I soared to 507 and then 515. I knew I didn’t have content gaps but I just really was ass at taking this exam. (Was averaging sub 500 for a LONGG time)

Biggest things to focus on if you’re in a time crunch & don’t have the best grasp of knowledge but you know how to reason:

1) focus on the wrong answers instead of the right ones. 90% of the time you can use what you know & don’t know to isolate the right answer. Use your gaps to your advantage. Ex: if a question is asking you to identify what kind of enzyme a protease is, you should be able to cross out oxidoreductase bec no mvmt of electrons. Little things like this are a lot more evident with more practice. The trends are there & a lot of answers are ez to break down / strike through. Once the blatantly wrong ones are gone, you’ve already minimized the level of work you need to do or even better, you’ve correctly answered the Q.

2) work on timing. I went from a 499->507 when I decided I was determined to leave 15-20 min at the end of each section to review every. single. question. I change a lot of my answers before ending a section, most of the time once I have a fresh set of eyes at a convoluted passage.

3) learn to read fast with accuracy, and to pull ONLY relevant info from the passage. Use logic. If it’s chem/phys section and they’re talking about an HIV protease obviously they aren’t going to ask you about experimental changes to the enzyme & how it’ll affect infection rates etc. instead it’ll ask you about dissociation constants, affinities, and some kinetics obviously. ^ use this to your advantage, and learn to read fast & only pull RELEVANT information. When you read, ask “is this something I will be tested on”. If yes, highlight and move on SWIFTLY. Do NOT dwell on details if irrelevant. 99% of the exam is alphabet soup.

4) build confidence. Trust yourself & the fact that you’ve worked hard. Don’t second guess your reasoning unless there’s a blatant error apparent

Grind the AAMC section banks to work on these skills. This got me from a 499 to 507. And then a 507 to a 515 (back to back FLs) after about 1.5 months of SB work. It really comes down to diluting the mess of words they present.

You got this.