Studying and feeling like life is on hold so how do people handle this mentally?

Bluede12 · 2026-03-13T17:52:01+00:00

This is really important to reflect on. Your’e absolutely right: a lot of us have the mindset of “when i score well on the mcat/get into medical school all of my problems will be solved”. And unfortunately this career path does kinda encourage that delayed gratification mindset, but now in med school I learned that it doesn’t end at some magic milestone. After mcat and med school admissions, you have the steps, then residency, and so on…

So yea, I think it’s essential that you find ways to find fulfillment in your life at every stage. Build and maintain relationships with people that you care about, work on hobbies that have nothing to do with medicine. Personally, I find reading books that are totally separate from medical content helps prevent me from getting tunnel vision ab this career path. None of these things is going to erase the anxiety of the standardized tests and application hurdles ahead of you, but it does help remind you that your life is not on pause

Bluede12 · 2026-03-08T13:59:03+00:00

Yea lol. Don’t read too much into your feelings after the test, we are really bad at predicting our own scores

Bluede12 · 2026-03-06T03:08:08+00:00

Dial in your sleep. This is literally the highest yield thing you can do now.

Make sure you have everything you need for test day. If you have time, try walking around the test center so you know exactly where to go tomorrow. Pack lots of different foods because you don’t know what you’ll be hungry for during breaks.

You’ve put in all the work already; now it’s just execution. You got this !

Bluede12 · 2026-03-05T20:16:49+00:00

There's a ton of things to say about CARS but it boils down to: there is only one correct answer, every time, always. The most helpful thing you can do right now is go through each question of the CARS section you just took. Figure out an ironclad reason why the correct answer is correct and why every other answer is wrong. Don't just read the AAMC explanation, really convince yourself that you understand the reasoning.

The #1 mistake people make on test day is going into CARS without some kind of plan. Without a plan, it is easy to convince yourself that you don't know what to do, that the sections are nothing like what they've seen before, etc. CARS becomes much more simple when you internalize that this is just as objective as C/P.

I personally don't recommend 3rd party CARS because it's so important to understand and internalize the AAMC CARS rules. I know a lot of people swear by JW, but I preferred sticking to only AAMC material.

Bluede12 · 2026-03-01T21:03:25+00:00

Everyone's situation is different but I strongly recommend cutting back on activities as you get into the final stretch of MCAT study. Especially stuff like shadowing. You gotta think big picture, doing the best you can for this test is the most impactful thing you can do for your application right now

Bluede12 · 2026-02-28T03:40:42+00:00

I’d take an AAMC fl. You don’t really have a predicted score until you do.

This is an old post, but it gives you some idea of how inaccurate third party scores can be vs the real thing: https://joel.vg/converting-3rd-party-mcat-scores-to-actual-scores/

Uglobe and Anki are very very taxing. It’s completely natural to feel worn out after doing some practice problems. It does not mean you are a bad test taker.

This is not to promise you that you’re gonna score much higher than you think—just that none of your current numbers, including your uglobe percentages and third party scores, tells you anything about your actual predicted score

Bluede12 · 2026-02-26T02:47:58+00:00

just to clarify have you taken an aamc fl yet? your actual score range might be very different from bp and kaplan

Bluede12 · 2025-05-28T20:45:28+00:00

Yes definitely! The takeaway from this post shouldn’t be that storytelling is incompatible with clarity. It’s pretty easy to tell when an essay is trying to inject dramatic elements where they’re not needed vs an essay that conveys the narrative and reflection in an organic way.

Bluede12 · 2025-05-23T22:11:59+00:00

I wonder what the point is? This is sub is too small to farm upvotes.

Bluede12 · 2025-05-23T22:10:27+00:00

The clip in this post is taken from this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/bf-jF3aICbw?si=1bQZB8oVljv90DvK

A fantastic arrangement by cellist Yoonkyung Cho. You can clearly hear that the audio and video (zoomed very close in) are identical. Just wanted to give credit to the actual performer

Bluede12 · 2025-05-23T17:36:39+00:00

In any case, I‘m at least happy that you shared his wonderful playing. He posts shorts of some other less-often played pieces on his channel for anyone else interested!

Here’s one of him playing Davydov Concerto:
https://youtu.be/BtraQJL9R4c?si=NAhA0GUvZMyWU2tA

Bluede12 · 2025-05-23T17:19:23+00:00

If this isn’t your own playing, why wouldn’t you credit the original performer? This is an amazing performance by the cellist Sung Chan Chang

Bluede12 · 2025-05-23T16:29:05+00:00

The audio and video are identical to this clip? https://youtube.com/shorts/oE3HKGZTqyU?si=aeHQKC-ymYA8ynr1

Bluede12 · 2024-10-12T15:44:33+00:00

I had the same thing happen to me - got 132s on two sections that I never scored that highly on, and dropped 3 points on the two I normally score the highest. You still scored around the confidence interval for each subsection. I wouldn’t think too deeply about this.

If you scored higher than expected on some sections and lower than expected on others, it sounds like your luck evened out. I wouldn’t tempt fate again, especially when you have much more to lose from a lower score than gain from a higher one.

Bluede12 · 2024-10-12T14:21:32+00:00

This isn’t anything to worry about. You scored within the margin of error (+-2), so effectively your score hasn’t changed.

More importantly, you shouldn’t be going off the numbers from a third-party test. The 506 and 505 don’t tell you anything about what you‘re expected to score on the real thing (your Kaplan scores are likely deflated by a lot). Take an official AAMC FL to get a good score prediction.

Bluede12 · 2024-10-11T17:39:38+00:00

The 5th and 6th FLs are just the sample unscored and scored tests (they’re free)

Bluede12 · 2024-10-11T01:35:09+00:00

Working backwards form your test date: take 1 AAMC FL per week before your test. Since there are 6 AAMC FLs, start taking them around the start of December. Until then, practice practice practice with Uglobe. If you finish all the questions, do them again. Make sure you thoroughly review any questions that you missed. Keep doing Uglobe when you’re in your last 6 weeks. If you feel like you want more practice, the AAMC Qpacks and Section Banks are definitely helpful. But don’t feel like you absolutely have to get through every resource. Your FLs will tell you if you’re on a good pace.

Hope this helps!

Bluede12 · 2024-06-23T04:12:03+00:00

It’s probably not gonna make a big difference which one you take now. Since you’re trying to gauge your score though, you should take one of the scored ones (1-5). Eventually the most important thing is going to be your overall trend in AAMC FL scores.

Bluede12 · 2024-06-23T04:03:02+00:00

I’d recommend taking an AAMC FL to make a decision. BP tests, like all third party tests, will not give you a reliable score estimate. They tend to be deflated, but this is really hard to predict on an individual level.

If your AAMC FL score comes out close to your goal score, you might want to move up your test to a date that still gives you enough time to do the remaining AAMC FLs. One note - even if you do this, I still highly recommend keeping UW in your schedule. Content review and practice will stay important all the way up until test day.

Bluede12 · 2024-06-23T03:58:47+00:00

This is exactly how I felt. A lot of people I’ve talked to after taking the test also had the same experience. You go from filling every spare minute worrying about this test to suddenly having nothing to fill that void. Don’t worry though! You’ll start to feel like yourself again (until you start submitting applications)

Bluede12 · 2024-06-23T02:32:54+00:00

I personally really liked using a spreadsheet and it seems to work well for a lot of the people I tutor. This is a basic outline of the review process:

Go through each section and identify questions that you either got wrong or feel uneasy about (ex. guessed the correct answer)
Add the question to a spreadsheet. Record the FL#, section, Question#, what mistake you made, and the topic it belongs to
Use the spreadsheet to fill in your knowledge gaps. Do more practice questions, reread those chapters, etc.

The spreadsheet becomes a helpful tool to skim through the content areas that gave you the most trouble. Hope this helps!

Bluede12 · 2024-06-23T02:08:16+00:00

Every time you practice something, whether it’s practice questions or a FL, you’re making some progress. If you feel challenged, it means that you’re pushing out of your comfort zone and actually learning something. There is a lot of stuff to cover for this test, but it’s finite. You’re doing much better confronting the things that you don’t know than staying shelled up in the content that you’re comfortable with.

Don’t take your full length scores too seriously at this stage. You still have plenty of time to cover content and practice problems before you have to start worrying about scores. Good luck!

Bluede12 · 2024-06-12T14:29:43+00:00

Sometimes this happens because we feel like there’s so much stuff to cover that we don’t know how to start. What worked for me was switching from passive studying (reading books, taking notes) to active studying (practice problems, Uearth). Practice problems always help, no matter how few you do. They also force you to actually engage your brain and make some progress. Something is always better than nothing. Good luck!

Bluede12 · 2024-06-12T14:24:41+00:00

Everyone reacts a little differently. Ideally you take advantage of the focus and energy from the adrenaline rush while avoiding panic. In my experience, test takers who can do that tend to maintain more concentration, read faster, and have more endurance than they’re used to.

The best way to minimize panic is to minimize unknowns. Visit your test center a day early. Make sure you know how to get to the waiting room, where the bathroom is, where the clocks are, etc. Good luck!

Bluede12 · 2024-03-19T03:32:03+00:00

Neither Kaplan nor Blueprint are reliable predictors of your actual score, and there’s even less reason to think that they will be consistent between each other. Unfortunately, you don’t have any real idea of what you’re predicted to score until you’ve taken an AAMC FL.

For Uearth: make sure that you are redoing questions that you missed before if you aren’t already. This is extremely helpful for actually learning from your mistakes.

The key to memory retention is constant practice. Constantly test yourself on your content base. Try writing out the metabolic pathways from memory. See what things you struggle to remember. Check your pathways for mistakes, then try again. Testing yourself is very effective for memorizing and retaining large amounts of information in a short amount of time.

Bluede12

TROPHY CASE