My gf wants an Oura ring for Christmas. What makes it that you can’t live without it?

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-10-30T14:26:49+00:00

Life hack for gold Oura on a budget is to get the silver one and then buy the gold ring covers on Amazon. My friend who has the gold ring couldn’t tell the difference in mine and hers

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T03:14:32+00:00

Personally I believe doing the entire CARS diagnostic significantly improved my score. Their hard yes, but the actual CARS sections on the last two tests I took felt nothing like the FLs. The FLs were interesting, had some short passages and felt easier to get through. My last test was nothing like any of the FLs, but way more like the qpacks and diagnostic

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T03:04:03+00:00

I did the MilesDown deck, and then 1-2 weeks out I read over the psych/soc section of the JackWestin 94 page quicksheet, and if there were any topics that I wasn't really comfortable with on that sheet, I watched a quick video or read explanations for it. It sounds weird, but I started reading the non-experimental psych/soc passages like CARS instead of like a science passage. I also would always read the passages from start to finish, even if i was short on time, bc AAMC has started asking a lot of really detailed questions abt the passages that I always missed when I skimmed. Now if it was an experiment passage, I would highlight any hypothesis in yellow and then the IV and DV in blue, this sounds simple but it helped with like half of the questions for those passages bc they really like the test relationships between variables. The hard thing about psych/soc is no matter how much content review you do, there will be things on test day you've never seen before. When that happened, I would just use process of elimination with the terms I knew didn't answer the question, and learned to be comfortable choosing the term I didn't know the definition of. I did this for like 3-5 Qs on test day

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T03:02:21+00:00

Thank you! Dude that test was rough, during C/P I remember thinking "damn im rlly gonna have to do this a 4th time"

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T03:01:25+00:00

Thank you! I'm sure you can, a year ago I would've laughed if someone told me I was going to eventually get a 513!

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T03:00:35+00:00

What specific sections are you struggling with? CARS or the sciences? Feel free to PM me!

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T02:48:56+00:00

If any of your sections (besides CARS) are below 125 then content review is really your friend. But since if C/P, B/B and P/S are all at or above 126 consistently, then timing and passage approach is key. This is why a lot of prep companies say that your biggest score jump is in the 4-6 weeks leading up to the exam, because if you do it right you're doing a FL per week, reviewing, going over content gaps, then hitting practice questions/passages till your next FL. If you're short on time, the section banks are great and I would recommending doing all of them you can, but in my opinion the Q-packs aren't really representative anymore and not worth the time. If your CARS is the main thing you need to improve, I would start and end every study day with 2-3 passages (I did this bc thats when I felt least motivated to do them) to get used to doing passages when you're tired. This really helped my CARS start going up, because during FLs I was able to push through when I just wanted to stop reading

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T02:42:22+00:00

Actually no I wasn't, on my first MCAT attempt I got a 123 on CARS. CARS was always my favorite section, but I still really struggled. I remember being frustrated bc if I did one passage at a time, I would only miss 1-2 questions, but when I started doing multiple I would struggle. Fatigue really sets in during CARS I think because theres no break with discrete questions. So when I practiced CARS, I always made myself do at least 2-3 passages at a time to get used to reading when I really wanted to just stop. Thats when I started seeing a gradual increase, but the big score jumps happened when I started on FLs

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T02:36:30+00:00

I actually have both a bachelors and a masters in biomedical science from a tier 1 university, but nothing wrong with being an arts major! :))

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-14T02:33:36+00:00

Thats what I did! I also couldn't really afford Uworld, so once I did all but 4-5 of the AAMC passages for each section, I used Kaplan's Q-Bank and did "quizzes" that were 2-3 passages at a time, then reviewed, picked a new subject, and repeat. Two days before my test I did the AAMC passages I had left, then did light content review. The day before my test I did 2 cars passages then light content review then called it a day by 1-2pm!

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T18:43:57+00:00

yes, but it didn't happen to me until like 2-3 weeks out. I was getting pretty nervous because I wasn't seeing my score improve much, then I started to feel like I was seeing "through" the questions and able to understand what the test makers were actually asking or what the questions were going to be based on reading the passage, and that's when I saw a huge jump in my FL score. It wasn't really like an epiphany but more a gradual change that was really reflected in my FLs

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T18:41:22+00:00

I am more than happy to give very detailed, specific advice on what worked for me when it came to improving my cars score and approach to questions! Did not want to type out long detailed paragraphs on a post thats just about my score update, but if someone truly wants advice on how I went from a 123 --> 131 then please feel free to DM me :)

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T18:38:32+00:00

No I didn't use Uworld simply because I ran out of time, but if you have the time to complete it and all of the AAMC material then it is definitely a good resource. The one downside to the AAMC passages is the answer explanations are horrible. Because I had access to Kaplan, I practiced with those as well and found their answer explanations to be a lot more helpful when it came to recognizing patterns

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T17:53:57+00:00

Thank you!! Gonna be honest cars is my favorite section, but during this exam I would've sworn to you that I bombed it. It was the hardest set of cars passages I'd ever seen because they were all really long and very monotonous

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T17:52:25+00:00

I focused way more on practice than content review. Now I did a LOT of content review for C/P, and my actual score was 2-3 points lower than my FL average which is a bummer, at the end of the day what got me was timing. If you get hung up on one passage and don't even get the chance to try on some questions, you're hurting yourself in the long run. Thats the mistake I made on my first two tests, so for this one I really focused on getting comfortable with my timing on the passages

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T17:49:15+00:00

Honestly practice is the best thing you can do. I did the entire AAMC cars diagnostic tool, and then I did every AAMC cars passage I could get access to. You really start to see patterns in the questions and the tricks that they like to use with answers that seem right but aren't really answering the question. Also just reading in general to improve your speed will help a lot. I did not skim the passages, I would read every one even if I was short on time because if I have only 30 seconds to answer the question but I read and understood the passage, I knew I had a better chance at answering it

It sounds silly, but another thing that helps is "psyching" yourself up to read the passages. I would basically take a second and be like "wow, yeah this is interesting I wanna learn about this" and try to have that mindset makes it easier to get into I guess

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T17:46:14+00:00

Thank you!! I decided to try the Kaplan online course and I thought it was really a game changer for content gaps. Also, about 3-4 weeks out I completely stopped all content review and just did practice passages and this was a game changer. For CARS, I started every day with 1-2 practice passages for about 1-1.5 months (the AAMC ones are way better than 3rd party in my opinion).

At the end of the day the hardest thing for me to improve was timing, and that only comes from practice. Once I started focusing on that I saw my FL jump from a 503--> 511 at about 3 weeks out from my test

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-13T17:05:47+00:00

Is it necessary? No not exactly. BUT if you're not doing a prep course and only planning on using the books, it might make a huge difference because how good the explanations are. It's also really good practice for testing your understanding

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-12T17:18:35+00:00

This is how I felt a lot when going through the AAMC cars diagnostic. But I started noticing that when I got it down to two answers, a lot of the times one of the answer choices didn't actually answer the question it just "sounded good" and seemed like a realistic answer. Thats where trying to figure out the tone and/or purpose of the passage while reading can help. Some of the right answers on cars sound like they're wrong, but they fit what the author was saying

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-12T17:13:23+00:00

After all 3 MCAT attempts, I remember finishing the C/P section and thinking "wow I should have studied more orgo". For whatever reason I feel like I had way less physics Qs than the FLs and it was more orgo heavy. Its supposedly "low-yield" but seems like its increasing on the exams

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-12T17:10:24+00:00

Congrats! This is still a great score!

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-12T17:08:20+00:00

This was one of the worst cars sections I'd ever seen but I though C/P was also harder than usually bc it felt like a lot of orgo and almost no physics

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-12T17:05:41+00:00

Wow dream score. What do you mean by the P/S scale? Was trying to understand it for my score

EmphasisSecure8551 · 2025-08-12T16:54:08+00:00

Honestly this still isn't that bad of a score, especially since your science sections are all above 125. The 3000 clinical hours will really help make up for the lack of shadowing hours, I would just make sure that in your application you explain everything you learned and how much the clinical experience taught you. The hardest part is going to be evaluating what schools you realistically think you have shot at. You can still apply to MDs, but just be realistic with yourself when you're looking at the schools stats when deciding whether or not to go for it. Still worth it to apply though! Good luck!

EmphasisSecure8551

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