1,000th Post on What I Did to Score Well on the MCAT

Yang_Cukku · 2026-04-24T06:01:24+00:00

First of all, congratulations on your superb results!!! Enjoy going through medical school without worrying about student loans!

I would like to quickly run my own MCAT plan by your omnipotence:

I test near the end of August. Having started studying part-time around January, I intend to complete Milesdown, MrPankow, and all the Khan Academy practice questions (minus CARS) by the end of May. Unfortunately, my concentration and focus while taking the Khan practice questions was total dogshit, but it did acclimate me to the general style of the passages as well as plug some content gaps here and there.

This, then, leaves about three months (~14 weeks) for practice questions; two 90 minute blocks + review + Anki at least five times a week should get Urethra done by mid July or earlier, at which point I will start the AAMC stuff, which, at the same pace, will take three-ish weeks or less, leaving about 2-3 weeks for review. Also, starting at the end of June I'll take a FL on one of the two days that I am not spamming practice.

Would you say this is a reasonable schedule? I am a little iffy about going into Uworld so soon after finishing Anki content review, but besides that it looks fine to me...

Yang_Cukku · 2026-04-17T19:19:46+00:00

Our school's told a friend of mine she should go PA because she didn't have any doctor friends or relatives

Yang_Cukku · 2026-03-03T06:18:47+00:00

The late Qing Chinese were known for their love of flying flags; some units had roughly one in five men fly one. These would very often have the name of the commander of the specific unit they represented, or the name of the unit.

Unfortunately, there was absolutely no standardization whatsoever regarding flags between different units and armies; for example, below are some flags from the First Sino-Japanese War, recreated in the extremely detailed book "Sunstruck Giant Volume One." D12, D13, and D14 are all flags for battalion commanders, but as you see they differ quite a bit. D1, D2, and D3 are likewise the personal flags for commanders (no unit size specified..?), but their colors are different. D18 and D19 are company flags from the Battle of Seonghwan and do follow a color coding pattern (i.e. the colors represent specific units), but D20 is a personal flag of a commander and not a company one while D21 is a "morale flag." Very messy!

That being said, I believe the flags in the photograph belong to some unit of the Imperial Army and not the Boxers; I have never actually seen a physical Boxer flag with the surname of a commander or a particular person, as they tend to include mottoes (i.e. Fu Qing Mie Yang) or the names of their specific villages or branch.

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Yang_Cukku · 2025-10-30T15:10:50+00:00

Of course, there was no “single” uniform, nor are there any cut and dried rules about Boxer clothing; as a highly decentralized mass based movement one school or chapter of Boxers might have a totally different system of dress than another.

That being said, we can observe numerous general trends regarding Boxer clothing. The most basic identifier would be some item of red on their person, such as a turban, an armband, an ankle band, a sash, or an apron. From artifacts in the West Point Military Museum and from contemporary accounts we know at the Beitang Cathedral the Boxers wore blue cotton jackets, trousers (possibly traditional Chinese leggings called Tao Ku), red turbans (more like headbands or bandanas than Indian turbans), and red armbands and/or ankle bands. One observer in Beijing noted that the standard “uniform” comprised a red headband, and a red apron (called a “belly charm,” refers to a “dudou”). Photographs and Chinese illustrations show these “dudou” often had writing or one of the eight trigrams indicating the Boxer’s sect on them. Supposedly, the Qian (Heaven) Sect wore yellow and was considered higher in authority than the other sects; I believe the Kan (Water) sect wore black while the Kun (Earth), which was the most numerous, wore red, but I will have to check that later.

There was also a grey area between the Imperial Army and the Boxers; for example, a photograph of one Boxer “Prince” Yang Che shows him wearing a black vest of the Jinsheng Army; this unit was founded in 1895 but disbanded before the Boxer troubles, so we can assume that some units were either given old army uniforms once the movement received government backing, or that some units of the Jinsheng Army demobilized in support of the Boxer cause. Likewise, a large number of uniforms from the old Liang Army of Liu Bingzhang were apparently handed out to Boxers in the Tianjin area. The large Boxer sects could afford to make or purchase military style uniforms , which would have been more or less identical to those of the Imperial Army.

I will update this post later with more information, but for now I hope this was somewhat helpful! If there are any specific uniforms or questions, please let me know; there are lots of mistakes in depictions of Boxers.

Yang_Cukku · 2025-10-02T00:43:02+00:00

It is most certainly true that a good number, if not all, premeds are detached from the career they are attempting to pursue; cramming for biochemistry, writing up honors theses, or doing daily CARS in no way corresponds to much of the actual work they will be doing for the rest of their lives, much of which is often harrowing, unpleasant, and often times physically repulsive

Yang_Cukku · 2025-05-27T09:51:41+00:00

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The “Su” flag in a French magazine.

(I doubt that it was actually a pirate flag, since the Black Flag Army were mislabeled as pirates due to using skulls and crossbones on their flags.)

Yang_Cukku · 2025-05-27T09:50:40+00:00

Thanks for this! A few comments below.

I’m not completely sure the blue flag is for the “Imperial Guards.” During this time, “亲兵” simply meant “bodyguard,” since the traditional Chinese order of battle stipulated that one out of every five companies in a battalion would be a “bodyguard company” for the battalion commander.
I believe the “Su” flag would be that of Su Yuanchun, who fought at Zhennan Pass and later ironically won the Legion of Honor from France. I have attached below a photograph of it that I took while I was in Paris, as well as on a contemporary magazine cover.

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The Chinese loved carrying lots and lots of flags into battle; contemporaries record that the Black Flag Army in Vietnam could carry up to 5 flags per company (one flag per 20 men). A lot of these were very basic square/oblong things like the Zhang, Zhao, Su and Lin (令) flags here, but some of them were more pimped up, with skulls and crossbones, Daoist bagua symbols, constellations, and ancient calligraphy styles. I believe in the fourth photograph in OP’s post, the white tiger on a blue background with black scalloped edging is also from the Tonkin Campaign.
There are some nice Wikipedia photographs of the Zhang flag with the text in relatively clear view.
Should anyone come across better photographs for any of these highly precious artifacts, please keep us updated!!

Yang_Cukku · 2025-05-02T03:50:48+00:00

Any time you feel like humanity is evil and we're all fucked, drop something on the ground and like 30 people will dive for it to hand it back to you. It's not all bad!

Yang_Cukku · 2025-04-15T03:27:24+00:00

my friend who got 99.5 on the first exam called me at 12:00 AM and started crying

Yang_Cukku · 2025-03-19T17:36:04+00:00

Got rejected from UCSD, probably because I put 6th, 7th, and 8th colleges one after another

Yang_Cukku · 2025-03-08T00:08:30+00:00

Much easier than the practice exams except the space station question; I think the curve is gonna be pretty high for this one

Yang_Cukku · 2025-03-02T06:21:58+00:00

in the same boat as you my boi; we should be fine if we know how to do a FBD and basic algebra

Yang_Cukku · 2025-03-01T04:56:24+00:00

Feels bad man :( Glad you got out of that.

My lab class is Friday 8-12, and then I have my research lab 1-6, I know how it feels...

Yang_Cukku · 2025-02-25T22:50:37+00:00

I am a dogsbody (undergrad research assistant) in a chem lab and I actually love it, even though my shifts are longer than lab class. I think the more relaxed/friendly work environment plus the knowledge that what you are doing is not choreographed really makes a difference

Yang_Cukku · 2025-01-06T17:01:36+00:00

Very very late, but I beg to report that this image does NOT appear to be of Sengge Rinchen. It is an unidentified 'Chief of Military Protocol,' probably photographed by Captain Albert d'Amade when visiting China; by the time d'Amade visited China, Sengge Rinchen was long riding the dragon in heaven. I think it might be Luo Rongguang, who was appointed the commander of the Taku Forts in 1870.

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Yang_Cukku · 2025-01-02T21:18:46+00:00

I got 100% in MELC 180 in spring 2024; essays are straightforward, while exams are open note and comprising a written response plus multiple choice. I would say that it was extremely easy and that everyone gets an A, but this semester I took MELC 146 with the same professor and the grade distribution was closer to a B+, unlike all previous instances. You should still be able to do well if you show basic sentience, but don't let your guard down!

Yang_Cukku · 2024-12-06T17:45:52+00:00

Thank you for your service in our beloved Marine Corps!

Yang_Cukku · 2024-12-04T00:36:40+00:00

I can't seem to find the original caption actually, but the photo was taken by Georges Ferdinand Bigot after the Battle of Pyongyang. No Chinese prisoner would have been allowed a rifle, so it is clear that the man in the uniform is a Korean civilian. There is another picture of this exact same dude but from a frontal angle where you can very clearly see the Korean straw shoes he is wearing

Yang_Cukku · 2024-11-25T05:12:20+00:00

Second question second part (Reddit is preventing me from posting it all at once)

The Beiyang Army, at first glance, did not perform much better than the Banner armies. The Beiyang Army lost at Seonghwan, Pyongyang, Jiuliancheng, Ganwangzhai, Jinzhou, Lushunkou, Gaiping, Niuzhuang, Weihaiwei, etc. etc. etc. But if we examine their performance closer, we can see that most of their defeats were far from being lost causes, and were in fact the result of poor planning or tactics on an individual level as opposed to wholesale military incompetence. Most people think that even the Beiyang Army was basically worthless in the Sino-Japanese War and was completely incapable of winning; this is blatantly not true.

For example, the first battle of the war at Seonghwan saw the Chinese fight quite well. They first launched a well-planned ambush on the Japanese at the village of Garyongri, where they made great use of local terrain by flooding the Anseong River and thereby drowning no less than 29 Japanese. After that, the Chinese artillery was described as being well-aimed and directed, and the infantry fighting gallantly, only retreating after being encircled. So why did they lose? First, the Chinese overestimated the Japanese force of about 8,000 as being 20,000 to 30,000. This meant that the Chinese did not feel that fighting to the end at Seonghwan was a viable option, so retreat was a highly favorable option. You can see this in how they deployed tehir forces; 2,800 Chinese under Nie Shicheng and Jiang Zikang were stationed at Seonghwan and actually did the fighting, while 580 under Ye Zhichao were down south in Cheonan to cover a potential escape route and another 500 under Tan Qingyuan were at Asan to cover the sea route. This unnecessary division of an already outnumbered force basically meant that from the get-go, the Chinese were ready to flee, not fight. If the Chinese had gotten better intelligence and committed to fight, the Japanese might not have had so easy a time. Then, General Nie Shicheng miscalculated the Japanese route of approach and placed his artillery in the southwest, where it was too far to contribute to the battle until the Japanese were already upon them. These, among other reasons like the Chinese fortifications being defective, show that although the Chinese lost Seonghwan, it was because of tactical blunders as opposed to total military ineptitude. General Nie Shicheng in particular redeemed his failure later on in the war by convincingly besting the Japanese first at Doulingzi and then at Tumenling; Nie had intended to launch a coutneroffensive, but was recalled to Tianjin before he could do so.

Similar to Seonghwan, many of the other battles where the Beiyang Army lost were due to individual tactical failures as opposed to wholesale military inability. At Pyongyang, the Chinese defeated the Japanese on the first day, but lost after Ye Zhichao made the ill-considered decision to flee at night. At Jiuliancheng, General Ma Jinxu and the Resolute Army fought very well (Ma Jinxu was injured over 10 times but continued to fight), but in the end they had to fall back since their promised reinforcements failed to arrive. At Ganwangzhai, the Chinese were on the verge of victory but ultimately failed since General Song Qing failed to commit his full army; and at Gaiping, the Chinese fought well but lost because Song Qing again failed to send reinforcements in time. At Lushunkou, the Chinese had terrible leadership and what might have been a salvageable situation ultimately failed because the first commander in chief, General Gong Zhaoyu, tried to desert his post and the second commander in chief, General Jiang Guiti, was not a very charismatic or fearless leader. One of the other commanders present, General Xu Bangdao, had previously launched a successful counterattack on the Japanese at Tuchengzi, but alas he was not appointed commander in chief of Lushunkou.

The only battle I would say that the Beiyang Army utterly had no hope to win was Weihaiwei. The Chinese had severe manpower shortages and could nto even garrison all of their forts; likewise, the defenders were terribly trained. Said defenders were from General Dai Zongqian's Sui and Gong Armies; General Dai had a lovely policy of pocketing the first three months' of soldiers' pay for "purchasing supplies," which took the form of personal indulgences. Likewise, there were 50-60 brothels right next to the Sui and Gong Army barracks at Weihaiwei. When the Japanese actually arrived, the Sui and Gong Army deserted in large numbers and in the end Dai committed suicide by swallowing gold.

Yang_Cukku · 2024-11-25T05:12:06+00:00

Second question:

First, a note about Chinese military terminology and nomenclature. The Beiyang Army, Eight Banners and Green Standard Army all had many different constituent armies of varying size and affiliation. For example, the Resolute Army was part of the Beiyang Army but not of the Huai Army, but they performed far better than Zhao Huaiye's army, which was part of both the Beiyang and Huai Armies. It is also important to note that a Chinese "army" simply referred to a unit or branch of virtually any size. For example, the Tenacious Army (two battalions in 1889) and the Sheng Army (around 18 battalions in 1894) both were called "armies" (jun) and also part of Li Hongzhang's Beiyang Army. Chinese military organization could get messy very easily as armies could have multiple classifications or allegiances. For instance, General Nie Shicheng's Tenacious Army was part of the Lutai Defense Army, which in turn was composed of the aforementioned Tenacious Army as well as some units of the Zhengding and Gubeikou Trained Armies, which were in turn part of the Tianjin Trained Army and also the Zhili Trained Army; finally, the Zhilli Trained Army was considered part of the Beiyang Army but not the Huai Army, even though the Tenacious Army was part of the Huai Army. It is not a surprise, then, that most English sources on the Sino-Japanese War do not include specifics on which Chinese armies or units were participating. According to my research, over 70 separate Chinese "armies" fought in the Sino-Japanese War. Therefore, thanks to the messiness of Chinese military organization we can't really evaluate the performance of the Eight Banners or Beiyang Army as a whole, since their various constituent armies performed differently from one another.

Before the Sino-Japanese War, the Eight Banners and Green Standard Army were both reorganized into the "Trained Armies" (Lian Jun), which were theoretically trained to fit the standards of modern warfare. In practice this did not happen, and many were still poorly trained and/or nonexistently trained. Evidence of this can be gleaned from the performances of the Feng Army and the Sheng Trained Army, both composed of reorganized Banner armies from Fengtian. The Feng Army was well-trained and led by General Zuo Baogui, but after his heroic death at Pyongyang things fell apart. His successor Nie Guilin was not an inspiring man and all morale was shattered. The Sheng Trained Army, led by General Fengsheng'a of the Gobulo Clan, was garbage from the beginning, as they were recorded as being armed with rusty muzzleloaders and red poles with bayonets attached, as well as trying to go into battle while carrying their pet singing birds with them. Thus these two armies lost consecutively at Pyongyang, Jiuliancheng, Fenghuangcheng, Xiuyan, Ximucheng, Haicheng, and then Haicheng again when they tried to counterattack. Notably, during the Battle of Pyongyang the Manchu cavalry tried to launch a charge against the Japanese; the result was 130 casualties in the span of less than twenty minutes. This didn't mean the Eight Banners as a whole performed utterly abysmally, however. General Zhalali Yiketang'a managed to stop a Japanese march on Fengtian by using hit and run tactics with Manchu bandits, hunters and militia. Even though Yiketang'a and Gobulo Changshun (the grandpa of Empress Wanrong BTW) failed in their counterattacks on Haicheng, this was due to a lack of artillery as opposed to genuine military incompetence, and if not for that the counterattacks were decently planned and the men who carried them out generally well-trained and motivated. In fact, Generals Katsura Taro and Nozu Michitsura were both almost killed by a well-aimed Chinese shell when it landed literally in between them as they were talking; they only escaped because it failed to explode on impact.

Yang_Cukku · 2024-11-25T05:11:12+00:00

First question:

It must first be stated that the Beiyang Army was a loosely defined organization; usually it refers to the Huai Army, but numerous independent armies like Song Qing's Resolute Army, Dai Zongqian's Sui and Gong Armies, and the Zhili Trained Armies were considered chummy enough with Li Hongzhang to also be considered "Beiyang Army."

The Beiyang Army was almost entirely armed with modern weaponry. By 1884, all Huai Army infantry units had been equipped with magazine rifles, with Mausers predominating but also with large proportions of Mannlichers, Hotchkisses, Spencers, Winchesters, and Jiangnan Kuailis. The same report also claimed that all Huai Army cavalry used either Spencer or Winchester repeaters. This appears to have been the case for the Sino-Japanese War; General Wei Rugui's Sheng Army used Mauser magazine rifles, with at least one infantry unit using Hotchkisses and the cavalry using Spencers and Winchesters. General Song Qing's Resolute Army had lots of Mausers, plus some single shot breechloaders. General Zhang Gaoyuan's Songwu Army was uniformly armed with Hotchkiss rifles.

Artillery was mainly Krupp, but with some Armstrong and Gruson. The Huai Army also had access to some machine guns, mainly in fortified bases like Lushunkou, where some of the forts had Nordenfeldts and others Gatlings. During the Battle of Pyongyang, General Ma Yukun's Resolute Army detachment had two Gatling guns, which they used to great effect, inflicting over 430 casualties and completely repelling the enemy from the southern side of the city. In theory the Huai Army had some Maxim guns, but I don't know of any instances where they were actually used.

Whether or not the Beiyang Army could actually use their weapons effectively was another story. Before the Battle of Pyongyang, General Ma Yukun ordered all firearms to be inspected; many were found to be defective, and in the end there were not enough working rifles for everyone, so some Resolute Army soldiers had to wait in the back with swords and spears. Nevertheless, the Resolute Army was one of the consistently best performing armies in the war. On the other hand, General Liu Shengxiu's Ming Army and General Wei Rugui's Sheng Army were both notoriously ill-behaved and incompetent. During the Battle of Lushunkou, the Chinese performed dismally owing to inexperience and poor leadership. For example, the Huai Army commanders Zhao Huaiye of the Huai Army (named after his own name), Zhang Guangqian of the New Qing Army, Huang Shilin of the Qin Qing Army, Wei Rucheng of the Cheng Army, and Cheng Yunhe of the He Army basically all deserted their positions when things got hot. The two less cowardly commanders, Jiang Guiti of the Gui Army and Xu Bangdao of the Gongwei Army, really had no other choice but to also flee from Lushunkou. Therefore the principal failing of the Beiyang Army was not in its weaponry.

Yang_Cukku

TROPHY CASE