3 month MCAT Study schedule How many points do you want to improve by? This is the biggest determinant of how many study hours you need before you can reach your goal MCAT score. But without a good understanding of your starting point, this is impossible to answer. If you haven’t taken...
Should You Retake the MCAT? 3 Key Things to Consider
Studying your butt off for months, suffering through an anxiety-inducing test day, and then waiting an entire month just to get a lower-than-expected MCAT score is by no means a pleasant experience. It truly is the worst. It is so bad in fact that many students decide to quit trying to go to medical school altogether. But, please don't despair. You may...
What MCAT Score Do I Need?
The MCAT is the only consistent academic measure available to admissions committees. For this reason, the MCAT is more important than your GPA when it comes to Medical School admissions. However, there are several factors to consider before asking what MCAT score you need. Firstly, what is it that you are trying to use your MCAT score to do? This will...
Free and Low-cost MCAT Practice Exams and Questions
Free MCAT Practice Exams Free MCAT practice exams are crucial for the final weeks leading up to your MCAT test date. For your first diagnostic exam, I’d suggest taking the AAMC Content Outline Course (formerly Official Guide) Questions as a half-length diagnostic. Using the score converter in our Create-your-own Study Plan Course, you can convert your...
How Max Got a 523 on the MCAT
What does this mean? For one, explore your options. The financial cost of prep materials should be accounted for (paying for myself, I chose an inexpensive route that I’ll describe soon). It was through this exploration...
How to Spend Your Final Week Before the MCAT
When I started studying for USMLE Step 1 (“the boards”), I wondered which aspects of MCAT studying would come up again. Some biochemistry topics felt comfortable (amino acids and protein structure), and some topics required more learning (urea cycle and nucleotide metabolism). Yet, at the end of the day, building a quality study schedule really reminded me...
How to Balance Your Medical School Application with Studying for the MCAT
I often joke that medical schools are only looking for the skill that matters most for future doctors: the ability to jump through arbitrary hoops. Like it or not, medicine has a lot of hoops. For those of us who want to be a doctor, the MCAT will not be the last standardized exam that we take (the STEP exams are even longer). Nor will our application to...
Don’t Cancel Your Exam Score!
When you sit down to take the MCAT, you have already prepared for months. You probably have a loose idea of how you will score, especially if you’ve followed our FREE Ecourse and done those AAMC mini exams and full-lengths. With our MCAT Study Plan, there’s even a tab where you can track your progress over time to see your growth! All of this is meant to...
How to Get Off the Waitlist and Negotiate Better Financial Aid for Medical School
It’s that time of year again! Every April, medical school applicants begin the last phase of the medical school journey: negotiations. April 15th, MD applicants with multiple acceptances must narrow their acceptances down to 3 final schools. April 30th, applicants with multiple acceptances may now only hold 1 acceptance. While you can still maintain all...
How to Memorize MCAT Content: 4 Strategies
You may know what you need to memorize for the MCAT, but knowing HOW to memorize MCAT content is key. Flipping through content review books can be overwhelming, and it can seem downright impossible to learn everything in time for your MCAT test day. Luckily, several strategies have helped many of my students maximize their content memorization. In this...
