The MCAT Is A Med-School Exam, Not A Premed Exam

February 20, 2024

minute read

There were many moments during MCAT prep, when scores weren't moving past 500, or stuck mid 500s, where we all thought to ourselves:

"I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

It's stressful because when you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, you don’t know what to do to fix it.

You question if your MCAT score goal is within reach by test day, and by default you question if med-school is within reach.

We still remember feeling so frustrated at why we couldn't figure it out!

Especially because we did decent (some of us really well) in undergrad, but the same study techniques weren’t working for the MCAT.

Now that we're experiencing what med-school is like, here's what we wish we knew when we were struggling with improving our MCAT scores:

More...

The MCAT is a med-school exam, not a premed exam.

Yet we all study for it like we study for our undergrad exams...

And expect similar results.

Most college exams just require content review...

They don't require critical thinking, understanding passage authors, decrypting unnecessarily complex wording, maintaining mental stamina for 7+ hours...

And countless other skills the MCAT requires, which we've never been taught before.

For most college exams, you can get away with studying just nights before, as long as you can memorize and regurgitate information...

And nearly every premed is good at this skill.

Which is why once students get most of the content down (which would usually yield 80% or higher in undergrad)...

MCAT scores hover around 500 (~ 50th percentile), which unsurprisingly is also the 'average' MCAT score amongst test-takers.

With 511 being the average med-school acceptance score for MCAT, clearly AAMC is looking for those premeds who are studying much differently (not more).

Every premed tries to study more and harder when scores aren't improving, but continue to get mediocre results because they're studying hard using old methods.

It's useless to pedal as hard as you can on a bicycle, when you really need to develop the skill to drive a car.

A bicycle was enough for undergrad, but won't cut it in med-school!

It's time to graduate from old study methods into med-school exam study methods.

AAMC wants to know who can handle med-school exams...

So they give you one to filter out the best candidates.

If you're still scoring <mid 500s, you need to figure out the strategies to learn how to study for a med-school exam, and fast if you're testing this summer.

Well you don't even need to figure it out because we've already done that for you.

We struggled through the MCAT, so you don't have to.

You just need to implement the strategies we have for you, that will help you become a better med-school test-taker.

The best part? You can learn and see score improvements in less than 30 days. How?

Because of the way our MCAT strategy courses are structured:

First, you'll learn the strategies for every section. You'll learn what you need to do to approach content, passages, questions, answer choices, figures/graphs/tables, your schedule, and more.

Second (this is where the magic happens), you'll watch a top scorer go through the passages, and apply the strategies you just learned.

You'll observe as they give you a transparent view into their thought process, their logic, their reasoning, and how they make their way to the correct answer every time.

By the time you've seen a top scorer go through just 10 passages (there are a lot more), you'll already start seeing your practice exam passages from an evolved perspective.

You'll automatically start making the right deductions because you'll have absorbed the top scorer way of thinking (i.e. the med-school exam way of thinking).

That's when you'll see your scores jump.

That's when you'll know (just like we did when we figured this out)...

You got this.

Get the strategy course for the section you need most help in here.

We look forward to seeing you on the inside 🙂

The MedLife Mastery Team
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