3 MCAT Attempts to 513: The Power of Persistence with Priya Leghari

Show Notes

Burnout during the MCAT is a common and challenging experience, often characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion, decreased motivation, and a sense of overwhelm caused by the demanding and extensive preparation required for the exam. The intense pressure to perform well can lead to burnout among test takers, making self-compassion and balanced study practices crucial for maintaining well-being and achieving success. What does it take to conquer the MCAT, push through burnout, and come out stronger on the other side? In this episode, Vera sits down with Priya Leghari, a determined and resilient individual who shares her transformative experience of preparing for the MCAT. From facing burnout head-on to adapting study strategies, Priya opens up about the challenges she encountered while striving to achieve their goal score. Throughout their conversation, Priya provides invaluable insights on conquering various sections of the exam, including psychology, chemistry, and physics, while emphasizing the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Join us as we delve into Priya's inspiring journey of endurance, growth, and ultimate success in conquering the MCAT.

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From plateauing MCAT scores, and having to retake, to breaking down days before exam day, all 70+ MedLife Mastery Mentors suffered the frustrations and disappointments that come with MCAT prep. Yet we ALL ended up getting 90+ percentile MCAT scores and are on our way to (or already in) med-school! Now we want to help you do the same!

If you're struggling with the MCAT, need some extra motivation, want to know how top scorers before you studied and learn their best strategies, this show is for you. You have what it takes to beat this exam. We’re here to make sure of that!

Hi everyone! So I'm Vera from MCAT Mastery. Welcome to another MCAT Mastery interview. So in these interviews we talk with MCAT top scorers so that we can see what strategies help them the most on their MCAT journey and how they can inspire you on yours. Even top scorers have struggled with the MCAT but they managed to increase their scores to competitive level. We want to show you how they did it so you can too. For this interview I would like to introduce you to Leah Ligari. Thanks so much for joining us today, Priya. Thanks for having me Vera. Absolutely. So a little bit of a background on Priya. So her MCAT journey was three years in the making. She started with a 498 on her diagnostic and then realized that she was struggling since she didn't have a strong foundation in the content. Also had a tendency to overthink the questions. She got a 503 on her first MCAT attempt then a 505 on her second attempt before finally finding the strategies that worked for her and scoring an awesome 513 on her third attempt. What a journey! Congrats on the 513 Priya. Thank you so much. Yeah it's been quite a journey. Absolutely. Yeah so in this interview let's talk a little bit more about your journey. So let's dive a little deeper into exactly how you studied, you know how you schedule your prep, your strategies, your use for each section and a bunch of other stuff. Let's get started. All right Priya, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself so that we can kind of get to know you a little bit before diving more into the MCAT specifically? Absolutely yeah. So my name is Priya and I'm a Canadian pre-med student. I graduated from my undergraduate program in 2021 and I did my degree in nutritional sciences. So this program actually gave me a lot of space to explore different interests. So I did a lot of classes in metabolism and dochronology and I also did things like public health and alongside school I was involved with various extracurriculars including being a palliative care volunteer, a crisis responder for the kids health phone and a few different research projects that later went on to be published. Wow that is crazy you've got so much going on in that time. Wow thank you thank you. We're gonna talk a little bit more how you managed to juggle all of that but right now first big question I have for you I suppose this is going to be a doozy but so what inspired you on this path to becoming a doctor? Yeah this is a big question. So I grew up in a home where almost everyone was ill in one form or another so for example my mother actually has spina bifida and later was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and when my younger sister was born she had oligodactylicia, she had kidney malfunction and she suffered from failure to thrive and I know it may sound cliche but I really did grow up in a hospital and eventually became the primary caregiver to many of my family members and this translated quite nicely when I got to high school and I realized that what most people would have considered responsibility I considered passion and every class and extracurricular sense that realization has been to pursue my goal of becoming a physician. Wow yeah definitely that's a great motivation I think to become a doctor and I think it's also a a gigantic event you know that really challenges you and I think for any event like that you have to kind of look inward and see what you're made of. And every time was at the end of summer and always when I was in school I'd be taking a few condensed courses in summer I'd always be volunteering and I'd couple that with about four months of MCAT study. So the time that I got a 513 it was 2021 August I was taking English and biochemistry in the summer and you know because it was during COVID I was studying at home and I was doing all of my extracurriculars from the home office so like everyone else it was mostly COVID that was you know around us I have to say I think it hurt just because I like to go out to libraries and study or cafes I like to to switch up my my mindset when I'm studying and staying at home can actually be quite difficult for me you know I have my dogs I get distracted very easily so being outside and being in the dedicated work environment is quite helpful and not being able to do that I found to be a challenge. Yeah definitely I think you know at the time I definitely wasn't trying to write the MCAT or anything but I was feeling it myself the you know the struggles of being fine to one place I think at the very beginning I was actually kind of thankful for it because I really like staying at home but then eventually you know it just it just kind of like I don't know there's like a burden on you it's like oh I wish I could go outside you know but I never wish that I could go outside for it especially at the time I was living in on the east coast of the US so winter was very much a real thing but then suddenly it was like there's a blizzard outside I was like I wish I could oh my gosh it was quite kind of changing personality but okay so when you began studying for the MCAT what was your gold score how did you come up with that score specifically? Yeah so my goal score changed every year that I wrote it the first time you know I just wanted to see how I could do I kind of wanted to use it as a diagnostic I don't recommend this but that's the mindset that I was going in with so the first time I wanted to break 500 the second time that I wrote it I wanted a 508 and the third time I wanted a 510 plus with at least 127 in cars because I'm in Canada a few schools will selectively only look at the car score so I knew that I needed to have a competitive score for that section and I wanted a 510 or more in that final attempt because I knew that would be a solid score to apply for the schools that I wanted to get into and it and it did seem like a doable goal for me at the time. Got it I love it that you went about it very logically yeah and I think you know sometimes at least for me sometimes when I kind of have to set a goal for myself whether it could be you know like just as a goal in general or something numeric like a gold score and whatever sometimes I'm just like yeah I'm gonna go for this just kind of randomly and you know just kind of come up with that with no basis whatsoever but I like that you went about it kind of logically so let's talk a little bit more about study schedules so how did you plan your MCAT study schedule? So it was actually the same for the three years that I wrote the exam I gave myself four months in total and this included the classes that I was seeking in summer as well as extracurriculars and I did plan my MCAT study schedule around my other responsibilities but I would study and do all of my volunteer activities on six days and give myself one full day off to avoid burnout and the time that I just recently took it when I got the 513 I also plan to do 10 practice exams because I have pretty intense testing anxiety so I left the last seven weeks for those tests and I had the first nine weeks of targeted content review. Okay wow yeah that's nice so you only had one day off so how how long did you keep up with the study schedule for? Yeah so this was four months in total where I would be busy studying volunteering doing all of that stuff for six days a week and then one day off and I and I kept that up for 16 weeks this wasn't unlike what I would do in school you know with a full course load and work or volunteering that's typically how it was anyway so I didn't particularly find this challenging what I did find challenging was the eight to ten hour days that I would have on the six days that I would be studying that got quite challenging and that's why I wanted to dedicate one specific day a week to taking a break and just allowing myself to just be to relax to unwind so that I could do it again for the next you know however many weeks I had left. Yeah exactly exactly so on so I'm just curious actually on your day off you wouldn't do anything MCAT related right it would just be like a day of rejuvenation or relaxing but did you ever find you know sometimes like your thoughts would just kind of slowly drift over to thinking about the MCAT how would you deal with that that ever happened to you? So I think at the beginning it did just because I knew how much content you know I still had to cover and I was still tweaking my schedule so it would creep into my off days but you know by the time I got to week five I was like no I need to compartmentalize these two parts of my life because if I allow myself to think about it on my off day I'm not going to feel rested so on my off days I don't think I actually relaxed all that much I would go out I would do some sort of you know vigorous physical activity like biking or hiking or whatever just so that I was forced to stop thinking about the exam and I think that actually helped me out a lot I just had to shut off my mind and you know put studying aside for just that one day and that's that's was really helpful that's how I got myself to I forced myself to relax and it was very helpful for me. Oh I love that I love that I just wanted to ask that in particular because you know that is something that I'm struggling with like if I make plans like if I make a schedule and I tell myself okay Vera you're absolutely not going to think about work or think about anything else like on Sunday and then you better believe Sunday morning I wake up it's the first thing I think about it's horrible so I just wanted to kind of scratch your brain about that a little but I think making yourself busy like so busy that you're not able to think about anything else or just like so focused on something else I think that's something that's really really helpful. Alright so let's talk about your biggest challenges what were your biggest challenges like did you have any roadblocks any struggles that you really experienced throughout your MCAT journey and how did you overcome them? Yeah so because I wrote this exam three times I definitely came across my fair share of challenges specifically I really struggle with chemistry and physics because I don't believe I have a strong foundation in these classes so I had to utilize a traditional approach to study the section so I watched you know conceptual videos and I did basically hundreds of drill questions and I targeted my study time for this particular section so the bulk of my content was on the section because I knew it was my weakest so I just wanted to make sure that I had the skills necessary to do well on the exam and likewise cars has always been difficult for me just because it's so easy to overthink and not have you know quality practice when building this skill so this year I expanded how I studied I watched videos of people going through cars passages I listened to podcasts doing the same thing and I actually started reading short news articles because I found it was quite interesting to be able to read you know five to seven minute long passages and be able to you know strip away all the fat and get to what the author is trying to say and that's a skill that I feel like maybe isn't taught it's kind of intuitive for some people and I found myself needing to learn it from you know the ground up and as I mentioned I also have huge testing anxiety and to call those fears I did multiple practice exams to sort of train myself to focus on the test and not the anxiety of course I use third-party resources and they're not always representative of what you'll find on the actual exam but I use these specifically to see different passages and concepts and also to reduce my anxiety with test taking and this was super helpful for me and probably one of the best things that I did this year and I also did my best to target my specific weaknesses but one other challenge that I was dealing with was burnout and disappointment so I remember one time I did a practice test and I scored much lower than I was anticipating and because you know this was my third time writing the exam I was disappointed in myself and I sort of went into a little bit of a spiral to overcome these negative and intrusive feelings I decided to just take the weekend off so I took off two full days and I spent that time with some friends to get my mind off of it and allowing myself to reset was the kindest and most effective thing I could have done and it helped me so much because when I came back from the weekend I felt invigorated and I felt motivated you know to do better so the challenges were you know I had my weak points and I overcame them by targeting that and forcing myself it's always really hard to to work on the things that you know you're not good at but it is very satisfying you know once you get to a point where you're able to just master those skills so yeah oh I love that I love that and you know I think there's so many points that you mentioned there that we can kind of extrapolate on but I think that would take us like five hours and unfortunately we don't have that but I love that I love one thing that you mentioned in particular about giving yourself two days off to kind of be with your friends to get your mental health back on track and I think that giving yourself that little bit of kindness you know like it doesn't I don't think it matters quite as much like the length of time of giving yourself a break but it's more like how efficient you are with that time how kind you are to yourself and I think giving yourself a little bit of a break is not something many people do as much as they should be you know I think many people you know they've got their studies scheduled and they're really grinding away at it but they're not taking care of themselves mentally or physically and giving themselves the breaks that they really need and for me as well not even talking about the MCAP but just in life in general if you're trying to do anything that takes a lot of effort out of you whether it be mentally emotionally or physically I think giving yourself or knowing when to give yourself a little bit of a break a little bit of a pause however you do that I think that's super super important and I don't think it's something people do enough so I really love that you mentioned that specifically and that it really worked for you it did yeah yeah taking that time forcing myself to you know take care of my mental health was a huge huge point for me in terms of why I think I succeeded this year I think I definitely neglected that part of my life of the first two attempts and I it was reflected in my score you know I taking those breaks definitely helped bump up that score yeah exactly so if if someone wants to increase the MCAP score like you did so what advice would you give them what were your most effective strategies and methods yeah so I would actually suggest experimenting with different resources to see what works best for you my first attempt I thought that the quote-unquote right thing to do was read textbooks and then immediately jump into practice exams but turns out I'm a visual and auditory learner so this year I started watching video lectures I was listening to MCAP related podcasts and I adjusted my flashcards so that there would be some you know nice diagrams that would help me remember so being in tune with your own learning style goes a long way in terms of increasing your score and when I did that this year you know my score went up by quite a bit and I think it's because I was just listening to myself and using things that maybe are slightly unconventional but they they worked out great for me perfect yeah I think more and more people are slowly becoming aware that you know like different people can have different learning styles whether whether you know learn more visually or whether you can learn by listening things like that but it's not being practice as much as it should be I think so sometimes I think some people many people might not even be aware of what kind of learner they are until even later in life which is a shame because I think you know knowing that really helps you understand and and kind of helps you build the right strategies that you need for learning anything going forward even if you're no longer in school or no longer in like you know in the academic sphere of a sort so I think that's a really great advice so what materials and resources did you use specifically for your MCAT prep and what are some that you would recommend so I actually have an in-depth discussion about both paid and free resources that I used and I reviewed them on my Instagram page but it's a very very long post so to summarize the best free resources that I used were Khan Academy AK Lectures and Chad's Prep as video lectures there was also an Anki Deck which are essentially like flashcards and they were created by Reddit user Miledown I think there's about 2,000 cards and it's very easy to add your own so by the end of my content review I had about 3,000 cards that I was reviewing daily some other free resources I really liked were Jack Weston for Cars Practice and the MCAT podcast hosted by Dr. Ryan Gray and sometimes he'd actually have Jack Weston on and they'd go through Cars Passages so that was really really helpful as for paid resources I primarily depended on the AAMC material including full-length exams section banks and QPACs and I also really like to U-World which has tons of passages and questions with great detailed solutions and I found an old Princeton review textbook on physics and math from like 2012 so I use that as well and I also use the Kaplan textbook set to guide my learning and what I learned from using both paid and free resources is that you don't actually need to break the bank to score well some of the best resources I use were completely free so I would definitely keep that in mind if you're trying to save money but wanting to still score well there's tons of options out there perfect yeah I think you know in terms of MCAT prep if you have the budget for it you know there's a lot of things you can get that are very pricey but if you really want to consolidate if you really want to kind of lower your budget there's definitely many many options out there it's just a matter of finding it which I think is the huge obstacle is being I don't know like savvy enough to to find the right materials to find the right forums to be part of the right community get to those resources to begin with so how did you come across MCAT mastery did you use any of the MCAT mastery resources yes so I remember I was googling how to overcome a plateau with my score and I came across an article by MCAT mastery and it was really helpful in adjusting my mindset and preventing me from going into a downward spiral of stress and negative emotions my favorite MCAT mastery resource were the emails that I would get every so often and they would be of interviews of past top squares with specific tips that they used and I integrated the little things that they mentioned and evidently it seemed to really work for me I love that I love that and I'm super happy to hear you know that we were kind of part of your journey and hope that you get to that 513 and now yeah now you will be in one of those strategy emails that we're gonna send out how crazy is that right it's crazy all right so let's talk a little bit more about the MCAT in particular so your highest score one of your highest score was a 532 in psych so that's crazy like that is crazy so how did you study for psych so and do you have any advices for students who are kind of struggling with that section yeah for psych so I found that one quite surprising because it reminded me a lot of the cars section you know is a lot of reading comprehension when I wrote the official exam it seemed so much like cars that I was like oh no did I am I doing a second cars section but overall how I studied for that was there's an MCAT tutoring company called MCAT bros and they have a 300 page psych so sh document that is so comprehensive and so I would actually read the document and go through con academy video lectures and I would you know annotate the document as I went along and it's so comprehensive that I actually felt over prepared going into the exam and when I wrote it I was like oh I definitely feel like I've seen everything before nothing was a surprise so I would recommend that document if you can find it online it's basically everywhere I also used you world and AMC materials you know to test my knowledge and I had the onky deck for active recall and that was really helpful because psych so she has a lot of you know theories and terms definitions that you need to know so active recall in any capacity is incredible so yeah when I was going through the section and I was coming across something that looked like cars or bio biochem I would switch my gears and I would start thinking from a car's perspective or from like a bio perspective so that I could actually adapt to the passage types you know the section is always a bit of a mixed bag but as long as you have your content covered and a strong understanding of data analysis and the ability to critically review a piece of literature then you should just be fine awesome I like that you mentioned that you kind of have a different mode I would say so when you encounter like a car's passage you get into cars mode that's interesting so what are the differences there so with something like cars I find that the answer is always in the passage whereas for bio or biochem it's not always intuitive you know you do need to have skills outside and then you have to bring that in and then apply those skills but when you're looking at a car's passage the author is telling you what they think they're telling you what they believe in and you just need to adapt that that thought process you need to follow along and and be able to answer those questions so in psych you know there would be some passages where it seemed like the investigator was telling you what their results were and the question would be asking what the investigator thought and it was just like a car's passage you know the author is telling you what they think and the investigator is telling you what they think and you just have to apply that same sort of you know pattern recognition and understanding tone and which is which is you know different to bio biochem where there is only one right answer whereas with cars you know sometimes with the answers you can argue that all of them are correct to some extent but with cars I found that it was like one answer was more right than the others or you know all of the answers were wrong for this reason and this answer wasn't completely wrong so that's actually the right answer so it's a bit of a puzzle you know when you enter something that doesn't seem like a car's passage when you're entering a psych soch passage and all of a sudden you see cars you do need to quickly switch your gears and be able to adapt that thought process wow awesome this is like the first that I've heard of this actually so this has been really yeah this has been like a really interesting conversation because now that I'm thinking about this I'm like huh interesting okay so you got a 128 in cars so aside from this aside from what you just mentioned how did you kind of study for cars and what other advice do you have for this section yeah cars is always a bit difficult because as I said it's hard to build up that skill of reading comprehension but that being said it's certainly not impossible and I actually increased my score by four points since my last MCAT and what I did differently was this is kind of funny but I read this somewhere I tried to read each passage as though I was about to give a lecture on it and it sounds really silly but it works when I put myself in that headspace I was able to quickly find you know the thesis of the passage key evidence to support that statement and the tone of the author and if you imagine yourself about to give a lecture you want to be you know as well-versed as you possibly can be so when you go in with that mindset you are able to pick out all of that information and you're so ready to to basically add to the questions as though you're speaking to an audience and so aside from that little mind trick I also expanded what I was reading while I was studying so like I said I would find some short articles and do the same thing that I would do for a car's passage I would identify the theme I would find evidence and I would identify the tone and once I was able to determine those things I could come across basically any passage and answer the questions so this particular trick also helped with questions that you know ask you to assume what the author would do or think for a new situation based on the passage so these questions I found test your ability to take you know implied information and apply them to a new problem and if you're able to find the theme it's actually much easier to make a reasonable conclusion and if you're struggling on how to even begin studying for cars I suggest listening to the MCAP podcast you know hosted by Dr. Ryan Gray there are a few episodes where Jack Weston will come in and they both read the passage and they answer the questions together and this is really helpful because it gives you a baseline for how you can approach these passages and I think the AMC also recently put out the car's diagnostic tool and this is designed to help you understand how the test makers want you to approach their reading comprehension questions only two of the passages have full video explanations but it was very helpful to see how the official makers of the MCAT review their own passages yeah I found this section quite difficult to study for because there are very few third party resources that are able to replicate the official exam and so sometimes I would find myself answering third-party questions with the AMC mindset and get them wrong and that's okay because as long as you're getting the AMC material correct you're definitely on the right path wow yeah I love the little tidbit you mentioned at the beginning about kind of doing a little bit of a role play I suppose and pretending you're a lecturer and whatnot I think you know something like that is something that's very small and depending on who has a person it might be a bit easier to do than others but it could be something that's very powerful I love it all right so let's talk about the sciences so it looks like bio biochem was your weakest section you got a 126 on that and then on chem fist you got a 127 and you did mention that you initially struggled a lot with chem fist so do you have advice for students who are struggling with chem fist and bio biochem yeah so chem fist has historically been my lowest section every time I've written it so I knew this time I had to redo how I approached this material so as I mentioned I found an old 2012 edition of the Princeton review physics and math textbook and I found this particular book very helpful because with each subject and concept introduced it came with multiple example questions with full worked out solutions and this was useful because I was able to see the same type of question from multiple angles allowing me to answer a question no matter which way it was phrased so I actually struggle with that in chem and fizz where I'm introduced to a concept and I can answer it in one way but if they were to rephrase a question and you asked me to find a different variable for some reason I find a lot of difficulty with that so this time I tried to learn a concept and I tried to solve for every single variable possible and this allowed me to see the concepts from multiple angles and that was really really helpful and for chemistry I also really enjoyed video lectures because it's easier to visualize concepts and for those I really liked ak lectures and chats prep both on youtube both wonderful resources and I also used you world consistently for these topics as well as amc section banks and cupaks the best advice for the section is to do as many practice questions that you can get your hands on and review the solutions in as much detail as possible this will help with pattern recognition skills especially you know with physics and chemistry where there's only a finite number of ways that this material can be tested there's only two types of variables that they'll maybe ask you on for you know a given concept so covering your bases with material is a great first step but ensuring that you give yourself enough time to test your understanding will dramatically increase your score amazing thanks priya I feel like I'm ready to take the MCAT now and do sufficiently well I mean well actually let me let me take that back I won't say that actually but let's let's talk a little bit more about your MCAT day so what was your MCAT day like what were you feeling that day the morning of the exam how did you deal with anxiety prior to the test during the test yeah so by the time I got to my official testing day I had done this basically 10 times now because I had written my 10 practice exams in testing conditions I had a 3 p.m. booking so I woke up I went to a little blueberry farm with my family in the morning I had some lunch that I would have every single time I took an exam I packed my bag and made sure I had my snacks energy drinks documents and then I headed to the center and it was a usual check-in process you know I put my things in the locker and I started the section I felt really good coming out of that section it seemed like it played to my strengths as opposed to other years however you know this could possibly be attributed to better studying this year unfortunately I ended up going a little bit over than I usually do during my break so I had I think about 10 seconds to check back in and head to the computer before the car second started so it was actually very thrown off and it took me a few moments to catch my breath and focus on the passage in front of me I was quite stressed that I was losing time but it did seem like I did fine once I I gathered my thoughts I took a deep breath and then I focused during my break I had a protein bar and the rest of my energy drink and then I headed back in about 15 minutes early and I started the bio biochem section right away so this section was a little disappointing for me because I remember feeling like I ran out of time and I felt like there was more data analysis than some of the practice exams and you know analysis often takes more time and I felt like I was racing against the clock and this was unfortunate because there were two passages that I wish I took the time to read in more detail because they were actually very interesting and things that I studied in undergrad so I wish I had some time to you know savor what they were talking about but unfortunately I feel like I ran out of time but when I started when I started it's like so I was feeling I was feeling good you know I actually got through all of the questions in about 55 minutes so I had 40 minutes to review everything and I felt very confident with the section I remember there was only like four questions that I flagged because I wasn't a hundred percent certain I ended up finishing about I think 30 minutes early and then I headed out and then when I got home I googled the questions because I knew it would bug me until I figured it out and it seemed like I was on the right track with my answers and I did get a 132 so I'm glad I listened to my gut feeling and you know I went with my first choice for those questions yeah exactly okay wow what a day what a day yeah I am also someone who struggles with anxiety not just testing anxieties but just anxiety in general like if I need to go to the grocery store I have to like psych myself up 30 minutes beforehand like okay Vera you're gonna go to Target now it's gonna be okay so honestly just hearing your journey that day literally makes me anxious like right now like oh my goodness yeah I'm so happy that she did manage to get catch her breath and did well oh no I can't wait she was losing time doing her break like what's gonna happen next okay awesome I am glad that it worked out and I think one thing that I would like to mention was you have done so many practice exam prior to this that it didn't feel like something that is so new you know and I think it's really great to have that kind of experience that you've done a lot of these practice exams before so it's not another level of anxiety of the newness of it all like that hasn't been kind of added to all of the anxiety you already have to deal with I suppose wow that was a journey like you don't realize it I'm literally sitting here I'm so happy for her right now thank you yeah it was it's very stressful in the moment but looking back it's not so bad exactly exactly so if there is somebody studying for the MCAT and it's feeling like burned out you know burned out frustrated sad along those lines they do you have like any advice for them anything to say to them yeah I'd say that this is completely normal to feel this way especially with the MCAT and the most important thing is to be kind to yourself this exam tests your ability to retain and apply knowledge but you don't also test your endurance and ability to grow as a learner so if you're feeling burnt out that's probably a sign that you should take a break and recover as pre-meds it's super easy to get swept up and studying and forget that we're humans that have complex needs so when I was feeling burnt out and you know it was often I forced myself to get out of the house get some exercise remind myself that I'm a person and the MCAT is just one of the things I'm doing in my life it's not my entire life and I tried to balance you know social activities and exercise into my routine and that really helped keep my head above water when it was starting to get stressful and I think you mentioned this but when I took breaks sometimes I would feel guilty but then I remembered that according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs basic needs like water and sleep followed by friendship and connection or integral to me being the best self that I could be fostering a healthy mind really helped me stay positive and motivated me throughout this entire process so just go easy on yourself it's just an exam and you're gonna be fine very well said thank you so much for you I think many people including myself and I'm not even saying anything I'm cat really need to hear that I feel like you know whenever I talk to people I'm constantly just trying to gather advice from that I'm just like yeah myself has nothing to do with the MCAT this is just for me personally so talking about your MCAT journey is there anything you wish you did differently during your prep like any regrets at all yeah this is an interesting question so the first year that I wrote the exam I actually paid a company about three thousand dollars for prep and you know I didn't do well on the exam so I think that was a regret from the first year I did what I thought I was expected to do and I didn't really listen to myself in terms of my own intuition about how I enjoy studying and what skills work for me so that's a regret from the first year but this previous year I actually don't have any regrets I don't wish that I did anything differently I took all of the mistakes that I'd made the first few times I wrote the exam and I completely overhauled my system I prioritized my physical and mental health I tried to stay social but I still studied to the point where I was proud of what I had accomplished actually you know what I do have one regret and it was waiting so long to open my score which was three months after it was already released I was so anxious I couldn't open it so I waited three full months and then I finally opened it wow that's crazy why didn't you wait for that long was it just you couldn't bring yourself to do it yeah I was so anxious you know like the second time that I opened my score I was expecting much much higher than a 505 based on my practice exams and how much I'd studied so when I opened it I I essentially had a breakdown for a week straight and I think I was like a little bit stressed out a little traumatized from that experience so I definitely wow opening this for months which is a long time yeah yeah you gotta rip off the band aid gotta rip off the band aid I went through something similar myself but it was not for something as life-changing as the MCAT it was actually me delaying watching this one specific movie which is like such a weird comparison I know but it was like the last movie of this really big franchise I will not name any names for anything specific so you can use your imagination to fill it in but it was the last movie of this gigantic franchise and everyone has seen it the opening night whatever weekend was huge but I just couldn't cope knowing that this will be last movie and there was not going to be anymore so I waited six months before I actually watched it because I couldn't bring myself to emotionally I was like oh this is the end guys but yeah I kind of get where you're coming from nothing is life-changing or you know as as important as the MCAT but for me it was something I needed to delay for my own emotional health or something I don't know I was like 12 so who knows yeah absolutely that take a closure is hard exactly exactly so how were you doing while you were waiting for your MCAT score to get back so you know as I said I was so anxious I couldn't open it but luckily I was taking classes so I kept my mind off of it for the most part and I didn't really have any reason to open it anyways because I figured if I needed to rewrite I could check it before I had to sign up for the next exam but if you ask my friends and family they'll tell you that I was full of stress and they were always trying to convince me to open it so I could finally put my mind at ease and I didn't realize this at the time I thought I was totally zen about it I was like yeah the MCAT doesn't matter it's fine it's done and I thought I wasn't even thinking about it but if you ask my friends and family they're like Priya wouldn't stop talking about the MCAT for the three months that the score was out they're like she would slip it into conversations she would talk about it a little bit and then we would try to convince her to open it to stop talking about it but you know I didn't even see that I didn't even notice but it's not great I wasn't doing great while I was waiting for my score understandable understandable you know and I love that their perception of what actually happened totally for what you thought was actually happening yeah so let us talk a little bit more about the actual day you opened and actually saw your score what was that day like what was your reaction oh my goodness I'm so anxious I think I checked on December 13th when my score was released back in September and I was putting up the Christmas tree and I said to my sister you know what let's just go open it I actually got my sister to log on and see it for me because I was so scared and when she finally told me I was like you have to make sure that you tell me in a very specific way don't say the number just say you know good or bad and if it's good or bad tell me like very good or like okay good we had this crazy system where she had to use very specific words and no numbers so I wouldn't have a breakdown but when she finally told me when she finally told me I burst into tears because I was so proud of myself and relieved that my hard work you know had translated into a score that I was proud of and it was a really great day and then awesome moment for me yeah it was it was a bit of a struggle a bit of a challenge the first two times I'd written exam and so this was a nice way to round out my MCAT experience and to close that book for me you know absolutely absolutely and again congratulations on the 513 it's well deserved and you definitely deserve to have a gigantic celebration I'm not sure if you did but I hope you did if it was me I certainly would have thrown like a huge party and just mentioning to every single person I meet like you know cashier at Target did you know I got a 513 on the MCAT just kindly you know slip that in a little bit amazing amazing I definitely feel like it was a long time coming and I'm glad that you got there and I'm glad that we were you know a little a little bit part of your journey I suppose so what are your plans for the short-term future for the long term future and what are you kind of thinking you'll be in in five to ten years from now I know huge question huge question well currently I work as a clinical research coordinator and I'm not a great time doing that but I anticipate I'll be starting school hopefully this September five years from now I hope to be wrapping up medical school and starting residency and ten years from now I hope to be you know fully settled as a physician and perhaps doing some side work maybe as a primary investigator for clinical trials myself and you know if you'd asked me this question maybe three years ago I would have a very detailed itinerary of what the next 10 20 years of my life would look like but I found that like while it's fun to have a life plan it's also really nice to allow life to follow its natural course so that rather than comparing it to my strict plans I can just sit back and enjoy the ride and you know feel proud of whatever work I do and not be disappointed that I didn't meet my ridiculous expectations so I'm just taking it one day at a time perfect perfect yeah and I think you know the amazing thing about kind of going with the flow so to speak is that sometimes you just stumble upon or you're given an opportunity that you never dreamt of because it's more amazing than you could have ever imagined it for yourself and I think that's one of the great things about kind of not having step by step day by day concrete plans and just kind of seeing what comes you know and going a little bit of a time perfect amazing so it looks like that is all we have time for today unfortunately would have loved to spend a little bit more time talking to you and going over everything but good luck with everything that you have coming up Priya it sounds like absolutely amazing time and thank you for coming on this was so fun I got a bunch of great advice this for me specifically but I also hope the listener got a bunch of great advice that they can use on their journey but thank you for all the listeners as well thanks for listening to us have a little bit of conversation we hope Priya's journey has given you some insight and some inspiration to get you to your goals for and happy studying everyone thanks so much hello there it's Vira again before you go on with your day I wanted to let you know that we have a lot of free resources like our free strategy course checklist mnemonics practice material and a bunch of other stuff check them out and mcapmastery.net slash free if you want a bit more personal life help we have a bunch of awesome top scores who can help check out mcapmastery.net slash mentors we know that the mcap is difficult and the path to becoming a doctor is a difficult one but it is entirely achievable I hope this episode has been an inspiration and has given you some hope for your own journey to your goal and cat score thanks for listening remember that every top score every med student every doctor has made it through this journey and you can too you got this