I got a low sat score (1410/2400) but a high school high gpa (3.7). How do I get a high mcat? I just got accepted to Uri and Ric
Is English your first language?
Yes
Are you a college junior?
If not, there is no reason for you to worry about MCAT.
No soon to be freshman
Do you have any advice for me about being pre med?
Most importantly enjoy remaining time in high school. As to MCAT: take premed classes before MCAT, try to go to class every day, stay on top of material, and do well. Also understand that premed courses aren’t taught with MCAT in mind, so you’ll have to get some prep materials and study on your own and/or take MCAT prep course. Although the amount of MCAT prep time needed varies from student to student (2-3 months, more or less?) and is often taken sometime in third year, you certainly do not need to give much thought, if any, about MCAT for some time. So focus on doing well in your courses as your college GPAs will be just as critical as MCAT score. Also make time to enjoy your college years as well. Good luck.
OP, with a 1410 on the SAT, you need to start immediately working on whatever is causing you problems. What was your score breakdown? What classes were giving you problems in high school. You have time to fix this if you start now. If you wait until months before you take the MCAT to fix your deficiencies, (as others have suggested) you won’t have enough time.
Start today by reading, reading, reading. Increase the difficulty of what you read over the months ahead. Don’t let anything get past you. Fully understand everything you read (have a dictionary open at all times).
Best of luck.
Max SAT Score Reading 470, Math 500, Writing 440
Do you recommend I read the sat reading list 100 books?
normally I’m anti @plumazul’s start early approach for the MCAT but with that SAT score I think she’s right here.
Are these the books you’re referring to? http://missyween.com/?page_id=13 If so, I say no. Those are mostly fiction and the kind of text you’ll see on the MCAT is not fiction. I’d look to things like newspapers and magazines. Go for the more educated kind (e.g. NY Times, Scientific American, Economist, not US Weekly and People)
Does “Max SAT score” mean it took multiple attempts to get to 1410? Does it mean you got that score on one of your attempts or does that represent the best individual section scores over multiple attempts (a superscore?)
What was your SAT prep like?
It is a superscore of ±10 to the writing section. During my prep i got max 600 math 540 reading and low writing 430
How much should read? And do you think i will be prepared in a year.
I doubt this is an issue but do not skip any intro coursework. If your school offers some remedial level science/math/english classes (maybe they don’t count towards the major or med school requirements) take them. Don’t be afraid to use your school’s support services (e.g. free tutoring from senior students, a writing center to critique essays, etc.) Your foundation is weak. Most medical school applicants probably had baseline SAT scores above your current maximum. What prep did you do? Self study with a book? A class? A tutor? Lots of practice exams? Mostly flash cards? What was your method exactly?
NYT and SA are probably good sources - I don’t remember the little list I used to know when I worked at Kaplan. I think New Republic was another one on there. Washington Post was probably on there (especially since they own Kaplan, lol) Basically you want to be able to read educated writing aimed at an educated, but not specialized audience (e.g. I would not recommend reading medical/research journals - that’s too specialized).
You want to get used to understanding not only what the pieces are saying but also how they are saying it. What is the author’s point? What evidence does the author use to support it? Does the author address any potential/existing criticisms of their point? Editorials/OP-eds are probably more in line with MCAT passages than actual news articles. Reviews of things are also good.
I did some self study with a tutor, but I could have studied harder.
Should i start out reading articles and looking up words i don’t know?
Vocabulary is probably not the most urgent skill you need to work on. You need to work on overall reading comprehension.
You might try summarizing the content of each article you read in your own words. Make the summary brief–no more than paragraph.
Also try highlighting/underlining what you think the key points in the article are.
Another thing to try: find the topic sentence/thesis that identifies what the article is going to discuss, then make a list on a separate page of paper of each supporting idea used in the article.
I would not look up vocabulary while reading. It breaks your concentration and interferes with your general comprehension of the article. Try to guess the meaning of words you don't recognize by their context (how the words are used in the sentence/paragraph). Learning to guess meaning via context is an important skill in developing reading comprehension.What math class are you currently in? What grades are you getting?
What AP classes have you taken and what scores did you get on the AP exams?
No, you won’t be ready for the MCAT in a year, nor should you be. Students do NOT typically take the MCAT after frosh year of college.
Oh wow. I totally missed that “prepared in a year” comment. Good god no. Strong students shouldn’t take the MCAT after freshman year. The earliest I know of anyone taking it is summer after sophomore year and he was (is?) an exceptional student.
I agree with WOWmom that vocab isn’t really the crux here - it’s about deconstructing arguments. Here’s a Kaplan blog post talking about their technique, passage mapping, in the context of the GRE (but it’s the same thing for MCAT Verbal): http://gre.kaptest.com/2013/12/12/gre-reading-comprehension-passage-analysis-tips/
Since you worked with a tutor, what was your baseline score at the start? Unless you started well below 1410 it sounds like the tutor wasn’t very good (or you didn’t put in the effort?). Trying to figure out how “representative” that 1410 is since those scores are in the 30-40th percentile. The MCAT is an enriched test pool so it’s even more competitive than the SAT and typically students’ percentiles drop a little from SAT to MCAT. The average MCAT percentile for people who actually get in to medical school is ~85th.
I did not try hard enough. What will i realistically need to do to get in the 85% minimum mcat scores? I want to work much harder.