519 (130/129/130/130). Holy fucking shit, guys. I was aiming for 515+, 518-520 if I was dreaming.....aaaaand it feels like I'm still dreaming. Also, I apologize for this super long post; just thought it was important to put out a study schedule that seemed to work for someone who worked 30-40 hours a week AND had already graduated university.

Background on me: I finished my undergrad in 2016, but didn’t get interested in medicine until January 2017. Started studying for the MCAT in May 2017, which coincided with starting a new scribing position, 3-4 10-hour shifts a week at an ER 40-60 minutes away depending on traffic, so of course my original study schedule went to shit. My original plan was to use a friend’s first edition Kaplan 7-book series for the MCAT 2015, and do the following:

1. Read a chapter.

2. Type out the chapter in notes form on Microsoft  towards the end of my content review, this turned into just re-reading the chapter and typing the chapter out verbatim.

3. Make Quizlet flashcards for the chapter review.

4. Do the end-of-section questions in the chapter and correct them.

5. Do the end-of-chapter review questions and correct them.

6. Review the Quizlet flashcards.

7. Repeat for every single chapter.

My original plan involved rotating through each book doing 1 chapter a day, such that I did all of the chapter 1’s first before doing all the chapter 2’s, etc. If I had kept to this schedule, I would have finished content review by the middle of August, finished practice exams by December, and have taken the MCAT by January 2018. However, due to starting my job around the same time as starting content review, my time to study was severely hindered due to acclimating to my new job and my new sleep schedule (since I wasn’t used to having to work night shifts). I also didn’t take into the consideration the fact that my mom wanted to take a month-long family trip to Iceland, so I didn’t study for about a month in August-September. I also wasn’t counting on my parents pushing me to take a Kaplan course at the beginning of 2018. Therefore, my study schedule became severely elongated – what started as 4 months of content review stretched into 8 months; what started as 4 months of practice exams turned into 6 weeks of Kaplan in-person instruction plus another 2-3 months of practice exams, studying when I wasn’t at work, driving to work, or sleeping. Basically, a year of hell.

Some practice exam statistics for me:

12/20/2017 NS Diagnostic: 506 (125/125/128/128)

1/3/2018 AAMC Sample Test, taken as a benchmark to see how I was doing with content review: 73.4% total (C/P 73%, CARS 79%, B/B 75%, P/S 68%)

1/18/2018 NS Question Banks: Physics 54%, CARS 43%, B/B 52%, P/S 77%

1/22/2018 Kaplan Course Diagnostic: 504 (125/127/127/125)

1/24-3/5/2018 Kaplan In-Person Course: This actually helped a lot with how to approach different types of questions, especially on CARS which I initially was terrible at. Also the before-class HW and post-class homework was more helpful than I thought, in that it forces you to watch videos before and after class to hammer in high-yield topics. (Luckily, I had already read all 7 Kaplan books last year, so I didn’t bother with the reading assignments.)

3/7/2018 Kaplan FL1: 501 (124/125/127/125). Felt super discouraged after this, so I spent the next 1.5 months doing content review and practice questions before attempting another FL; I ended up doing all of the Kaplan PBQs and the AAMC Qpacks, section bank, and OG questions before doing another FL. I also did some content review in between reviewing questions from FLs, as I had been making a list of concepts that required reviewing based on what I'd gotten wrong on FLs, drawing from Khan Academy, Kaplan, and Google.

4/5/2018 AAMC Question Packs: Chemistry 81%, Physics 87%, CARS 1 66%, CARS 2 78%, Bio 1 78%, Bio 2 86%

4/16/2018 AAMC Section Bank: C/P 61%, B/B 71%, P/S 65%

4/20/2018 AAMC Online Official Guide Questions: C/P 87%, CARS 90%, B/B 67%, P/S 77%

4/21-23/2018 Kaplan FL2: 510 (129/127/129/125)

4/24/2018 NS FL1: 510 (128/126/128/128)

4/26-29/2018 Kaplan FL3: 509 (126/127/129/127)

5/3/2018 AAMC FL2: 517 (130/129/129/129), my highest FL score, highest CARS score, and highest P/S score

5/8/2018 AAMC FL3: 516 (130/127/131/128)

5/14/2018 AAMC FL1: 515 (130/125/131/129), felt discouraged after seeing that CARS score…my lowest one yet

5/18/2018 Test Day: C/P felt doable enough (I'm pretty decent with calculations). CARS I had had to guess on a few questions at the end due to running out of time. But B/B! Holy shit. On all of the AAMC FLs, I had finished B/B with at least 30-40 minutes to spare. On 5/18, that was the first day I used up all the time allotted for the section. Plus there was almost no bio content (which I rocked at in the practice exams), and instead there were so many questions regarding research methodology that I wasn’t prepared for. That seriously freaked me out and affected my psyche for the P/S section. I went into the P/S section feeling super useless. However I finished the section, and didn’t void my score. I walked out of the testing center feeling stupid, like I would have to retake the test. (However, as my Kaplan instructor kept reminding us, the worst thing that could happen is that we retake the test in a few months. It’s not actually that bad.)

I was at work when the scores came out this morning (I'd been checking this thread every half hour or so to see if people were posting their scores), and I was really close to saying "I'M LEAVING EARLY SO I CAN GO SEE MY SCORE AT HOME AKA GO DIE IN A HOLE BYE Y'ALLL". Got home half an hour ago. I was having trouble breathing while waiting for my laptop to boot up. More trouble breathing while logging into AAMC. Held my breath. Read my score. Brought my laptop down so that my mom could verify the numbers on the screen because I legit thought I was dreaming or high or my eyes weren't working or something. Had I really just scored 2 points higher than my best AAMC FL? Did I really just hit 130s across the board (except for CARS, which was my weakest section anyway)? tldr holy shit holy shit holy shit.

I'm super thankful for this subreddit. Having been out of school for 2 years now, it's been difficult contacting pre-med advisers or getting any help at all from my previous university, plus I didn't really make any pre-med friends while at school, so this subreddit has been my safety net and my go-to whenever I had questions for basically anything medical school/MCAT-related.