT is, you have a year, you have a month, you have a week, take an hour, sit down, think about your journey. Think about what you had to get here, what you're planning to do to get yourself the rest of the way there.

[00:15:46.720] - Speaker 2
Think about what the MCAT really means to you in the grand scheme of things. Is it your fuel to your fire to improve? Is it a small part of you that you're going to ignore later because you know what, this was traumatic? Is it somewhere in the middle? Is it something else entirely? It doesn't matter. As long as it matters to you, as long as it gives you meaning, that's what actually matters. It's not always a one-time conversation. I still cry basically every day for a month. I was so scared, but part of my brain was at peace. I think peace is the first step to getting where you need to go is this idea of readiness and an idea of a focus. Once you know the meaning behind the MCAT in your life, you're able to decide a path, create focus. I promise it's not just an emotional thing I swear, it's not people just getting happy, and that's what makes them get a 5: 30 or 5: 28 or whatever. It's also like key strategies and key changes that they made in their studying to do that. And so Austin, you want to take it away?

[00:16:43.960] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think just first before we continue that I think the whole psychological aspect of the MCAT is so underrated. Everyone talks about there are two phases. You have the content phase, and then you have the practice phase, test-taking, whatever. But throughout all of that, everyone likes the buzzword I know Puja mentioned that. You're like, Oh, what's the strategy for success? But nobody ever really talks about the psychological strategies for success as well. And part of that is when you get that stagnant score, that's where it really comes to a halt. And if you haven't been talking to yourself throughout the time, whatever that looks like, some gratitude journal, meditation, whatever, when you get to the stagnant score, it's going to hit where you do have to take that drop in your ego and let your guard down and be honest with yourself. Yourself. And I think that's where improving your stagnant store really starts, is being honest with yourself, specifically with, I think, reviewing your exams. And I know everybody always talks about reviewing your exams is so important, so important. I also think it's important. But with that conversation, you need to know, how am I supposed to review my exams?

[00:17:50.600] - Speaker 1
It's not enough to just be like, oh, I knew that, and go on, right? You got to take that ego hit, I didn't know it. I didn't know where it was in the passage. I didn't know that I was even supposed to look in the passage for that or that it was in a chart or something. When you're reviewing, you need to really be honest with yourself. For me, I think a lot of people, the why I got this wrong chart is super helpful. There's a few different ones out there. I just use the one that was in the Kaplin book because that's what I had and it was easy right there. For me, having to write down a reason why I got something wrong really forced me to get away from the idea of I knew that. Because if I wrote down, I knew it, but got it wrong, what does that even mean? How How is that going to help me? Instead, I'd be like, I did not remember this formula, or I did not look at the word only in the question or least or something like that. And from there, having the why I got this wrong chart was really helpful for me to look at the areas where I'm consistently making mistakes.

[00:18:48.140] - Speaker 1
If it was a content, a specific section, or if it was reading the questions and finding out, how do I know that an answer is not relevant? That it's just even sounds so good, it's so tempting. But it's just not answering the question. For me, having that laid out in a spreadsheet was just so simple for me to take a step back and look at where are my areas that I'm going wrong? And you can also see what are the things you're doing right? Because not everything It's always negative all the time. I got this wrong, I got this wrong. You also want to know what you're doing really well so you can work on that, improve that, and maybe use some of those skills and apply it to your weakest areas. I don't know, Pooja, what do you think?

[00:19:26.260] - Speaker 2
I would completely agree. I would definitely, if you have to take anything out of Austin It's this thing over there. It's notice the way he's talking about it. He's not immediately saying, Oh, I got this wrong. I didn't know it. He's picking apart the reason behind why he didn't know it. He forgot it. He didn't see it. He misread it. He did something else. He changed his mind halfway through. When you're reviewing your exam, you're never going to see that passage again. You're never going to see that question again, nor are you going to see the answer again. The content matters, but only so much. I told myself and I tell all my students, You make two incorrect decisions when you get an answer wrong. You decided the right answer was bad. Then you decided some other answer was better for some reason. You have to pick apart exactly why you made those two decisions. And then it's not only that. I always find there's... We make all these sheets. I have students who will take a full day, put lots of words in, and then I ask them, I'm like, Then what? You learned all this stuff about yourself.

[00:20:25.240] - Speaker 2
Now what? What are you planning to do about it? So you need to take that extra step. Oh, I I didn't read that in a chart. Well, why didn't you read it in a chart? Did you think the chart was irrelevant? Were you planning to go back? Did you highlight the thing in the chart and somehow still miss the answer because you got stressed out? Were you anxious to totally blague that low-key, you should have got that right? There's a difference between the answer where you're like, I should have known this. I actually put that A first and then I switched it, versus, I don't know how I would have got that right anyways. It's totally foreign to me. There's such different vibes out there. You need to pick apart what your brain is doing and then come up with strategies to fix it. If you didn't read the chart, why don't you make it a priority to read charts the next time and read all the figure titles and just take two seconds to analyze it? For me, I had the dumbest, the number one dumbest mistake you could make. I would forget to scroll down the passage and read the last paragraph.

[00:21:23.500] - Speaker 2
I would get questions wrong simply because I didn't take my mouth and scroll down. Then I'd be like, I don't know where you're supposed to get that information from. I can't find it. I get the question wrong. And I'd be like, Oh, my gosh. It was right there. I just didn't read it. So then I made it a habit to scroll down at the beginning, count the number of paragraphs, and to know what the last sentence was. So until I reached the last sentence, I knew it wasn't done. And it prevented that. At some point, I read so fast that I kept missing things. I took my finger and I put it on the computer screen. It would read for one exam. That's all I did. It's take my finger and read. So I would be forced to read every word. It sounds stupid. I definitely did not do that on the day of. But for that day, that moment in practice, that was helpful for me to teach my brain a new pattern. The number one strategy that you could apply to the MCAT, to your life is the recognition that you are unique.

[00:22:18.680] - Speaker 2
Your brain pattern is unique. People make similar mistakes, but everyone is going to make a unique combination of them. There's no one way to get a 528 on this MCAT. The only way anybody does really well is understand what they're doing wrong and they fix their specific mistakes, not fix the mistake of somebody else that they may not even be making. If you have to get anything out of today, know that we're going to tell you to listen to yourself, how you're feeling, how you're thinking, how you're working. And how to improve your own pattern. And if we say something that doesn't align with you, then don't follow it. Just because we happen to be MCAT tutors now does not mean we know everything. We definitely do not. I've been in this job like three years. I'm still learning I'm still learning about new resources. I'm still learning new patterns of teaching. I'm learning how to recognize different learning styles. People are unique. People grow. People develop. Don't believe that just because you're bad at something today doesn't mean that you'll be bad at that a month from now. Who says, You are your biggest obstacle, but you're also your best friend.

[00:23:22.220] - Speaker 2
You are the only person and only tool you have available to you when you're in that exam taking it. If you're not there for yourself, nobody else is, I promise. When you're in the exam and it's like six hours in, you're it. And so find partnership with you, how you think, how you work, and use it to your advantage.

[00:23:42.920] - Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely. I think a little bit on the flip side is that you want to take that step back and all those realizations. And like Pooja said, you need to do something about it. I think that's always what's lacking is that people will be like, Oh, I've been doing this, this, this. I study so much. So hard, so many hours. I highlight every single word in the Kaplan book, the whole thing is yellow, and then they don't remember it. And it's like, if that's what worked for you before, it's always good to try that because that's a place to base yourself off of. But if you're at a plateau, you're getting the same thing over and over again, you're doing the same thing over and over again, nothing's ever going to change. So at some point you got to pick, and it doesn't have to be like you revamp your entire study schedule, everything changes. It might be little tweaks here and there that add up to a bigger change. But you have to really identify things that you can do differently because you're never going to get better if you keep doing the same thing that's not working.

[00:24:44.900] - Speaker 1
I feel like that's always that caveat that people are missing out on when they do all the reviewing, all the studying, everything. If it's not working, change it.

[00:24:54.300] - Speaker 2
I would completely agree. I really like how you said not to revamp your whole thing. I find people People, their number one worry is that they're doing it wrong. They scrap everything and start at ground zero all over again. The analogy that I use for the MCAT is building a house where passages, they're like your content, they're the foundations. You got to build a roof. You need different tools, different materials at different times. Just because you needed bricks for the walls and not the roof, doesn't mean the bricks are useless. They have their purpose and their time and their place. Your strategy might be good, but that doesn't mean if it's not working, it wasn't good enough. It just might mean you need to add. It's not always going to be negative, like take away. Sometimes you have a good foundation, you just need to add extra. So don't be afraid to stick with what you're doing and add something to it or make a tiny change. You don't need to scrap. You don't always need to stand from ground zero. And please, if you think you need to make a change, that doesn't mean you were doing everything wrong to begin with.

[00:25:57.460] - Speaker 2
I get that a lot. It's like, I wasted six months because I wasn't doing it X, Y, Z way. You didn't waste six months. Last time I checked, when people come out of the womb, they don't know how to write an MCAT. And not everybody has people who've taken them that you're learning from. And even if you do have friends or you've gone on YouTube and you're listening to us and you know people have taken the MCAT, they're not you. It's a journey. You have to learn about this and figure out what works. And so it's not a waste of time. If you do find, you know what, everything isn't working, you got to scrap and start over, that doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It doesn't mean that everything is hopeless and over. You did what was best for you in the moment. You learned from that and you grew. And that is worth commending your sofa and patting yourself on the back.

[00:26:42.560] - Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely. It sounds like if you med school wasn't working out, you could have had a good job in construction with that analogy. I've had another difference between us. Who would say X, Y, and Z? And for my American listeners out there, that's Z, X, Y, and Z. I know.

[00:26:57.950] - Speaker 2
No, it is Z. It is Z. Oh, my gosh. I don't know what you all are with Z. It just sounds like somebody's name, not like a letter. It is Z. But fun fact, I barely know how to pick up a tool, and I'm still learning to exercise. So me in construction is a very nice dream. If med school doesn't work out, I will actively go into construction. But I think this is a good time to start talking about what... So we've generally said, Try strategies, get some help when you need it, listen to people, But we haven't really gotten to the nitty-gritty of what exactly we've been doing. So now we're going to take a little deep dive into the very specific things that we did, what's worked, what hasn't worked, and strategies we can provide to help you consider your stack and scores. Hey, Really again? Hitting pause real quick. Our Daily Dose emails have been a game changer for thousands of students. Every morning, you'll get a practice question, a memory hack, a top scorer tip, a success habits checklist, and a motivational boost, all in one short, focused email. Totally free at medlifemastery.

[00:28:03.400] - Speaker 2
Com/mcatdailydose. And if you're stuck or unsure where to go next with your prep, don't wait. Book a session with one of our mentors who crushed the MCAT and can help you do the same. Just go to medlifemastery. Com/mcatmentors. So Austin, you were talking earlier about this, why I missed it sheet. I know that when I was reviewing, honestly, though, low-key, I don't recommend this to most people, but for me, all I did was after my exam, I took a piece of paper and a pen, and we just write it down. I'm like, Oh, I missed this because I misread the question. And at some point, I got so used to my patterns that I just wrote down the patterns and tally-marked it when I was going through the exam. But for people who never used one before because it's not the most intuitive thing, what exactly is this Why I missed a cheat? How does it work?

[00:28:52.060] - Speaker 1
Yeah. So Pooja is doing a little old-school, handwritten style. But if you're someone, you got that brand new iPad for college or whatever, this is the time to use it. So basically, Why I got this wrong or why I missed it chart, whatever you want to call it, it's like an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets spreadsheet, and it has different columns that help divide out your test. First, there's different ways to organize it. You might do a different tab for each exam. So AMC1 might have a tab, AMC2 might have a tab. Alternatively, you could do each section gets its own tab. So maybe AMC1, Bio-Biochem has a tab but once you're there for one section, let's just say we'll take ChemPhys. You're going to have the first column that's going to say what section is. So you write the ChemPhys there. And then you'll want to put what question number it is in the passage. That way, when you go back, if you ever want to look at it again, which you should review again, you know where to go easily. And then you're going to break it down and help identify what subsection it's in.

[00:29:53.600] - Speaker 1
So if we're in chem phys, maybe it has something to do with work. Physics Sometimes I would just put physics and work, just because it's a little more... There's not as much going on. Or you could also do, say it's more chemistry-based. You could do substitution reactions or organic chemistry reactions. Again, that's whatever works for you. You just want a little breakdown. Then you can copy in the question and the answers if you'd like to. Then the last column in the way that I was doing it is really the important part and is why I got this wrong. And then this is your chance to dig deep and go back to the question. I always recommend rereading the passage as well, going through the charts first, just so you know exactly what's going on. And maybe just by reading the passage, you can figure out why you missed it, that you didn't know where to look in the passage. But this is where you want to be super specific. And again, it's not just like, Oh, I forgot. You could break it down as in something that I've never heard of before. I didn't know this at all.

[00:30:57.660] - Speaker 1
I studied it, but I don't remember it or I studied it and I remembered it, but I didn't know how to apply it. Or you could tie it into the questions. You read too fast and you did not read a very key word. You could say that you picked an answer that was out of scope, or you picked an answer that was just wrong because of a biological basis that was not right. So that's something to include there. You could even go to the chart that you did not know how to read that chart that has six lines involved in the different shapes and all that stuff that they love throwing in there. It's got enzymes here and it's got concentration there. It's like, what's going on here? So you want to be super specific. MCAT Mastery actually has a really awesome one that I wish I knew about that I found out once I started tutoring. I actually will have the most common issues as a vertical column. So then you would just check those off as you go. So misread question is a column. And then you can go down and look for your chemfiz passage.

[00:31:53.780] - Speaker 1
How many questions, like visually, you can see, how many questions did I misread the question? And when you see Oh, five out of the 20 questions I got wrong were that issue, that's something big that you want to note, star. If you're writing down puja, highlight it or whatever you want to do. So that way you know it's important. And for me, what I found a lot of the time is that, especially in cars where there's no outside knowledge, is that I would often use outside knowledge for passages I really liked, which was super important because it's way outside the scope. It's not in the passage for CARS. It's not going to be an answer. And then I also realized that the questions lead to a specific answer and that my answer choice needs to answer that question. I always like ones that sound so good, and I'm like, this aligns with what I know about like, environmentalism or whatever. Like, yeah, about recycling is good. Check. But that doesn't answer the question they're asking. It's not in the passage. For me, that was one way that I was able to really improve CARS, is that go through each answer choice, and instead of just being like, Oh, this sounds good, I have to be like, Is this the question?

[00:33:01.040] - Speaker 1
Is it able to answer it? And then in the passage? Is it supported? Those were the two caveats. And that's why I really like that method.

[00:33:08.920] - Speaker 2
I completely agree. I wish I knew about the MCAT mastery one. The low key, it takes my students a whole day to do it. So maybe pen and paper is old school, but it's faster. I would add to that. So it's not in the MCAT Mastery one. I edited in there that if there's an anxiety or a stress basis, that's also really important to monitor because there's a difference between you not answering it because you didn't know it versus you not answering because you blanked. Knowing how you felt about the passage is really important because oftentimes, if you're stressed out and you're like, Oh, no, this is a genetics passage. I'm bad at genetics. Then you go in there and get all the questions wrong and you go and review it, you're like, Oh, my gosh, it wasn't even that hard. It was all the easy genetics, not even the complicated stuff I was scared about. Then you'll find that what might be going on is you're so stressed out that you're not allowing yourself to think. If you want to put it in science terms, when you are stressed out, you activate your sympathetic nervous system, and your sympathetic nervous system shuts off your frontal cortex.

[00:34:08.640] - Speaker 2
I promise you, when you're giving it the exam, the number one part of your brain that's working is your frontal cortex. If it's off, you're not doing anything. Instead, it's in your amygdala. Your fight and flight is designed to run from a bear, not be like Bill Gates and build Microsoft from scratch. And so you can't write an exam if you're in fight and flight. You physically... Your brain just won't. The pathways involved are inhibited and shut off. So you need to do things to calm yourself down so that you can actually think and get back into the driver's seat instead of allow your field to drive you. And so in your why I miss it sheet, keep attention to those emotions. I also like to add a column that says, Now what? And it goes back to our earlier point. You'll know exactly what you do wrong. Oh, I didn't read the chart. Oh, I didn't read the question. Oh, I didn't know this. Now what am I going to do about it? What's my goal? And you don't have to do it for every question. You might find it really helpful to it after every section.

[00:35:01.620] - Speaker 2
These are my big issues in ChemPhys. Here's what I noticed visually going through those checkboxes. Here's what I'm going to do about it. For ChemPhys, I know the equations, but I don't know how to apply them. Something I suggest to students is to go to their local library, find a grade 11 or 12 textbook on ChemPhys, and just do the questions at the end of the chapters. They have nothing to do with... They're not passage-based, but you'll get a sense for the styles of wording that are used to ask questions, looking for answers regarding velocity or time and how actual questions are phrased. You don't have to use a calculator. Just guess your way through the answer and just learn the styles of questions. It's a great way just to get used to that. If you find, for me, a big issue that I had was changing answers. If I didn't feel super comfortable on the topic, even in things like BB, I'm a biochem major. BB was my best section, but even in BB, sometimes I would not feel comfortable and I would just blank. I just would not trust myself. I would choose the convoluted, fancy-sounding answer instead of the simple answer.

[00:35:58.900] - Speaker 2
Remember, in AMC, they're not trying to trick you. None of the MCAT is trying to trick you. They're trying to confirm you know how to apply yourself and stick with what you know. In medicine, so sorry, you'll realize I have the balloon-size ego, so I'll keep going back to medicine because I have years of experience now in how that world is designed. In medicine, people are going to ask you, why is it not like this? What about if it's like this? You're going to know a lot of stuff, but you have to stick to your basics so that you don't answer incorrectly and just add in fancy science-sounding words. Because if you give somebody incorrect information, they're not going to like that and they're not going to find it very helpful for their health and overall care. When you're getting asked questions, no one's trying to trick you. They're trying to confirm you know how to know what is right and what is wrong, and then stick with it, even if you're slightly uncomfortable. I promise you, people in emergency are not spending hours debating what to do with their patient. They just got to stick with it.

[00:37:00.000] - Speaker 2
Based off a gut feeling, based off of what's worked in the past, and then go with it because that's what saves people. Think of your MCAT like you do your patient. Stick with your answers. Don't change them. If you're not 1 billion % sure you're wrong, then yes, change it. But I found for me that was a really big issue, and so I just tried to stick with what I was going. And yeah, you don't get every question right, but you get a heck of a lot more right if you stick with your gut. You'll be surprised with how much you know. A lot of the times, your gut will be active because a part of the back of your brain is doing the logical thinking. So simple answers are correct, not because you saw it in the passage somewhere, but because you can prove it using content, using the passage, using common sense. Don't deny your ability for common sense. That'll help you so much on this exam. It's just being like, This sounds fancy. I've never even seen it in content. I probably didn't even need to know this. It's just a garbage answer.

[00:37:48.080] - Speaker 2
They just dumped in here because they were bored and someone wanted to have fun. I'm just going to stick with this basics. I stick with what I know and I go and do what I have to. This exam is designed to be doable, easy, simple. The hard part is learning all the information and not overcomplicating it. The hard part is not answering those questions. They're designed to be simple questions, and you'll always find that you know way more than you actually need it to know.

[00:38:11.600] - Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that that confidence area is what a lot of a lot of people struggle with, especially if you're someone who runs out of time a lot, especially, and I found in my tutoring, that people who run out of time often for every question will go back to the passage, and it's not with intent. That's the point is, for many questions, I did go back to the passage, but I wanted to know, where was I going? I was not rereading the entire passage for every question. I find that with people who are not confident, who don't trust themselves, that every question, they need to go back and reread everything and then do it again. Because now, okay, they read it again, but it's like, where was it? And all that extra reading, going back, is it really this? Are they trying to trick me? This mental gymnastics that you do to to get to an answer, all of that takes extra time. It's draining, you lose stamina. And it's part of the mental part of preparing for the MCAT is just learning how to go back with intent. And that's why I think for me, highlighting was super important, but not highlighting every word.

[00:39:18.020] - Speaker 1
If I highlighted, I wanted to be able to read just the highlighting part and get the gist of that paragraph. Maybe I missed some details, but I was able to know what's going on in order to pick a paragraph to go back to. So I'm not rereading the entire passage. This is especially true with CARS, like I was talking about earlier. There's no outside information, so you can't use that common sense in a way. Because maybe you disagree with the author. Maybe the author is talking about something and it is not what you think at all. Maybe it's not common sense to you, but you have to go based on what the author writes, not what you think. And so highlighting and maybe writing a three-word summary, four, five, six-word summary of each paragraph. So if you need to go back, you know where it is. And I think that also ties into active reading because you're forcing yourself to understand it then instead of going back and rereading and being like, So what was this about? What did I just read about this protein, this thing that's going on? I don't get it. If you're doing it while you're reading, and not necessarily to a super in-depth way of where you understand every single little detail, but if you can get the gist of what's going on, that that active reading, highlighting important things only, writing your little summaries, that is going to save you a lot of time from going back and reading.

[00:40:38.420] - Speaker 1
And it's going to also help build your confidence because the more you do it, the more you can feel like you trust yourself. And that's a lot of it of the not second-guessing and all that that Pooja was talking about earlier.

[00:40:48.920] - Speaker 2
I feel like you just spoke to me as a tutor and just brought to light my number one thing that I deal with with the students is timing. The thing that wastes your time is indecisiveness. It's going back. It's freaking out. It's changing your answer. It's not trusting yourself. It's all this emotional time. No one takes forever because they read slow. Okay, some people do. I won't say that. It's a generalization. Some people do. But why? Or calculations take a long time. But the majority of time spent is time wasted. I find for me, the simple tip that I use is read for seven, answer for three. Almost 60% to 70% of your time for a passage should be spent reading the thing and understanding it. Whether it's CARS, BB, CP Psych, the paragraphs relate to one another. What you start off with is how you'll end off with. Things come back, things are brought up again, things are tied together. Even in BB, where it's experimental, it's telling a story. They're trying to prove a point to you, prove a hypothesis. Things related. If you don't understand it now, you won't understand it later.

[00:41:49.180] - Speaker 2
You'll only get more confused because they'll add more information. If you don't understand it at the moment, figure it out in the moment. I would challenge yourself to avoid going as much as possible. Force yourself to learn to remember, even if you get it wrong. Your brain will not learn to retain the information until you're under a stressful situation where you're needed to make it happen. This is the perfect time is in practice, is to get stuff wrong, even when you're trying to force yourself to remember because you will learn how to retain it. You don't have the time once you're past... When you're even past the MCAT, once you're in med school, you learn so much information. You don't have the time to always be going back every single time and double-checking every little thing. At some point, you have to be able to just retain it and remember it and use it to your advantage. And so what you have available to you is so much no opportunity right now to make the most of your intelligence and make the most of your study process. And so I completely and utterly agree with Austin.

[00:42:56.100] - Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think on that same topic, that same mindset is knowing when it's okay to get a question wrong, which is not something you're ever used to doing, right? You always want that 100% on the test, right? You get a question wrong, it's like, oh, my God. But on the MCAT, unless you're aiming for a 528, which would be awesome for everybody. Everybody would want to get that. Unfortunately, it's not possible. And for 99. 9% of the people, it's not going to happen. You are going to get questions wrong, but you want to be okay with the ones you get wrong. Some questions are just so hard or such low yield information that it's not going to come to you. You can reread the passage all you want. You can think through every physics formula ever, and it might not come to you. And it hurts because you want to get every question right that you can, but that's what it... That you can. So if you... A lot of people will get to the test and be like, Oh, my God, it was so hard. This was the hardest test I ever took.

[00:43:57.280] - Speaker 1
Obviously, part of that is the nerves. This is the important one. This is the one that counts. But I imagine that a lot of people will get things that are hard, and one passage is going to mess them up, or one question is going to mess them up because they spend so much time on that, especially those first two or three passages in chemfiz. When your timing is off for those, it's going to affect the rest of that section. And then when you go to that section not doing well, then the CARS is going to be bad. Then you go into your lunch break and you're upset, and the rest of the day spirals out like that. And so it's okay on that ChemPhys, that second passage, that third question in it, you don't know it, you don't need to spend three minutes trying to figure it out. That is way too long. It's okay that that one super hard question you're not going to get. You just move on. Because if you do a little cost-effectiveness balance, ratio, whatever you want to call it, getting that one question wrong in 45 seconds is going to allow you that two extra minutes to finish the section.

[00:44:56.180] - Speaker 1
How many more questions are you going to get to now? And it's an endless cycle that the more you spend, the more you get behind, and it just gets worse and worse. So I think learning that it's okay to not know something, to pick an educated guess, right? Because you're going to be able to cross out at least one answer, usually. But being able to use that educated guess, and then moving on. You can flag it if you want to, come back to it later, but we'll never see you again, most likely, and we'll move on.

[00:45:20.780] - Speaker 2
I completely agree. I have a fun story. So I'm a BioChem major. I walked into the exam knowing that if every section to go bad, the one that was going to go good is BioChem. I'm a 132 scorer in biochem. I was one going in there. I was like, this is my section. I know it like the back of my hands. I have a little strategy for timing that I use where I do all the discrete questions first because it allows... I either know it or I don't. I get it right or I don't. Then using the rest of the time provided, I can just divide it by the number of passages, and it gives me an approximate amount of time per passage. I found that simpler for timing purposes. I I go there and I go to the very first discrete question, and I'll never forget it. It's on Alzheimer's proteins and the role of amyloid beta and tau and stuff like that. I was like, Oh, Lord. I had never once studied Alzheimer's disease. I'd never once studied its effect on the brain. I was like, What is this? I know proteins, I know enzymes.

[00:46:21.820] - Speaker 2
I don't know what that is. I sat there and I stared at it for one or two minutes and I was like, Oh, my gosh. I've over I'm going to bomb this section because I didn't study properly. I spiraled. I watched myself spiral. Then I had this out-of-body experience where I imagine coming out of my body and staring at myself and going, Oh, my God. You know what's actually going to happen? Is this section is super easy. But because I'm freaking out right now, I'm going to do this section. It's going to go horribly. I'm going to walk out to my parents' car. We had to get a hotel because I wrote my exam three hours away from where I live. I'm going to walk out to them and tell them, Hey, you all, I know we're going to Niagara Falls today, but actually, I bombed Bibi, not because I didn't know it, but because I shot myself in the foot. I knew that that was something I did where I would get anxious. As I said, second-guess myself and get all these things wrong that were useless, all because I was anxious. I was like, Okay, you know what?

[00:47:17.920] - Speaker 2
One question is not worth the rest of this section, worth my anxiety, worth my time. I calmed down. I would never tell someone to calm down because they tell themselves, It's going to be all right. No, Don't lie to yourself when you're trying to calm yourself down, but be honest. Be like, Okay, this is one question I get wrong. So be it. What do I still have in my back pocket? I still know other BD concepts. Fundamentally, I'm going to see at least one of them, and I know it. I know how to manage my time. I know how to think critically. I know how to get myself out of sticky situations. But I don't know how to do that if I'm anxious. This is not helping me right now. I use a lot of self-taught to calm myself down because I'm a very intellectual person. I have to prove to myself that it's It was calming down. And then I did. And it wasn't amazing. I still thought it was a bit shaky, but I got through it. And that one question, I'm like, 90% certain, I got wrong. And I still got a 132 in the section.

[00:48:13.060] - Speaker 2
And the irony is after that, it still went downhill. I went to psych. And for psych, I use the Kaplet books, and I promise you, Kaplan books are not the way to study psychology because they barely cover anything, but I didn't know that. So I didn't know a third of my exam I had never seen before. I was like, What is any of this? I've never heard of you. I don't know what you're referring to. These concepts are bizarre to me. I went, Oh, my gosh, this can't be the section I feel either. I just came out of BB going through this mentality. I refuse to do it again. What I found really helpful in that moment was to take all the... Okay, so you know what survivor, someone dumped in an island and they're like, Okay, if I give up, I die. So obviously, I'm not going to give up. I'll do whatever it takes. I took on that mentality. I'm like, I can't go back in time. I teach myself all the psychology I didn't learn. I have to deal with this and do whatever I can. I read the passages really thoroughly.

[00:49:07.460] - Speaker 2
I would take the names of the theories, literally, to try to figure out what they do and what they need. And then off of that, I would be applying myself and be like, Okay, I think it's this. I don't think it's this. I look at the other three answers, and if none of them made sense, I chose the weird one I'd never heard of before. I did whatever it took. You know what? I got a 130 on the section, not knowing 30% of it. Not because I'm smart, but because I worked for it and I trusted myself. And it comes back to the piece of confidence. You are your only savior in situations like that. Not us, not any other company, not your friend, not an MCAT book, just you. You have all this time in practice to learn good skills. That's ultimately what I try to teach my students. The MCAT is not about how many practice exams you do, how many questions you do. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality of your practice, the quality of what you do with your time. It's learning who you are as a thinker and relying on that.

[00:50:05.800] - Speaker 2
Because when you get stuck, when you come across something you don't understand, when you come across an idea you've never heard of and have to magically walk yourself through it, you are the only person there to make that happen. You can't go back in time and learn that information. So what do you have in your back pocket? Things like learning how to summarize, things like learning how to simplify information, like what Austin said with CARS, writing down tiny little summaries or highlighting important ideas or things like mapping out a biological process or with the insight, taking words literally because that's all I could think to do. It is what it is. You make it work, but you decide to make it work. Don't get lost in your anxiety and give up because you can be anxious after the exam. Nobody's stopping you. But during the exam, the number one thing you could do for yourself is stay calm and stick to who you are and what you know and be okay with what you don't and getting it wrong. Because if you do that, then you'll get the grit and you'll get the to make your way through it, and then you'll do really well because that's called resilience.

[00:51:05.680] - Speaker 2
When you're in medicine and you're alone on a floor and you get a patient with the most complicated, scary emergency ever, you'll freak out, but then you'll calm down. Then you'll remember that you're all they got, and you're going to keep them alive, and you're going to make it happen somehow. So treat those moments like you do your patient and emerge at 2 AM dying. But you'll do whatever it takes to get yourself to where where you need to go because you can do no less. Okay, at this point, I think we bombarded you all with information of what to do. I hope at this point it makes sense, though. We've told you strategies, but the number one thing we've been trying to get across is how to be you, to find who you are, find what you love, find what you don't love, and get better at it. Don't listen to just what other people say and take it literally. Don't believe that one way is the only way. We're here to help you, but so are other people on the internet, but so are you. You're your number one supporter.

[00:52:03.300] - Speaker 1
Yeah, and if you ever need a motivational speaker, it looks like Pooja is perfect for that. I feel uplifted. I'm not even taking the MCAT. That was three years ago, but I am ready to go to take it. Just kidding. I never take the MCAT again.

[00:52:14.160] - Speaker 2
You know what? I'm going to be a construction worker on the weekends, a motivational speaker at night, and then a doctor during the day. I'll just do it all. We do it all. Guys, what am I doing in MCAT Mastery? I need to be going out there being a motivational speaker, a construction worker, building houses for cars. Let's do it. But hopefully that this is giving you some motivation to find yourself, find where you need to go. But I also understand how lonely it can be. It's hard. Even if your friends are taking the MCAT, you don't want to compare yourself to them. Maybe you know nobody. Maybe you're the 40-year-old single mom of two who has never once thought about becoming a doctor but realized that this is your midlife crisis and passion, and you don't know anybody taking this. Maybe the people on the internet are not where you are, not in your position, and don't really understand you. Know that you're not alone. It's lonely, but you're not alone. You have us at MCAT Mastery, people from all ages, all backgrounds, all traditional, non-traditional paths to medicine. You have other people on the internet, other companies.

[00:53:13.820] - Speaker 2
You have your friends, your family. Please reach out. You have yourself. But in the meantime, until that day of the exam, you have us, too. We'd love to be able to help. We'd love to be able to support you. Here at MCAT Mastery, we're here to be your number one supporters, your friends, your cheerleaders, sometimes the mirror you need to see what's right and what's wrong. Sometimes we're the person who's the shoulder to cry on. Trust me, I've been that shoulder for people to cry on many times in the past, even over Zoom. My shoulder is wet, but it's a good wet, so it's good. But yeah, it's been a pleasure being able to talk about such a massive frustrating obstacle that is the MCAT. But hopefully after this, you see it more like an opportunity to grow, to find yourself, and maybe find us.

[00:53:59.780] - Speaker 1
Yeah, that was very well put. I don't think I have anything to add, except if you need inspiration, that single mom of two is always killing it on Reddit. That's all I know. It's always 520. So true. If the single mom of two can do it, so can you.

[00:54:12.840] - Speaker 2
Well, at this point, have a great rest. Rest of your time, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, maybe you're eating a sandwich, maybe you're up for a run, or maybe you just finished your practice exam. Know that we're here. We're here for you. You're here for you, and you got this. Have a great rest of your day. Bye.

[00:54:30.000] - Speaker 1
Before we sign off, remember, the path to med school isn't always smooth.

[00:54:38.530] - Speaker 2
It's full of setbacks, doubts, and days that feel like you're not getting anywhere. But that's part of the process, and it's one every doctor you admire has gone through. Don't stop now. You got this. And if you're looking for someone to actually look at your prep and help you figure out what's missing, what's working, and what needs to change, you can work with one of us. We personally pair you with the most ideal top-scoring mentor for your MCAT situation. Learn more at medlifemastery. Com/mcatmentors.