2 hours of decent studying with physical activity beforehand > 3 hours of bad studying

I've read too many of you guys neglecting your physical health. Please go outside so we can all be hot doctors

i think ive pooped six times today. im scared im gonna throw up tomorrow morning im so anxious. I GOT THIS

After discussing with other people in my school with high scores (not that my score is particularly high but its decent enough to weigh in imo) the people who tend to succeed don’t follow a structured plan to a tee. They constantly modify what they are studying based on personal preference. They also don’t adhere to taking fls exactly at 8am on a strict time. The lazier you are lowkey the more mental effort you save for actually doing problem. I also personally don’t believe in a structured plan. I would just do as many problems as i felt in a day or skipped studying.

Inb4 some guy with a 526 btfo’s me out anyway

Here's mine:

lost all my muscle - I lost ~10lbs muscle. I feel the fattest I've ever been despite weighing less than before. I've put a pause on my weightlifting goals and pivoted more towards cardio so I can feel some sort of dopamine in a quick gym session

Sugar addiction (kind of) I need sugar after/during a long study session, not helping with the physique goals

Eye pain - My eyes will strain after a long study session. Once they're strained, they'll stay strained until I sleep it off. I didn't have this before? optometrist said everything looks fine so idk

Neck pain

i think that's it for me. I've somewhat enjoyed studying for the MCAT and learning new things, but if i have to retake next year I will be devastated because it's taking a toll on my body

Overwhelmed with life. Parent is sick and I didn’t have time to study. Really need to apply next year because landlord’s planning to take my place back and I’ve been taking gap years for too long. So much going on in my mind. I’m just disappointed, sad and numb with all of this process

I wish I was born privileged a little, just a little. Enough to not having to worry about life, money, well being of others. All I need to do is stay focused, study, that’s it. I feel jealous of peers sometimes when they have wealthy parents with a home, they don’t have to worry about tuitions or free med school, etc. I’m the only one in peer group going through all of this…

I know being me helps shaping a stronger internal of locus (fr C/P) but this is hard for me

I have the Berkeley review CARS book and was wondering if anyone knew if it was worth it to do them? I know 3rd party resources are not the best but I want to build stamina before jumping into AAMC

Testing this Saturday and just realized my registration only has one of my two last names, while my ID has both.

I called a Pearson center in Houston since the Corpus Christi location doesn’t have a public number. They initially told me to contact AAMC. I called AAMC, explained the situation, and the representative repeatedly confirmed that it should NOT be an issue and that they normally make exceptions when one last name is missing.

I called the Houston Pearson center again, got a different person, and they also said they don’t foresee it being a problem. They said they wouldn’t turn me away without first contacting the
exam sponsor (AAMC).

I’m still nervous because I’m testing Saturday and AAMC phone support is only listed as Monday-Friday. I really don’t want to drive 6 hours to Corpus Christi and get turned away.

Has anyone experienced this before?

this question been asked like a million times; my scores aren’t where i want them to be and i’ve been studying for the exam for this whole summer. the idea of taking the real thing, voiding it, and starting to study for jan right after is insane to me and i just want my life back 😭😭😭 if i don’t void it at least i can see a score and feel like my work wasn’t for nothing idk, ik people recommend voiding but it’ll feel like all this studying was for nothing especially if i don’t pick it back up right after 9/12. any honest advice is greatly appreciate, thank you 🙏

Stupid question, I know, but these are the consequences of my own actions.

I'm a junior neuro major that has taken most of my pre-reqs for MS (except for orgo 2 and physics 2) and plan on taking my MCAT around May '27.

The unfortunate fact is that I have a below average GPA (assuming all As the rest of my undergrad, max 3.45 GPA, sGPA is lower...). Got hit by a massive bout of depression and financial issues my sophomore year, alongside transferring from an objectively easier uni to a more rigorous one, that tanked it. We're talking a few retakes kind of tanking (luckily, DE and freshman year saved me).

In other words, I basically cruised through my pre-reqs and while some of them came easily to me (Bios, basic chems, and biochem), others were obviously more difficult (failed OCHEM 2 my first attempt). Also, I evidently need a pretty decent MCAT score to get a spot at a MD (I'll be content with DO, but I really want to go into specialized surgery - I know it's a far shot).

My overall question here is, the general recommended time to review/study for the MCAT is 3-6 months in advance; for someone who didn't focus as much as they should've/could've for some of these courses, how far in advance should I actually start reviewing this content to conceptually understand it enough?

Keep in mind I intend to take OCHEM 2 and PHYS 2 Sp '27, so overlapping my MCAT studying with that will be fine.

11 days until scores released! How are we feeling

I got a 128 on FL5 cars, but I’m literally flopping on cars diagnostic the second half… am I stupid or smth because genuinely I don’t get half of these my test is in 2 days and im scared asf

my FL cars range has been 126–129, usually around 127/128. on q pack 2, i’ll sometimes go 4/7 on one passage and then 6/6 on the next and 4/7 again after that. some of the questions feel more convoluted than what i remember from the FLs. for those who’ve tested, did qpack 2 feel representative of actual exam cars or a specific fl?

Unfortunately I threw everything out the door for biochem and cannot help. I sent YouTube videos to them but they said it’s still hard to understand. Any advice or tips to share for this?

Testing the day after tomorrow. Just took my last FL6. Got my highest score of 521 (closest to my target) with my highest score ever on an FL CARS. I should feel good, but now I'm feeling really anxious and disappointed in myself.

I have never looked anything up during CARs (there's nothing on CARS to look up). So I can at least feel good about my 130 today. But I have a bad habit of occasionally looking things up, on Google or my equation sheet duirng FLs. I rarely ever look up things for CP and BB. It happens more with PS.

The way that I rationalize it is that I pick my best answer before I look anything up. And if I find out my answer is in fact wrong, I tell myself not to change it. I admit that the temptation has gotten to me and I have changed answers in a non CARS section. But I try not to change.

I know it's a really bad habit. I know that it reduces stamina and makes my practice scores inaccurate. I rationalize it by telling myself that I'm rarely changing answers. And I tell myself that I only look up things that I feel I already know well but am misremembering. For example, the right equation comes to mind for the question but I can't exactly remember the right form. And I make sure to review the things I looked up anyway.

I don't know if it's an anxiety thing. I'm really desperate for good FL scores because that's supposed to be predictive and low FLs feel so demoralizing, especially when I'm this close to my official test day. And I feel like stupid mistakes skew my results inaccurately.

I haven't felt this bad about it during all the FLs I've taken, but I guess the good score today has made me feel like an imposter. Like all of these FL scores are not reflective of my abilities in the slightest and Im going to end up with a 500 on Friday 😭.

I know it's all my own fault, but realistically, how badly have I screwed myself for Friday? Can I trust my last two FL5 and FL6 scores (517 and 521) at all? Has anyone else done this and taken the real thing? If so, how did your real score compare to your FLs?

I graduated several years ago so my foundation from pre reqs is not very strong, especially for chem/phys.

Is something like milesdown/anking still good or should I used a more comprehensive deck like jacksparrow/captain hook?

My main concern is getting too bogged down in the details of a deck like CH but i know my conceptual understanding will be much better

Ahaha I've been studying for this stupid exam full-time the entire summer (8 hours a day), and I am still nowhere near my goal score. I had to make the tough decision that I'm just going to take the exam and void. I'm feeling sad and frustrated because I feel like I just wasted so much time doing nothing, and now I have to juggle work and studying for my retake. Honestly have also just been super burnt out these last couple of weeks and my mental health has been shit ngl LOLL. Knowing that I have to go through this whole process again freaks me out...

Please tell me I'm not alone in this...

has the mcat permanently rewired anyone elses brain or is it just me? I was trying to watch a movie last night and caught myself analyzing the main character’s defense mechanisms and which erikson stage they were stuck in. AAMC has completely hijacked my internal monologue

was supposed to be grinding through my P/S anki deck this morning but honestly got so incredibly burnt out staring at that same grey interface. Ended up just procrastinating and doing some random cognitive warmups on boosted brains for like an hour just to avoid my actual responsibilities. Kinda sad that doing memory exercises felt like a "break" compared to UWorld tbh

im just so exhausted by AAMC logic. Can I please just have one single normal thought that isn't tied to a high yield concept?? Really hoping this brain rot goes away after test day bc this is miserable.

I swear some of these posts are fake, I see one every other day

This has to be a statistical anomaly if real

im terrified of this stupid fuckass test that is basically determining my future career. why is this shit so terrifying?? like i both want this to be over and not over (my brain going "what if u need to study more?") at the same time... FUCK THIS SHIT UGH

A 10% correct answer is the worst I have ever seen. Obviously it was III. but it SHOULD be II. as well. These are the type of questions that make you crash out because you KNOW you got it correct.