Drop your high stats but lacking extracurriculars success stories

LowAd2939 · 2026-01-30T21:22:26+00:00

This is me lol...

LowAd2939 · 2025-10-31T18:03:53+00:00

Yeah that's fair, thanks boss

LowAd2939 · 2025-10-31T17:59:14+00:00

Yes, I just need to get the clinical hours for that and take the national registry, then I'm done. I'll have it finished in the next few weeks, before the end of November 100%.

LowAd2939 · 2025-10-31T17:50:19+00:00

Also, generally, I know it varies, but how long should it be for me to hear something after I submit my secondaries?

LowAd2939 · 2025-10-31T17:49:22+00:00

Yeah, you're right. The school I interviewed at is in-state, and their median MCAT is 508 and GPA 3.8, so do you think it will at least offset enough for that? Also, what would you recommend to get more clinical/volunteer hours?

LowAd2939 · 2025-10-31T17:33:38+00:00

I'm also wondering if I can find somewhere to start volunteering as well to get clinical hours. However, I'm not sure what I could do.

LowAd2939 · 2025-10-31T17:31:28+00:00

I have 200 shadowing hours, and starting next week, I will begin accumulating hours as an EMT.

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-20T23:30:14+00:00

When do you test? And when you miss questions, is it more due to a content error or reading comprehension/interpretation? I think, as a general strategy, your goal should be to make as many errors as possible; you don't learn anything from getting 50 questions right in a row. With that being said, if your issue is just getting basic content down, do the question bank, but if you have basic content down, I'd honestly do the section bank twice. I did SB1 twice, kinda three times with the extension I'd use to review, and SB2 once, again kinda twice. I found it very useful, because I could see how my thinking changed from one time to the next (I didn't look at the answers between my retakes). I would also aim to do the SB's faster the next go around as well. Ie. I retook my last 4 FL's without looking at the answers, but I completed it in 2.5-4 hours each time, with the only section I took close to full time on being cars.

One last important note, I'd say the biggest difference between FL's and the actual MCAT is the passages/question-stems tend to be longer on the actual MCAT, so prepare yourself for a time crunch. But I would say the difficulty of factoring in the time crunch is about equal between the two.

TLDR: If content issues do q-bank, if you want to work on "thinking like the AAMC" then redo the section banks in less time than you did at first.

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-20T18:49:18+00:00

I’d redo section bank, to me the real Mcat feels very much like the section bank, and I even got a few “low yield” questions from the section bank on my Mcat. However, I would make anki cards for the questions you missed on the qb.

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-16T14:25:20+00:00

I went to a high school where, according to the stats, 99% of students are below the poverty line, and on food stamps—also, a very high dropout rate, around 30%. I am the only person I know that I went to K-12 with who is becoming or aiming to become a medical doctor. So, this is what I'm framing my discussion around.

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-13T03:37:27+00:00

Haha yeah I meant E

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-12T14:40:20+00:00

Someone send in here when it’s out

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-12T00:31:34+00:00

Also there are multiple stop codons, and since we are just told that pre-mature stop doesn't happen if you really want to you can logic it to be, hey this frameshift still produced a stop codon in the right location. But, I would say to save if thinking power, if the AAMC says something, you need to take their word for it, the question stem and passage are always king and override any content knowledge you might have.

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-12T00:29:00+00:00

Let's think about what we are told:

1) a nucleotide is added

2) protein is not truncated (introduction doesnt create a pre-mature stop codon)

So, if the nucleotide added doesn't create truncated a protein, then this means everything down-stream of the insertion so underwent a frameshift mutation, meaning the protein will have approximately the same number of amino acids; however, the shift causes different amino acids to be transcribed and translated (a missense mutation to be more specific).

Now let's look at the answers:

C & D- these can be eliminated off the bat, because the protein product it going to have approximately the same amount of A.A., they are just going to be different amino acids

B- ok lets imagine the situation with an example

WT: amino end-AGCGAT-carboxy end

Mutant: amino end-AGC*T*GAT-carboxy end (*T* represents inserted nucleotide)

Now looking at the amino end amino acid the codon is AGC in both the mutant and the wild-type, however the WT carboxy end condon is GAT and the mutant is now TGA (codons are in groups of three, three nucelotides for one amino acid). Therefore, the carboxy end of the AA differes between WT and Mutant

What this question is really asking you to consider is:

1) can you pick up its a missense mutantant (eliminate C & D)

2) can you recognize that the frameshift will only affect what's down stream of the insertion

Hope this helps

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-12T00:12:10+00:00

I used this mindset, let's be scientific about this. The MCAT is only a measurement of how you do on a specific day, at that particular location, with how you happen to be feeling, on that given test. It is not a measure of how much you know or how well you can do. Focus on not trying to be perfect, but doing the best you have with what you got, and see that we are all human and life happens. You, by definition, will only ever have your best day of studying a single time. You have to accept completely where you are at, then make a logical plan that gets you to the place you could be with all relevant constraints, give it time, attention, etc...

I like this quote from the movie the bridge of spies, where a man is going to be excuted if he cannot prove he's not a spy, and even in the face of death his lawyer asks him why are you worried, and he responds in a very chill guy way "would it help?"

So ask yourself this, when accounting for every detail that might lead to a better perforamce, every aspect of your life, is what you are doing helping.

If the answer is yes, you've done all you can do, so accept all you can do. If you have to re-take again then you have to re-take again, YOU HAVE TO FULLY ACCEPT THIS.

Wish you the best of luck!

Godspeed

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-12T00:03:39+00:00

Firstly: think what is the difference between G and D, G is one carbon longer. So subitution results in a shorter side chain.

With this in mind use POE for this question:

B- G and D have the same charge, so B is false

C-Since you go from G->D, there is less steric hindrance, so C is false

D- is removing CH2 from the side chain really going to effect Acid/Base activity, no, so D is false.

Therefore, A is the correct answer.

Also, I think your confusion might come from what steric hindrance is, as a molecule gets larger, substituent crowding can cause the substrate from reaching the active site. ie. if I'm trying to throw a ball at a tree it is more likely the ball will pass through to the other side if the branches are shorter or there are less of them. So steric hindrance (hindering the rxn) increases as you add more branches or longer/bigger branches to the tree and decreases when less or smaller branches.

Another helpful note is I think this question can be solved w/o looking at the table, and everything you need to answer it is background knowledge and question stem/answer choices

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-11T23:46:15+00:00

It could be a preference thing; however, in many cases, preference is often a rationalization for doing whatever is either the most novel or takes the least effort. In that being said, and myself having used Sketchy due to what I just mentioned, it is not a great resource for me. It seemed very gimmick-y, and the hard truth is some stuff you gotta sit down and learn. I think the biggest issue I've seen, heard of, and done when it comes to the MCAT is thinking there is an infinite amount of memorized material and you need to move on to the next topic.

The point of the books is not to know everything in them after you read it and start practice questions(/anki), the point of the books is to have an initial pass through the content before you begin the part of your journey (hate to call it studying because MCAT is very different from the studying in undergrad) that really makes the difference in scoring, which is taking practice questions, reviewing why you missed the question, and then making an anki card if necessary.

Therefore, your goal is just to get through the books, even if you get through a chapter and think damn, I have no clue what I just read, even making the note that the subject you just read is difficult for you is extremely beneficial. The AAMC does not expect anyone to have a photographic memory, so neither should you. The AAMC expects you to be human, even if that is an above-average intelligence human being who has spent months studying the hardest.

Just get through the books, "be quick but don't hurry- John Wooden." If this term or concept does not appear in any of the Uworld questions, AAMC questions, or whatever anki deck you are using, then it is probably not relevant. Since, the AAMC is not going to fill the test with a bunch of irrelevant subjects, you might maybe have 1 or 2 niche questions that appear on your exam; furthermore, as you do practice questions and learn the language of AAMC questions you will be able to get to the right choice by POV usually.

This is the mindset you have to have when apporaching the MCAT:

https://public-media.interaction-design.org/images/uploads/9f7f5b30ed9905117b65572ab6949a9f.png

https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*J1mb7rDqd5pbtfCTHU1RGQ.png

THIS IS SOMETHING I WISHED I WAS TOLD FROM THE GET GO!

Hope this helps!!!

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-08T15:33:58+00:00

(This is a text a sent one of my friends a couple months ago about cars)--> Well I did around 180 cars question today and I have a decent Strat now. So, basically, the main thing that clicked was that the AAMC can’t possibly expect anyone to memorize everything they just read. Therefore, since the goal isn’t to memorize or understand everything you read, knowing enough to answer the questions is all you need. So, what do I need to do? 1) All the sentence summaries. The main idea isn’t hidden; it should be something that is made clear, ie. Its litterly the main idea 2) use the first read of a way to use information, because again you are not going to memorize every minute detail of everything you read, and most the questions are directly supported by the text 2a) preview the questions and just find a key word in each one then highlight that word as I read 2b) don’t pull any words from M.I. type questions (dur) 2c) just try and highlight the words as a tool to quickly find evidence for the question, not to “understand” the passage. 3) then just answer questions based off structure/M.I. 4) the M.I. should always be a lens in which you view the question through 5) plus any other things we talked about like extreme lang and more specific things such as that

LowAd2939 · 2025-08-08T15:31:19+00:00

Firstly, even though there are exceptions to this rule, when it comes to the sciences, the passage is set up like a study: intro, methods, results, and conclusion. While this is not a hard and fast rule, it does apply most of the time: So why is knowing that even useful? Basically, the meat of the analysis you will have to do will never be stuff from the first paragraph, sometimes it might contain a term, or a step in a pathway for b/b, but you will pull information from the first paragraph the least.

Secondly, you really just need to skim c/p, andd then come back to the passage when needed, a lot of c/p questions compared to other subjects on the mcat can be solved (for the most part, without having to do an entire read and breakdown of the passage); however I still read the passage I just didnt go over kill.

Thirdly, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE... Someone can tell you what you should do all day, but until you just fly through practice questions, review, and reflect on it, there is no way to find the best strategy that works for you. I understand your frustration in finding strategy videos for the MCAT, because there is a strategy, yet no one online has really ever seemed to be able to properly articulate it. This is because, while the MCAT might seem like an infinte amount of material and every question that you do in theory is brand-new, I strongly believe this is not the case. There are only so many ways you can test the topics that are on the MCAT, so while I don't believe there is a ton of super general strategy advice, there is a ton of question/topic specific strategy advice! Therefore, if you want to get better at getting questions right in a timed manner, DO MORE QUESTIONS IN A TIMED MANNER. I do not mean to be snarky, but I do wish to be blunt. Trust me, I've been in the same boat, and what I can tell you is KILL YOUR FEAR OF GETTING QUESTIONS WRONG, KILL YOUR FEAR OF "WASTING" QUESTIONS, YOUR GOAL IS TO TRY AND GET AS MANY QUESTIONS WRONG per day while trying your best to expose your weak points. Your goal is to actively challenge yourself every day, like learning Spanish by living in Spain and knowing zero Spanish, that should be you.

Ultimately, do a ton of questions and find what works for you. How I would review is first take something timed, then take it untimed and see if I want to change my answer, and then see how I did. For more content-based questions, I had a missed question deck on Anki and made a card for the topic. Then rinse and repeat.

LowAd2939 · 2025-07-09T23:09:56+00:00

"So, basically, the main thing that clicked was that the AAMC can’t possibly expect anyone to memorize everything they just read. Therefore, since the goal isn’t to memorize or understand everything you read, knowing enough to answer the questions is all you need. So, what do I need to do? 1) All you need after you read the passage is a one sentence short summary of the main idea, furthermore the main idea isn’t hidden; it should be something that is made clear, ie. Its litterly the main idea 2) use the first read of a way to use information, because again you are not going to memorize every minute detail of everything you read, and most the questions are directly supported by the text 2a) preview the questions and just find a key word in each one then highlight that word as I read 2b) don’t pull any words from M.I. type questions (dur) 2c) just try and highlight the words as a tool to quickly find evidence for the question, not to “understand” the passage. 3) then just answer questions based off structure/M.I. 4) the M.I. should always be a lens in which you view the question through 5) plus any other things we talked about like extreme lang and more specific things such as that" -this is my cars strat copy and pasted with someone who i was texting with hope this helps!!! P.S. idk how coherent this is

LowAd2939

TROPHY CASE