This might be the very best advice I have ever gotten for studying for the MCAT. My roommate, who I met via the master’s program I took, was in a similar place as me. He, however, was able to get a 514 on his MCAT before I my third attempt. I was fucking blown away when he told me. I was incredibly proud of him, but it was then that my competitive ass decided that I HAD score higher than him.
My roommate gave me a detailed breakdown of his score. The thing that stood out the most to me, was that he got a perfect score on the biology section and a 50th percentile score on the CARS section. In picking his brain, he revealed to me that he barely spent any time studying for CARS. He told me that during his prior attempt he had dedicated what seemed like entire days studying for CARS, after all it was consistently his worst section. Yet, when he took the MCAT, all of this work was for nothing. His score rarely moved more than a point or two up. For a little background, my roommate was born and raised in France, and although he was a fluent English speaker, the CARS section always gave him trouble. This is apparently a common theme for foreign students (like me). He mentioned this to me, because he sees that I have been focusing an exuberant amount of time on CARS. Yet, my score seemingly never moved.
My roommate’s reasoning was infallible. He put it as a hypothetical. If you were to score a perfect 132 on all three sections (other than CARS), you could score as low as 124 on CARS and still get a 520. Although it seemed so obvious when he said it, I was flabbergasted that I had never considered this concept. I was wasting precious time and effort mulling over how to improve my CARS score when I should be focusing all of my time and energy on my bread and butter. I almost stopped working on the CARS section, all together, I just wasn’t very good at it. Plus, it was a pain to study for. Instead I dedicated more time to reading, either CARS passages or for leisure, to maintain reading speed and comprehension. I ended up getting a perfect score on the Biology section and a 131 on the Psych/Sociology section.
Disclaimer: I am not telling you to disregard CARS. I have many friends and colleagues who excel in CARS. To them, I would more than likely tell them to practice CARS as much as possible. I’m telling you to take a step back and analyze what you are good at what you are not so good at. Then focus most of your energy ensuring you highlight your strengths.
Scrub To Scrubs 