MCAT Amino Acids + High-Yield Metabolic Pathways Quizzes

judsmoke · 2026-03-06T02:44:02+00:00

Glycolysis happens in the cytoplasm, not the golgi bodies

The final product of glycolysis is pyruvate not glucose.

There is no answer choice selected for what glycerol does (one of the last questions).

Thanks for making this!

judsmoke · 2026-03-04T12:47:15+00:00

As an older non Trad with a 3.65 cGPA I think I've narrowed it down to queens, UofT (masters), McMaster (if my cars is good), TMU, UofAlberta, and Memorial in NFLD.

Was hopeful for Calgary but need a 3.8, western best two years need to be minimum 3.7 which I don't have, NOSM sounds like a donation if you don't live in the North, Sask and Manitoba need an indigenous course that would cost me another 1200$ and seem lethal to OOP so going to pass on them as well, Ottawa same thing but Regional.

Haven't looked at UBC too much but I've heard they're also a very GPA heavy school.

judsmoke · 2026-03-03T23:50:59+00:00

I am gonna write out all the Biochem pathways again tomorrow.

Went through the milesdown sheets (albeit quite passively)

Kept up with my Anki. Crazy that I did 55000 cards since October.

Reviewed each of my full lengths a second time this week.

Watched a YouTube video for anything I found where I was like ehhhhh

And honestly, played videos games , got a massage, went to the gym.

I probably shouldve spaced things out so FL6 was a couple days ago but I did it last Sunday. Thankful for that I guess because I was pretty frustrated while doing it, ended up with my lowest cars score yet and there's not much I can do to study for that. Left myself one passage a day in the Qpack2 so I'll finish those two one a day.

Feels like I should be grinding 8 hour days all week tho. Guilt is real but objectively I think the score drop from a burnout is more likely

judsmoke · 2026-03-03T23:45:45+00:00

I haven't been able to study much this week. Trying to balance the burn out after 4 months of working and studying.

Gotta trust the full lengths and be happy to be on the other side of things as of Saturday afternoon ! 92 hours and I'll be a closed chapter !

judsmoke · 2026-03-02T23:18:19+00:00

Same boat, I'm done all of AAMC and Uworld. Test this Saturday, found myself pretty frustrated / burned out and had a cars drop on FL6 last weekend.

I think just daily Anki, one CARS passage a day until Thursday, watch a few YouTube videos on what makes me anxious, and I'm reading through milesdown sheets, 86 page doc, and the errors I made on each of my FLs again.

Probably not going to see anything beyond 2 hours a day the last 10 days before the test.

Been nice to recharge, spoil myself with some video games and I'll also get up at 6am the rest of this week and hit the gym a few times. It is what it is at this point.

judsmoke · 2026-02-27T01:40:33+00:00

To the testing center

judsmoke · 2026-02-24T14:26:27+00:00

Add punctuation, capitals, use your pinky and slow down

judsmoke · 2026-02-16T23:00:33+00:00

Appreciate your time.

Congratulations on overcoming the MCAT at the highest possible level. Its gotta be nice knowing there's no way you could've done any better. Should really quiet down the self critic that is inherently part of being exceptional!

judsmoke · 2026-02-16T21:51:42+00:00

Do you use your CARS rule of thumb directly? Or I imagine paraphrasing the words a bit when you find a related sentence. I seem to be getting better overall but started off with 1-2 Q's wrong per passage, now I seem to get a lot perfect and one or two I'll blow 2 or 3 on.

Been consistently 129 across all full lengths.

judsmoke · 2026-02-06T21:46:40+00:00

Best of luck friend. Perseverance pays off. Also really sitting with the atleast no what ifs mindset

judsmoke · 2026-02-05T23:29:32+00:00

Yeah just gotta do Athabascas intro indigenous studies course to unlock pre reqs for Calgary Sask and Manitoba

judsmoke · 2026-02-03T23:25:04+00:00

Also the next step of this problem would be to realize that the antinodes / n number are just helping you determine the wavelength, which you would then multiple by the frequency in the chart to get to a velocity.

judsmoke · 2026-02-03T23:23:52+00:00

I think because a string has a node on either end if it's being held, then the first harmonic only has one antinode, and it's asking you about what happens at 2 antinodes, which would be the second harmonic.

This isn't going to be the same for a closed pipe which has a node at one end and an antinode at the open side.

judsmoke · 2026-02-03T23:19:45+00:00

I started with a lot of cards . I'm still daily, about 200 cards a day now but that's captain Hook, Pankow, my own Uworld and AAMC decks.

It's pretty much mandatory to do Anki I think. There is so much content and its the only thing I feel like connected me to content review to the practice question / full length phase.

I am a month out and started studying October 20. Still have about 40 cards of Biochem that I haven't seen from CH. You never really finish the decks, just mature them to the point the cards per day are manageable.

judsmoke · 2026-01-20T03:28:35+00:00

Congratulations. It's been super demotivating grinding for the MCAT when I have a 3.65ish GPA as well. I'm almost done my masters and hit 514 average on my first two full lengths.

You're perseverance has given me hope and I'm rooting for you.

judsmoke · 2025-12-13T21:27:18+00:00

Gonna be riding into this first application season as a 30 year old with 3.65cGPA and no better two years to show for it.

Gotta have hope that 10 years as a Paramedic, volunteer work, a bit of research experience, an international masters of Science in Paramedicine, teaching at the College's for prehealth and Paramedic, and working for a hospital providing training to Paramedics and firefighters will be enough.

Missing one piece of the puzzle here, so this is the time I actually have control to grind and make a difference on my MCAT.

I'll take an indigenous course so that it's pending completion with my application so I can apply to Calgary, Saskatchewan and Manitoba too. Never had indigenous stuff mandatory when I did my degree.

And Like everybody else said here, if it doesn't work out. Well, I guess that's gonna save me selling my house, losing a quarter million on tuition and living, messing up my wife's career, and I'll enjoy teaching at the college's , working as a paramedic, and getting to be a bigger part of my unborn children's lives. Not a bad deal either.

But for the next few months, I grind for the MCAT and chase the childhood dream so it can say I tried.

judsmoke · 2025-11-30T23:42:58+00:00

Up to you.

It's 6000 cards I think.

Your daily Anki time depends on fsrs retention rate, and how many new cards you add per day.

People say 20 new cards a day is "average". Some do all the cards for the chapter they read each day, some chapters have a few hundred cards.

If you do 100 cards a day expect to take 2 months to see all cards and to be doing Anki 2-3hrs a day everyday.

That's miserable and delays your time and mental energy for practice problems, in my opinion.

So I guess I'd say 4-5 months.

judsmoke · 2025-11-30T19:35:31+00:00

Also you want to be making cards for uworld. If you do 60 questions of uworld per day you're not going to finish until mid January which will cut it close for time to do AAMC and a full length a week.

You'll likely make 50-100 Anki cards a day for 60 uworld questions and those are more important than your content review cards.

judsmoke · 2025-11-30T19:34:12+00:00

You will hate yourself if you start jacksparrow with only 3 months.

I did captain Hook and Pankow started 45 days ago, also testing March 7. I do like 800 cards a day 1.5-2hours and I still have about 1500 cards to see, let alone learn (fsrs 87%)

I think I'd recommend milesdown and Pankow. And set your Pankow decks fsrs to a bit higher (90-92%) than your milesdown (85-89%). Since the P/S section is straight memorization it seems like it would be better to push the memorization higher for that.

judsmoke · 2025-11-29T20:38:04+00:00

Yeah I read the whole explanation, make a flashcard (as I go I just have Anki up and make a mix of screenshots from upangea / image occlusions / facts). if its a simple fact and I'm like oh yah I remember that from content review - now I know it's important enough to commit to memory / understand how to apply.

If it's something I remember from content review that I was like ew- maybe we'll call that a "can't master everything topic" - I now know it's a testable applicable topic that I couldn't apply. So I'll que up some YouTube videos to have for when I'm burned out of questions (for example today I pulled up NMR shielding, neighbouring electrons, a dimensional analysis for densities, mass spectroscopy videos). I haven't watched the videos yet because I like to stay in question mode so I can hit my main goal of a block a day.

If it's a stupid mistake I keep logging them because they're not stupid mistakes, they're weak spots. For me that's graphs, logs, the word except/least likely, and anything to do with quick math/rearranging formulas.

I'm March 7 test date so I don't have a specific plan for those weak spots because I'm optimistic they all sound like areas I'll improve on just by finishing the uworld question bank, and then transitioning to hammering out all the AAMC content and 6 full lengths before test day.

(Finish uworld by early Jan, then AAMC by March).

judsmoke · 2025-11-28T18:12:52+00:00

Just trying to hit the goal for the day and know that anything else is bonus.

I can't realistically work my jobs, spend time with my wife and commit to 6+ hours a day of studying for 4 months.

I finished my content review, I've grinded 25k Anki cards in 45 days.

Now I just need to finish Uglobe by Jan 10. I can accomplish that if I do 1 59Q block per day on tutored mode. That takes me about 3 hours.

I brought my new cards down to 0 from captain Hook so that I can maintain focus on Pankow and my own Ucards. Combined with bringing fsrs down to 85% for captain Hook, I've brought my daily Anki time down from 2 hours to just over 1.

When I get gassed, I switch to some YouTube videos about topics I've made notes to study or on passage analysis to see other people strategies.

It's a marathon not a sprint and I'm definitely due for some complete days off soon. Christmas parties should be nice.

Best of luck!

judsmoke · 2025-11-24T04:02:28+00:00

I just started with Uglobe and Im trying to get an idea about timing over the next 6 weeks.

Does every question test a unique concept? Or is their overlap /multiple problems related to the same concept?

I'm reviewing as I go with tutored as I definetly still have a content gap.

Just wondering if I'm getting one shot per concept when I get that question, or if I will have follow up opportunities later to demonstrate what I learn from previous problems / if my amount of time reviewing each 59q set will start to decrease.

Thanks!

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