Is anyone else out there taking THE TEST next Friday??!! I am really starting to freak out,have been calm up until now. Doing nothing but practice tests every night for the next 6 days. I need all the good energy you can muster sent my way!
Good luck! Be sure to take some time to relax, too. You’re not going to learn a lot by cramming the last two days. Spend that time to do whatever cools you off a bit. And eat well, sleep well. Most stressful thing you should do the day before the exam, IMHO, is drive there so you know exactly where it’ll be, where to park, etc.
Good luck to ya! This’ll be a great opportunity for you to show your stuff.
- spowellod Said:
...Doing nothing but practice tests every night for the next 6 days....
Wouldn't recommend that. If you're doing something wrong that is holding back your score, you'll do it on all 6 tests and next Friday too.
Pace yourself, do a test, analyze score, figure out what you did wrong. Take another test, try to improve by learning from mistakes. Repeat. One test followed by an analysis/lessons learned day worked best for me.
Your stamina/tolerance may be different but try not to burn yourself out. On Thursday you do nothing MCAT related - relax, do some light exercise, and enjoy spring. Friday you get to the center and knock it out of the park.
Good luck mon ami.
Sooooo…feel mentally exhausted. PS was very tough. Passages were long and information was difficult to process. Something about bar stars, entropy questions (what is that…j/k). VR had a passage about Robin Hood, another on cloud formation; questions were tough. BS was great, felt like I knew everything that was asked. Will find out in four weeks if I get to breathe rarified air with those of you that have MADE it. Positive vibes welcome.
Guess you can stop worrying about that now. On to the next step - start researching schools and where you want to go. Once you have a short list start visiting the school’s 2010-2011 thread on SDN.
The moderators are on the ball and pretty good about posting the prompts for the secondaries. Once those are available fill out the prompts even before you get the secondary application. You will be re-visiting, re-reading, refining your responses many times and you don’t want to be rushing yourself. Timing is a HUGE factor when it comes to applying and unfortunately I learnt this the hard way.
Subscribing to the online US News Best Schools list is a good idea - they have a lot of information in one place and you can also find contacts for the admissions deans/offices pretty quickly. I think it was $20 or so for a year.
Dazed posted some good advice!
I started a document of “Info on medical schools” where I listed for each school I had decided to apply to:
Info on the school -what about it had attracted me - what special did it have to offer? That helps when writing your secondary applications, since they often ask why you are a good fit for their school or some such questions
Also, list contact info for the admissions office, what letters of recommendation they want, if they use the AMCAS letter service (or Interfolio for AACOMAS).
I updated this with further info as I went along. Listing the secondary question prompts is a GREAT idea, and starting to write some of those essays is a fine idea. You want a good turnaround time.
Useful to keep an EXCEL spreadsheet too, with dates stuff was sent where, dates they confirmed receipt, application fees paid, date of secondary requests and date the secondary application is sent (my goal was no more than 3 days turnaround but a sick relative put me more at 2 weeks for some of them), interview requests, etc.
Kate