MCAT Success Stories — Interview with a 519 Scorer, Re-Taker, and MS1: Julia Meguro

MCAT Mastery Podcast: Show Notes

About The MCAT Master Interview Series

Welcome to the MCAT Master Interview series!

We’re on an ongoing mission to put together THE formula for achieving a top MCAT score.

We’ve been doing this by gathering the most effective MCAT study strategies from verified top scorers, and then we bring them to you in the form of blog articles, daily emails, YouTube videos, strategy courses, through tutoring sessions and anything else that can help you along on this journey to reach YOUR maximum MCAT score.

We’ve been researching and holding interviews with top MCAT scorers for many years now, until recently we thought "Why not let you all in and give you a seat at the table during these interviews!”.

So, that’s what this series is for ????

We hope by listening to these interviews, you learn proven MCAT study strategies you never thought of, that you can start implementing right away!

And most importantly, we hope you feel an increase in inspiration and motivation because the MCAT journey can be very tough and it can be easy to fall into negative mental cycles...

But as you’ll learn from these success stories, every top scorer had to deal with the struggles, the challenges, and through perseverance, through strategy, through mindset work, they all made it to the top score that was right for them. ???? ???? ????

About Julia Meguro

You've seen her our on our Instagram page posting awesome MCAT tips, the motivational/funny videos, and hosting live Q&A's with other top scorers on the MCAT...

Today you can learn more about her and her MCAT journey 🙂

Meet Julia Meguro:

When Julia first took the MCAT, she had studied for two and a half months while she also had an internship, and ended up scoring a 511!

Now getting a 511 in just over 2 months is already pretty impressive, but the problem was that she had already been accepted to a med-school that required at least a 512.

She was just ONE point off and knew she'd have to retake.

Disappointed but knowing how she could improve, Julia took a break and decided to retake with full focus. But with three weeks left before her test date she still hadn’t moved her score beyond her 510 plateau.

However in those final three weeks, she doubled down on her strategy, and improved her score to an amazing 519 by her test day!

In less than 24 days, she was able to increase her score by 9 points on the MCAT!

Today, Julia has been accepted to an MD/MPH program and we're so proud of her 🙂

In this episode, we're going to learn all about how she studied in her first and second take, how she increased her score, how she kept herself motivated, how she scheduled her prep, what strategies she used for each section, and so much more…

By the way, since Julia dominated the CP and BB sections of the MCAT, she contributed quite a lot to the Chem/Phys and Bio/Biochem Mastery module in the Complete MCAT Strategy Course (which we highly recommend you check out if you're studying for the MCAT!)

Topics Discussed

[7:50] How Julia strived to increase her score from 504 to her score goal of 512
[10:23] Julia's MCAT study schedule
[11:45] The resources she used that she finds to be most useful
[13:12] Her biggest challenges and what she did to overcome them
[15:47] Valuable advice for people who are struggling to reach their score goal
[21:00] How she studied for each section
[27:52] Conquering exam day jitters
[33:36] How she is helping other students prepare for the exam

Memorable Quotes

MCAT can be intimidating but you should not let it get into you and your goal of becoming a doctor.
MCAT Mastery makes the exam so much easier by providing affordable materials and resources.
MCAT Mastery is a place where all tutors share their own experiences to save students from making the same mistakes they did.
Doing the questions over and over again will help solidify your knowledge.
Focus on understanding what you are reading.
Knowing how to answer questions that you don't know is a strategy in itself.
Do not place so much value on your score because the euphoria you get from a higher score only lasts for a certain amount of time. It doesn't define your personal value or your ability to become a good doctor.
Do not compare yourself to other students because you have your own path that you have to follow.

Resources Mentioned

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Learn more about each mentor on the MCAT Mastery Team here.
Work with an MCAT Mastery Mentor: https://mcatmastery.net/mcat-tutors

Julia's Testimonial for MCAT Mastery Strategies!

"So much of the advice that I could have had in the beginning is all in this one place. The exam could have been so much easier."

Your MCAT Success Mentors

About the Author

We're a team of future doctors passionate about giving back and mentoring other future doctors! All mentors on the team are top MCAT scorers and we all are committed to seeing you succeed in achieving your physician dreams To help you increase your MCAT score to the competitive mark quickly, we have collaboratively created these self-paced MCAT strategy courses and are also available for one-on-one tutoring!

Learn more about each MCAT mentor