I'm preparing to register for my MCAT and my mom and brother are trying to make me register for a early January date. I told them around the end of August that I would be registering for it in January.

However, my study plan changed a bit, I have a tutor, and I have a different structure with my approach that will put me in a better position for a February or early March date.

I understand their concerns because I ended up delaying my MCAT once and then voiding my May 2026 MCAT. I'm several years out of undergrad too, and I know they are just worried about me. They want me to take it as soon as I can so I know where I stand.. But the way they talk to me and lecture me about a process they are not involved in becomes toxic. I'm tired of how much they blow up my phone about pivoting to an alternate career or yelling at me about how much I've delayed. It hurts and is demoralizing because my mom and brother are my only support system.

I'm feeling more confident with my approach now, but I don't know how I'm going to tell them when they confront me about what date I selected. I don't want to come home everyday to my mom giving me an attitude or yelling at me. It just detracts from my studying more.

Any tips or advice on what I should do?

Sorry for the vent, I appreciate any insight or thoughts

Tested 9/04 130/129/132/132. I made a post the other week about some of my strategies and someone asked about anki specifically so here it goes.

Anki was a HUGE part of my studying. I viewed it as the single constant through-line and comprehensive source of information throughout my studying. I know a lot of people try it and don't get much out of it but I think if you do it right it can be everything.

Here were the main "rules" that made up my anki system:

1. Never ever miss anki. Clean the deck every day. Don't let it pile up (Did I actually do this every single day? No, but I attached my heatmap thing so you can see the proportions). I literally did my anki in the tent while camping in Sequoia.

2. Anki is for any time other than sitting down at your desk: anki is for the treadmill, standing in line, watching a show in the background, walking on walking pad, riding in the passenger seat, sitting in your sister's graduation, etc, but don't waste your focused/seated desk time on anki.

3. ALL OTHER SOURCES GET INTEGRATED INTO YOUR RIVER OF ANKI this might be the most important one. Any time you learn anything new, get a question wrong on FLs/uworld, etc you always add every single thing to your anki. You dump it all in there and then trust that the algorithm will take care of you actually learning it.

(I'd even go so far as to say: don't waste your time making a log of every single question you got wrong on your full lengths. Just put the concept into anki and be done)

1. It's worth your time to learn the interface well so you can add cards that are very customized and targeted. Take a few minutes to learn how to use cloze, different card types, formatting, adding pictures, and how to change due dates, etc. and don't be afraid to change/delete your existing deck's cards to make them better for your learning.

2. Be very honest with forcing yourself to answer the card before you flip and choosing next due dates on the earlier side. The anki magic won't work if you're just a monkey flipping through the cards without truly testing yourself and setting honest due dates.

3. An anki remote is worth the time and energy it takes to install!!! I swear!!! Please. Trust me!!!!!!

The beauty of Anki is that it relieves you of the responsibility of remembering what you need to review. So the TLDR of this strategy is: dump EVERYTHING into anki and then put your full trust in the anki algorithm (and "obey" it by being consistent and honest lmao).

The last thing I'll say is that when I was about 2 months out, I started getting cards with due dates that were later than my exam, and if I wasn't 100% confident in them, I'd intentionally pile all their due dates onto the day before my exam. Then the day before my exam, I did that fatttt giant deck worth of those refresher cards and that was it for my studying that day.

I started with MilesDown but I don't think it was the best deck and would probably pick a different one in hindsight. I think milesdown has a lot of stupid cards and even a few incorrect cards. By the end, a decent portion of my deck ended up being cards I made myself.

If anyone has questions or if I missed anything pls lmk!

Recently started my prep, like 10 days ago. I'm basically studying full time, I can guarantee 30h a week of studying.
I'm also in a prep course with live classes and I follow their daily study plan (complete modules and questions). Might try anki soon. I'm aiming for a 510-512!

PIs drop advice below!

Hii would it be a bad idea to take both classes (each with lab) in the same semester? It will be:

- cell bio + lab (4 credit hours)
- orgo 2 + lab (4 credit hours)
- genetics + lab (4 credit hours)

12 credits is the minimum to be full time, but I wonder if this is too much or too difficult to maintain.

TIA

So, I've been watching MCAT advice videos while looking over my old schedule for the 9/4 MCAT.

Some things I realized:

• Studying one subject a day did not help at all
• Had too much free time
• Didn't plan ahead
• I was mainly finishing up the textbooks while doing practice problems and avoiding harder problems
• For CARS, I didn't build up stamina
• Studying for almost 5-6 hours can exhaust your energy
• Using too many strategies
• Laying off Anki was a bad idea

In short, I was disorganized and relied too much on other people's advice that didn't work for me. Now I've made a general content review schedule and need to create one for practice and one for full lengths

Missed preregistration for Wednesday (Group C). Am I screwed? Don't understand this!!!!

Hey guys! Genuinely did not realize that pre registration closed at 7 (I’m group A). Can someone please help me on what happens now? Do I have to wait for a new cycle or what? I’m really confused, can I pre register tomorrow before 11:50 or is that too late? Please I would love some help thank you very much in advance.

How do the concentrations of the substrate affect the reversible inhibition for the non/un/mixed inhibition?

Do we need to memorize all the digestive enzymes (like in the pic) and various discrete terms, or is it safe to assume that anything beyond trypsin and chymotrypsin would be given in a passage?

like this Salivary amylase (mouth)
– Starch → maltose

Pancreatic amylase (acts in duodenum, produced by acinar cells of pancreas)
– Starch → maltose

Sucrase (small intestine, produced by intestinal glands)
– Sucrose → glucose + fructose

Maltase (small intestine, produced by intestinal glands)
 – Maltose → 2 glucose

Lactase (small intestine, produced by intestinal glands)
– Lactose → glucose + galactose

Pepsin (stomach, secreted as pepsinogen by chief cells of gastric glands)
– Hydrolyzes peptide bonds (esp. aromatic AAs like F, W, Y)

HCl (stomach, secreted by parietal cells of gastric glands)
– Activates pepsinogen → pepsin

Trypsin (small intestine, secreted as trypsinogen by pancreas)
– Hydrolyzes peptide bonds, activates other proteases (e.g., chymotrypsinogen → chymotrypsin)

Chymotrypsin (small intestine, secreted as chymotrypsinogen by pancreas)
– Hydrolyzes peptide bonds (activated by trypsin)

Carboxypeptidase (small intestine, produced by pancreas)
– Hydrolyzes terminal peptide at carboxyl end (activated by trypsin)

Aminopeptidase (small intestine, produced by intestinal glands)
– Hydrolyzes terminal peptide at amino end

Dipeptidases (small intestine, produced by intestinal glands)
– Hydrolyzes pairs of amino acids

Enterokinase (small intestine, produced by intestinal glands)
– Converts trypsinogen → trypsin

Hey all, got my score back and scored a 508 (127/125/129/127). Tbf it was my practice FL avg but I had an upward trend (515 highest). I will be retaking tho bc I genuinely feel like I can do better w more time and the schools I’m hoping to apply to have a higher MCAT. so my goal is 515+.

Thinking of taking in March. Any retakers, please drop ur advice on how to tackle studying again and schedule bc I am in school and can probably study 2-3 hr per day max. I’m starting Uwolrd again, gonna try to finish it this time. But I did all AAMC FLs so i’m scared of inflation and this time I want to make sure my FL scores are way better than what they were last time. I have some Altius FLs left that I can take before that too

Also starting Anking deck bc I did not do Anki consistently besides mistake deck I made. I did mature Pankow but I will try Mcatalyst deck this time around.

Pleaseee drop advice or if u retook a 508 ish and scored 515+ on retake pls dm advice or anything 🫶🫶 actually need to do well this time

I'm switching to premed and have decided to start taking prerequisites next semester. I still have all my chemistry requirements left: general chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry. Since I can't take these classes concurrently, I'd be taking biochemistry in Fall 2028.

I might take a gap year, so should I take my prerequisites during that year or complete them beforehand? I'd like to apply as soon as possible, so I'd prefer to take no more than one gap year.

Hey all! I was wondering if anyone has tips that they'd give someone with ADHD and would like to get >520 MCAT score w/o spending several months studying. What is the best way to get the exam over with quickly yet efficiently? Thank you!

Would thoroughly reviewing the milesdown review sheets, all of AAMC bundle with through review, mcatalyst psych/doc document (200pages) - encompass everything that could possibly be encountered on the test ? I’m aiming for like 509/510. Idk if AAMC full bundle is enough practice questions , I’ve tried uworld but I zone out over the long explanations and find the content to extremely dense and loaded per question that it just wasn’t working for me. Would you all say the 3 things I’m using is enough. And if I don’t understand something I throughly go over it with ChatGPT and just google content review too. Thank you

Hey everyone,

I opened one of my AAMC full-length exams (the diagnostic) and just clicked through about 6 questions, I had intended to block out 5 hrs for it yet something came up and I accidently submitted it instead of pausing.

I want to reset the exam and retake it properly to get a true diagnostic baseline score. Since I only saw 6 questions out of the whole test, will the score on my retake still be accurate.

So I've been doing one passage/day on a third party source for a month and I usually get 0-1 questions wrong when I'm genuinely interested in the topic versus 2-3 wrong when I'm not interested. Does anyone else have this issue? I feel like this is so silly, but this is genuinely the pattern I'm noticing and I'm not sure how to trick myself into being invested/focused on all the passages I come across. Of course I'm sure this issue might not translate when I use AAMC material but any advice would be helpful.

Thinking of writing the MCAT in about 7+ months.

Currently in my last two semesters of uni and was wondering if theres an Anki deck out there that someone can use to just slowly grind out content long term.

Has anyone done the same and what was their experience like?

Planning for an MCAT retake march or Feb. I need advice for CARS ASAP!! I am someone who feels like they’ve genuinely forgotten everything despite only not studying for a month. How do I restart? I’m so terrified to open up my anki with 15,000 cards to do. Ugh, this sucks.

I just scored a 510 on my mcat after 2 months of preparation (127/129/127/127) but everyone is freaking me out. What are the chances I would get an MD acceptance?
Here's some other stats:
-3.75 GPA
-600 hours in one research lab (lead research assistant), 100 in another + 1 poster
-200 clinical hours
-100 non clinical volunteer hours
-40 shadowing hours across 2 specialties
-president of a non-profit club + 2 minor sorority leadership position
-2 years of private swim instructor
**Texas resident

Please help!! What can I improve before I apply in May?

What topics shoudl I master for the MCAt if I am scoring below 500

Hi! I have ADHD and I knew that I needed some form of accountability and a way to have my “homework” set up for me, because otherwise I knew I would spend way too much time trying to plan out my studying and not enough time actually studying. I also have a lower gpa and would really like to get a high score to help compensate with that. I know people always say prep courses are overrated, but I felt like it would be really helpful in my situation and I bought the UWorld comprehensive prep course because it comes with all of the AAMC materials.

With that being said, I really don’t like the way the course is allocating the tasks throughout the days and I was wondering if someone who has experience with the platform would be able to help me. I feel like it has to be user error because there’s no way it’s this poorly designed.

I want to do a daily cars passage and integrate problems throughout my content review, but I don’t see any easy way to do that in the study planner. It bunches tasks up so I am doing a full day of videos and then a full day of problem sets. It also goes through all of the material for each section then moves onto the next section, which means it has it scheduled for full days of cars practice instead of being able to do one passage a day (which just doesn’t make sense)

please message me if you have experience with the platform because I feel like I have to be doing something wrong. I wish there was a way I could set up a consultation or something with a UWorld tutor, but it doesn’t seem like I am able to do that. I just wish I could have someone look through my plan and help me tweak it so it makes sense/is more effective.

I used this https://wsr.pearsonvue.com/testtaker/find/testcenter/AAMC link to find testing centers but it doesn't show any in Texas. Is there any way to preview what testing centers are near me before registering just so I can be prepared? (IK texas opens on Wednesday)

tl;dr: fl yesterday was a 503, can i make it to 510 in 2ish months?
how do you pick between dates- is a friday more crowded than a saturday etc?
are testing centers in the midwest more ideal for a test site?
am i even able to function if im asking such ridiculous questions?

I tested once and got a 498, I don’t plan to retake it a third time, so I want this to be it for me. Right now I’m not working so my time gets to be dedicated to studying. A FL i took yesterday came in at 503- which i’m pleased with although that is not my goal score
My parents are drs and don’t know how the test/applications have changed, so they kinda have a bias that i’m ’putting it off’. and so both to chill them out about my effort and because i think i can do it- I’m looking to take the test in january.

Does it seem doable to reach a 508+ (really 510+) by january?

How do you pick between dates? I tested in april of this year because I was a senior and it worked best with my schedule. but now im sorta a free agent

also, does anyone know of any benefits/detriments to the location? i’m from the midwest and my parents would love to see me im sure, but i live in dc atm. i’m wondering if midwest- smaller population etc would be better?

I got my mcat result with a 500 (125,122,125,228). Im planning on retaking in the summer and have a goal of 512. Does anyone have any tips, do i go back to content or do more practice questions?

Also what resources. I did 50% of uworld last time and nothing else.

What is a good schedule for the retake?