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Maintaining a healthy balance between school, family and self-care had been Stephanie’s constant struggle. Taking her score from 496 to 505/506 took 11 months, then with 30 days left before her test day, her score skyrocketed to a 513! This is how she did it.
As you'll hear from the interview, Stephanie found our strategies to improve her score! Here's what she had said about them:
"One of the best resources for my MCAT journey! I wish I had found it sooner, but the MCAT Mastery guide & the CARS guide were so helpful. My score on practice FLs went from 506 to a 510 after reading this guide and learning how to correctly review my FLs. Scored a 513 on the actual, so thankful for these guys.
They sent emails every day with stories from other top scores testimonies and I would listen to them on my way to campus. Just hearing about others' determination and success made it feel more real for me. The Top Scorer MCAT Strategies and CARS Mastery with the CARS Dissections showed me how to really dissect a CARS passage to the point where I was only missing 5 questions per full length."
If you're looking for a similar score increase or are in a similar situation, check out these same strategies that Stephanie used. They'll help you as well! 👍
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, I'm Monica and welcome to another MCAT Master interview. In this series we basically just sit down with MCAT top scorers so that we can figure out what strategies are helping them the most in their process and hopefully inspire you as you're going through this journey as well. We know how difficult it can be. So many students struggle with the MCAT but that doesn't mean they can't find a way to achieve their dream score. So we want to show you how top scorers are ultimately getting there so that you guys can make it over the mountain yourselves. So with that I'd like to introduce you all to Stephanie Hayes. Welcome to the series and thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me I'm really excited. Oh my gosh we are so excited to have you as well and we're really excited to hear your story from you and everything like that but I wanted to start by giving our listeners a little bit of information I guess about your background. So when Stephanie first started on her MCAT journey she struggled with balancing the work required for success with other aspects of her life as one does during MCAT prep. So putting school and family obligations on top of the MCAT workload became a constant struggle culminating in her lowest practice exam score being a 496. However she didn't let that stop her deciding to take her prep slowly and raise her score bit by bit over the course of a year of sticking with the exam. Still after a whole year she found herself stuck at a 506 only a 10 point increase with just four weeks left before her test date and that's when she finally started searching for and applying proven strategies to MCAT prep. And in those last 30 days she was able to raise her score by seven points to a 513 on her final exam score which is amazing. So in this interview we're just gonna launch into understanding how she achieved a 17-point score increase overall and how she skyrocketed her score in the last 30 days as well how she studied overall how she scheduled her prep and then looking into each of the individual sections and getting her advice on each of those as well. And so much more that will come up outside of all those topics so with all that let's go ahead and get started. So Stephanie why don't you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself. Absolutely so I am from Augusta Georgia and I grew up with just my parents and I kind of decided that I wanted to go to UGI just to you know get out and get a new experience and I think that was really good for me. I love going to concerts and going to festivals as like kind of an escape. It's kind of stark from pre-med stuff which kind of helps you know when you get back into the studying mindset you had that fun that weekend and you can really focus for the next week. I have a club that I do. I started it actually with my boyfriend last year it's called the Brain Exercise Initiative and it's a chapter of a national organization that does basic simple math reading and writing with Alzheimer's and dementia patients in retirement homes and so we'll do these brain exercises with them in the hopes that their Alzheimer's is actually getting better and progressing. That's such a cool cause and it sounds like super meaningful as well so that's awesome. So going a little bit backwards then what inspired you to want to become a doctor in the first place? Did it have something to do with like Alzheimer's and that type of population? It definitely did so my grandmother was actually diagnosed with Lewy to Body Dementia when I was in high school and that was a pretty good catalyst for me going into the medical field. I did a lot of volunteering in high school at the hospital and I really enjoyed it but then when she came down with dementia it really made me want to learn more about the mind and understanding how this sort of thing happens and the path that you can take when you're younger or maybe even at that stage to improve and treat it because there is no cure. But medicine really because of her and I just enjoyed volunteering and doing my part to serve others and anatomy and biology have always been super interesting to me. So I thought why not put it all together and let's go to medical school. Right it's a whole bunch of different pieces that come together and motivate you I guess which is good because it's coming from all these different things. Right. So getting into the journey then you knew you wanted to go but obviously every pre-med student has to confront the MCAT at some point. So where were you in your life when you started prepping and how did you feel about it as you were going into it? So I was actually home for the summer because of COVID and I was taking two summer classes and I began thinking about how I was going to tackle my next year of school with MCAT prep. My mentor a doctor that I had shadowed in the college had told me that he suggested I start about a year out and at first I thought that is a lot of time to be studying for this one exam but you know what let me go ahead and take a diagnostic. So I took a Kaplan diagnostic which was a four hour exam and I scored a 496 and so that was having a good amount of pre-rex under my belt. I hadn't at that point had biochemistry or physics one or two so you can imagine my chemistry score was pretty low and so was bio and biochem. At that point I decided to go ahead and start thinking about a prep course if I would be able to do that and I decided to get a Kaplan course around that summer but it was not going to be until January to March of the next year that I would start taking that. Okay so that was the scenario going into it and yeah that first diagnostic score nobody's score is ever that good on that first one but that can be a hard starting place at the same time so with that score in mind and like the time it was also from that that score being from all of my pre-med classes they had a really good foundation first that test. Right, right exactly. So going from there how did you go about making a study schedule for your prep? So I started making a study schedule for my prep with doing the Kaplan books. I got them that summer and I kind of broke it down to trying to read about three chapters from a book a week so that would land me having read all of the chapters from the Kaplan that November and then I would from that point start doing practice questions. It wasn't perfect it really took some time to like actually get into the groove of that especially starting with school and having about 15 hours on my plate along with extracurriculars which during that time COVID kind of crushed a good bit of them but I was still trying to get my club up and running so that was pretty difficult and I definitely didn't reach my target of having all of the chapters read by that point and I probably got like a chapter to two read a week so I was pretty scared when it came time for in my schedule November to start doing three hours a day with practice questions and end of chapter questions with all of the books. So at that point I decided to do three hours a day of MCAT prep up until about April when I would kick it up to four to six hours a day and that would be my final push into my test date which was June. Okay so like this gradual increase in time and intensity which makes sense it's a long exam at the same time too yeah so. It was a great process though when I was doing the scheduling when November and December came around I definitely had more time with breaks to get more than three hours in and that made me kind of hopeful for going into January when my prep course would start because that would be once a week three hours a night and that's when I decided like three hours is probably gonna have to be my cap for those few months just because of school and extracurriculars and I would try to go home sometimes on the weekend but that's when the sacrifices started kicking in and you know taking a full length on a weekend and reviewing it the next day so it definitely increased over time. Yeah which makes sense when you're balancing and trying to time management I guess in general so moving forward like getting more specific so you mentioned Kaplan already what other resources did you use and find helpful in your book? So the Kaplan books along with their channel on their website were pretty helpful the channel kind of mirrors Khan Academy videos they come with worksheets that are a little bit more specific to MCAT tricks and tips I would say but Khan Academy videos I used pretty regularly I would take notes and put them in a binder of subjects that I was sore on for full lengths and Anki I began doing Anki for psychology probably in January and I would do it every single day and it was so helpful and then MCAT mastery the last month of my prep I wish I had found it sooner it was honestly the biggest blessing to find you guys because it really did improve my score but those were mostly all the prep courses the materials that I used yeah yeah I've heard a lot of good things about a lot of those resources so that must say something like those are helpful to a lot of people who are finding success in their prep now more generally speaking throughout your prep what do you think were your biggest challenges or struggles and how did you kind of work through those? I definitely think maintaining healthy balance with school and self-care was my biggest struggle my mental health towards the middle end of my studying was getting pretty rough honestly because I wasn't getting myself as many breaks as I should have I went straight from doing schoolwork and tests into MCAT prep and I really wouldn't let myself go out or hang out with friends for a good majority of the week and then by the weekend I was so dead and I would have to do a full length and then review it the next day that I ended up kind of burning out about the beginning of April and I had to take a whole week off of doing anything from MCAT just because I knew that nothing was sticking at that point and it was going to hurt me more than help me so after that I think I realized that I needed to make time for myself and make time for a break and take one day off a week every single time that was something that I was told to do from the very beginning and just never took seriously and I wish I had a lot sooner because I feel like I would have been more recovered going into a week where if I had a break and I would be able to absorb more rather than just going every single day pushing myself until you know I actually had to take a break and honestly meditation and yoga really helped. There's a yoga club on my school campus that I went to a little bit more I had friends going and they invited me and that was also super helpful. Yeah yeah I appreciate you bringing this up because I think this is something that a lot of students kind of forget about or at least forget until it confronts you like you said. Absolutely nobody takes it as serious as they should until they're like forced to and I think that pre-meds especially like I had a lot of friends going through the same thing with the MCAT and honestly no one really talked about it until one of us brought it up and then we all kind of you know let each other know that we weren't alone and it is hard and you know listening to positive affirmations on Spotify when you're on your way to class is not a bad way to go. It really does get you in a good headspace. Yeah yeah for sure like it's proven to help and it sounds like you have a support system too which is another way to like absolutely you need a support system. I had a friend that was in a hometown um from my hometown doing the exact same stuff as me and we would call each other every week just to check up and you know take tabs on how are you doing have you found anything that's helped you know let me know if you need anything which is huge you need to find a support group. Yeah at least to just even complain about the exam and exam. So yeah I think you're completely right about all of that and so it's awesome that you're able to look back on this side of it now and be able to see how helpful those things were for you. So is there anything that you did during your prep that you kind of wish you had done differently so like anything that you regret on the other hand of this? Yes so I definitely did not need to read a bunch of the Kaplan books that I did. That was that was a good waste of time if I'm being completely honest. Practice questions I did not hold to a high enough standard until like eight months into my studying and the last four months is when I was really cramming practice questions which I should have been you know having a healthy balance of content and practice from the very beginning. Another thing is I was kind of avoiding doing chemistry questions like on the side just because I found them particularly challenging but I feel like if I had gone and done chemistry questions like packs from either you world is what I've heard has been really great for a lot of people. From the beginning I could have solidified a lot of that foundational chemistry and physics at an early point and then worked on more complex and you know higher yield question but for me I was definitely you know on the short end of the stick getting into like really nailing that chemistry. Yeah no I think what you said about practice is super true and then again about chemistry and we'll get into the specific sections like I said but a lot of people avoid certain subjects for certain reasons and eventually you do have to confront that so that's another good point. Feel like you're good enough at it or it's definitely something hard so if you're particularly struggling with one section like mine was chemistry and you really just can't get yourself to understand a question or like the theory behind it set aside a part of your day you know and put away all the other subjects for that few hours and try to really dig deep into like the foundation of that chapter or concept like go to the videos go to the Khan Academy part go to the Kaplan books write down the equations like really try the basic basic equations and work your way up to like the end of the chapter problems and then to like a question online with you world or Kaplan because those are definitely more challenging than what you will see just in the readings but once you do that and you understand it at its most basic level if you understand the concept you can apply it to all of the more complex areas. That's great advice I feel like it's always yeah the things that you struggle with that you kind of don't right exactly um so I feel like yeah confronting that is is a really good idea and it's nice that you were able to bring that up um don't go too hard on yourself you know everybody has their weaknesses and once you start identifying them and just being aware of it you can really work on them don't avoid them yeah that's life advice too honestly right um so I know we've been talking about like a lot of the strategies that you used or things that helped you a lot if someone was listening to this and wants to increase their score like you did um do you have any other advice additional things or strategies and methods that helped you get there um I'm a very visual learner and so like videos were great with diagrams and stuff but I kind of realized that I love taking notes and even though it might be a pain and it takes way longer than just you know watching a 30-minute video to just take the notes and draw the diagrams and draw the processes it helped so much it was January when I was scoring around a 505 and I got pretty stagnant around a 505 for a few months probably up until March I got to like a 506 but when I started watching videos on things that I was weak on and actually drawing the processes or you know writing down the vocab words and like highlighting going back to my notes I ended up getting this giant pieces of poster paper and I would draw okem reactions and jizzix equations and I would put them on my wall and I probably looked like a madman for a few weeks but it was great for me because I could go up and look at my book and look at the wall and be like okay what am I missing what needs to be added you know how would this equation work how do these molecules break down or combine just really seeing it and having it somewhere written down was super helpful for me that's a great piece of advice too and I feel like even if you aren't a visual learner or aren't a prominently visual learner like that's not going to hurt you in any way either it's always good to yeah write it out okay so let's get into the separate section so your high score was a 130 in psych so which is awesome so let's start there how did you study for that section I know you mentioned Anki already was there anything else that you did that you would advise students to do so I actually found a website called mcat review dot org and it just had every single psychology definition that you could think of so I would do my Anki during the day and if there was like one concept that you know I could recall but I didn't really understand I would write it down I would go look at psychology or the mcat review dot org website to see if it had a more in-depth explanation and I really think that doing Anki every single day trying to finish that pre-med 95 pack will save you for psychology if there was like a certain disease that you had to know components of or like causes or like hormones that would be released during that I would definitely take notes of that and try to like keep it all in one place of like you know if this happens and then this is released just kind of drawing connections between stuff I really do find psychology interesting in general so there would be times where I would learn about a certain disease from like the Kaplan book just reading it and I would go and just spend 10 minutes diving a little deeper into it and kind of understanding processes just one level deeper will help you remember them and then for the research parts of it I definitely think you know having a Kaplan book or just like memorizing the variable types was super helpful because they will drop those terms in the passages and if you just know like what kind of experiment they're talking about in the passage like there is always going to be one question asked about that and then like highlighting variable types in the passages or like if they would mention a disease or hormone or an amino acid I would always highlight those because it seemed like the questions would revolve around something that are tied to those things and that definitely helped me increase my score towards the end and MCAT Mastery's guide also spoke on like just paying attention to certain variables and units so that helped as well yeah just a lot of a lot of different places to get all this information so that's so that's super actually crafty with it I mean the more the better I guess right okay so let's move on to cars next which was your next high score which was a 129 which is also awesome so a lot of students struggle with this section how did you study for it and what advice would you have I began doing one cars passage a day in august of the year before I took my MCAT so then I would work up to two cars passages a day and I did read the cars book from Kaplan I don't think it was particularly helpful it did let me understand like what were the question types that I should look out for and just kind of knowing that was helpful but my score didn't really increase with cars until I found MCAT Mastery and read the cars guide because I was reviewing the cars passages wrong I would just look at the question and think okay well I guess that answer makes sense and not really dig deeper into you know why did I get it wrong what about the other questions is also wrong and what about this answer is the right one so the last month and a half of my studying with cars actually reviewing the passages and trying to tie like a specific sentence or a phrase to the question that's asked would help me find my answer in the cars guide from MCAT Mastery writing topic sentences for each paragraph and then writing a main idea sentence was golden because honestly I didn't do that before so I would end up misreading or misinterpreting parts of the passage and without even realizing it so then I would get to the question and get it wrong just because I had just misunderstood that one paragraph so when I began practicing my cars passages like the one a day or two a day I would take the time to write one topic sentence or maybe even like a few words for each paragraph and then sum it all up with the main idea sentence and then I started doing this with my full lengths on the weekends I would write a main idea sentence for every paragraph and then the final one just you know doing it as quick as you can within your time constraints but that shot my score up I would end up doing going from four out of seven correct per passage to getting six out of seven which was awesome and then also just like reading on the side is super helpful for cars I was in a lot of stem based classes so we would have to read research articles and just understanding how like methods and results work just reading on the side is actually super helpful like you'll understand how authors will try to word things and when they mean one thing versus another and not trying to like put different perspectives in there just being able to differentiate between those two perspectives will also help you yeah yeah this section is like I said a lot of students have problems with it because it is you know it depends on strategy and like trying to figure out a way that works for you to confront it so thanks for just expanding on your experience with it so now let's move on to the sciences let's start with kemin fizz how did you study for that section and what advice would we have so kemin fizz I would go through the physics book and I would write down all of the equations from the end of each chapter and try to decide if I knew what each of those variables meant for myself and then I would do the end of the chapter practice questions and see if I was missing any major topics in there or like really could not figure out certain things and then I would go back and dive deeper into those particular areas and concepts for chemistry I really didn't see a score improvement until I did more practice questions reading wasn't so helpful with me there just because with the passages there's a lot of applied knowledge and learning how to integrate parts of the passage with you know an equation they may be asking you for so really practicing with the kaplan questions and I did some next step questions but you know only like the free pack of them and then the AAMC question packs at the very end I did every single chemistry question in those packs I would definitely say save them until your last rounds of practice like definitely the month before but doing every single one of those questions and reviewing them reviewing the answers that like you got wrong and how you got them right definitely improved my score right that makes sense but the sciences as well a lot of students kind of struggle with finding the methods that are going to work for them I guess getting into bio bio now so how did you study there was it similar or different to chem and fizz um bio bio chem pretty similar to the chem and fizz just you know writing down equations writing down topics this is kind of where my poster board and visualization came in because I would draw the glycolysis cycle and the gluconeogenesis cycle you know and just like trying to draw and see how they would connect and then I would find mnemonics for the enzymes that were used in those cycles and that was super helpful because they will ask that memorizing the amino acids uh was a must and you know all of the properties that go along with them so practicing those on Anki was also a pretty big helper I guess started keeping a notebook about three months before my test and just instead of like a binder with all these random pieces of paper I had a notebook that was more consolidated of like you know reviews of the full length and that would give me space to go back and write new ideas about bio and bio chem and review source subjects especially bio bio chem like use the books if you need to get that base understanding but other than that practice questions practice questions practice questions yeah great advice start with the content and then go from there hit the practice because that's where a lot of the improvement comes in for sure okay so let's talk about your MCAT test day like the actual day so how was it for you in general going through the day I was I was I was stressed I definitely had um shaky sleep it was not it was not deep um I think it was just nerves and I actually had gone um so I go to school at Athens and I drove up to Columbia South Carolina the next day to take my exam and I stayed over night the night before in a hotel so I got off I got myself breakfast and I meditated before the exam I did like 10 minutes of just like pure silence I'm trying to visualize my perfect score that I wanted up by 15 and I listened to some positive affirmations and you know really told myself I've been working so hard for this and I know I can do it it's just time to put it into game action and game mode and the anxiety it definitely gets better through meditating I would say um I did this before all of my full lengths as well or my practice ones and just doing that and having that routine on my actual test day was super helpful and calming yeah that's amazing I can imagine that was you know at least since you've been doing it as well it felt familiar having a routine was key to feeling more comfortable in that day too you know before that I practiced getting up at the correct times which was kind of hard because my exam was a seven-am exam um but I would do my best to take my practice exams on a weekend try to get up at the time that I would need to get up and pack my lunch like I would pack my lunch on the day of and then I would walk to the library just in case I would need to practice the timing of getting to my exam so having that routine definitely helps your nerves on testing yeah another great point and that makes a lot of sense psychologically for your mental well-being right so I guess walking out of the exam then how did it feel while you were waiting to get your score back um it was a bit nerve-wracking at first just because I was starting to finish up my primary applications or application and you know thinking maybe if I had to retake it you know what was I gonna do would I continue studying or would I take a year off those are all questions that were like floating around in my head for the first week or so like two weeks and then after that it kind of you know felt a little more distant and I could focus on you know having a good summer and balancing that with applications and friends and family and then you know when the score came around I just took a deep breath and you know I planned a fun night out with my friends no matter what and opened it with them and it went well yeah so how did it feel opening in so it was nerve-wracking like the whole day I didn't know if I should wait till 5 p.m like the website says and you know kind of looking before that felt weird so I actually went to my boyfriend's house and I planned a night out with him and all of our good friends so I go get dinner and celebrate you know it being over in the score getting back and you know I took a deep breath my laptop and was so happy I just like started crying because I realized like I'm never gonna have to take this again and that was the greatest feeling so yeah I was I was really happy I for a moment was disappointed that I didn't get a 515 and I got a 513 but honestly like going from my final practice exam being a 510 to the actual being a 513 I was so proud of myself for even getting that far right that's amazing so you did better than any of your practice scores which is awesome to think about so congratulations again on that score it's a really really great score and you worked really hard for it so that's awesome um much and so I guess going from here the last question would be what what is happening with you from here so you said you already finished your um primary application yes so right now I'm actually doing secondary applications I um submitted a primary with about 13 schools on it and I've done six secondaries so far and I'm still working on the other six if I had any piece of advice for that thank you I got earlier than June and submit your primary application in like June because I waited until July didn't get my secondaries back until August and with school it is a lot but at this point waiting on interviews back from schools and we'll be working on these secondaries and balancing school with that right now that's so exciting I know it's a stressful process but getting so close to actually starting being exciting right so you're on to the next exciting portion and once you get past the applications I guess that's when it all starts for real so that's so exciting right so congratulations again on making it through like the initial MCAT part of the process and good luck with like the applications and stuff going forward I think those were all the questions we have for you before we go do you have any final pieces of advice for students who might be listening to this and are struggling with their MCAT so I would just say don't be too hard on yourself because every single pre-med student has to go through this and you have to realize that you can only do what you can do so taking your time and blocking out three hours out of the day is better than nothing or if you can't do three just doing that one and a half in the morning before class is better than nothing um take a day off every single week and it doesn't have to be the same day you can mix it up but plan stuff for yourself because you can start to isolate yourself and that's just so unhealthy you want to maintain a healthy social life while you're going through this or even if you're introverted a self-care day you know because at the end of the day like it's more about you than this score like it doesn't define you and you can always take it again if you need to but you probably won't have to if you take your care of yourself through the long run of it yeah well said well thank you so much Stephanie for your time and for walking us through your journey we really really appreciate it thank you so much good luck y'all yeah um good luck and thanks for listening you guys happy studying everyone this is monica again and before you go i just want to remind you that if you're not receiving our daily free mcat strategy and success story emails yet definitely be sure to sign up for those at mcatmastery.net slash free course in addition to that if you feel like you might need personalized help with the exam and would like to have an mcat mentor look at your situation and help you identify exactly what's holding your score back you can look into that too at mcatmastery.net slash mentors and lastly and most importantly we just want you guys to know that you have what it takes to succeed on this exam we know the mcat is intimidating and when you get a score that's lower than you expected on a practice or on the real thing it's so easy to feel discouraged or frustrated or even hopeless about the exam we get it a lot of us have been there so we want to give you the guidance that we wish we'd had when we were in your shoes and that's what these interviews are for that's what our emails are for we want you guys to be able to feel confident again and most importantly be able to see that med school mission is possible and it's not out of your reach at all so thanks again for listening and remember that every top score every med student and every doctor made it through this journey so you can do it too you guys got this