u/joinmaren

Last summer I stayed home on the 4th to study while everyone I knew was out. I want to say it was some disciplined hero move, but I barely retained anything that day. If you stay home to work, all you're really going to be thinking about is what you're missing.

So for anyone who needs to hear it: take tomorrow off. The MCAT matters, it may be one of the most important tests of your life, but one day is not what decides it.

The guilt runs both ways. Grind all day half focused and you retain almost nothing. Take the day off and spiral about it at 10pm and you never actually rested either.

The middle ground: wake up early, knock out some Anki cards or a light review block, then close the laptop and go to the pool party or whatever. Be all the way there. Your mental health is part of your prep, not a break from it.

If you don't know how to fit rest days into your schedule without panicking, drop your test date and your resources and I'll help you map it out. Learning to schedule rest was the hardest part of my prep.

Last summer I stayed home on the 4th to study while everyone I knew was out. I want to say it was some disciplined hero move, but I barely retained anything that day. If you stay home to work, all you're really going to be thinking about is what you're missing.

So for anyone who needs to hear it: take tomorrow off. The MCAT matters, it may be one of the most important tests of your life, but one day is not what decides it.

The guilt runs both ways. Grind all day half focused and you retain almost nothing. Take the day off and spiral about it at 10pm and you never actually rested either.

The middle ground: wake up early, knock out some Anki cards or a light review block, then close the laptop and go to the pool party or whatever. Be all the way there. Your mental health is part of your prep, not a break from it.

If you don't know how to fit rest days into your schedule without panicking, drop your test date and your resources and I'll help you map it out. Learning to schedule rest was the hardest part of my prep.

When I started using Anki I made cards for facts. Lots of random stuff I’d see once and probably never again. It felt like progress but it didn’t really move anything.

I shifted to making a card only when it answered why I missed a question. Did I misread a graph. Did I mix up two amino acids. Did I not actually know what competitive inhibition changes versus what it leaves alone.

Those cards kept coming back in a useful way because they lined up with patterns in how I think, not isolated facts. The plain content cards I’d spent a lot of time on didn’t do much for me.

I still don’t know where the line is though. Some content does need to be memorized cold, and I’m not sure how much of a deck should be facts versus mistake cards.

For people who scored well, what’s your split? Mostly content, mostly error patterns, or some mix?

Everyone says the most important part of MCAT studying is reviewing your wrong questions. I do think they’re right. The problem is nobody tells you what “reviewing” actually means.

I always read the explanation and if it made sense I moved on and maybe added an Anki card. But I’d miss the same type of question a week later.

What finally worked was a rule: I wasn’t allowed to move on from a missed question until I could teach it to someone else.

That meant writing out why I picked the wrong answer, why the right one was right, why each other choice was wrong, and what clue I should have caught. If it was a calculation or a recurring style, I’d do similar problems until I could solve them without looking anything up. Or sometimes just retrying the same problem I got wrong was enough.

It takes way longer than reading an explanation. It also stopped me from making the same mistakes over and over. Looking back, that did more for my score than anything else and I didn’t figure it out until the end.

How does everyone else review missed questions?

Pretty much title...People warned me application season was expensive, and my undergrad med terminology class actually covered how pricey grad school is, so I knew what I was walking into. I spent my whole senior year working to save around $4,000 specifically for this. I genuinely thought that would be plenty.

Unfortunately this is the reality of the costs:

-Primaries: a little over $1,200 (I applied to around 23 schools)

-Secondaries: looking at another $2,000 to $2,500

-And I just realized I still have to take CASPer and/or PREview, which I haven't done yet, so those fees stack on top

Basically, the $4k I spent a year saving is almost spoken for before I have gotten a single secondary back.

And that is on top of normal life. I am working several jobs, doing volunteering and shadowing, and I just started paying my student loans, so most of what I make goes to rent, food, and bills. There isn't much left to absorb a surprise fee or another score report.

To be upfront about my situation: I am fortunate that my parents now make a good living, but I no longer get any financial support from them. The tricky part is that the Fee Assistance Program goes off parental income, so I don't qualify, even though none of that income actually reaches me. On paper I look fine, and in reality I am covering every cent of this on my own. First world problem, I know, and I am grateful to even be in this position, but it does sting a little.

I am not posting this to complain. I know it pays off eventually, and the cost of NOT getting in is far higher than the cost of applying. I am in it and I will find the money.

I am mostly looking for guidance from people who have been through it. How did you actually manage these costs? Did you put it on credit cards, take Grad PLUS or private loans, pick up extra shifts, something else entirely? I am trying to find the smartest way through this season without just grinding myself into the ground working more hours. Part of me is considering picking up night CNA shifts again, but I would love to hear what actually worked for you.

Pretty much title...People warned me application season was expensive, and my undergrad med terminology class actually covered how pricey grad school is, so I knew what I was walking into. I spent my whole senior year working to save around $4,000 specifically for this. I genuinely thought that would be plenty.

Unfortunately this is the reality of the costs:

-Primaries: a little over $1,200 (I applied to around 23 schools)

-Secondaries: looking at another $2,000 to $2,500

-And I just realized I still have to take CASPer and/or PREview, which I haven't done yet, so those fees stack on top

Basically, the $4k I spent a year saving is almost spoken for before I have gotten a single secondary back.

And that is on top of normal life. I am working several jobs, doing volunteering and shadowing, and I just started paying my student loans, so most of what I make goes to rent, food, and bills. There isn't much left to absorb a surprise fee or another score report.

To be upfront about my situation: I am fortunate that my parents now make a good living, but I no longer get any financial support from them. The tricky part is that the Fee Assistance Program goes off parental income, so I don't qualify, even though none of that income actually reaches me. On paper I look fine, and in reality I am covering every cent of this on my own. First world problem, I know, and I am grateful to even be in this position, but it does sting a little.

I am not posting this to complain. I know it pays off eventually, and the cost of NOT getting in is far higher than the cost of applying. I am in it and I will find the money.

I am mostly looking for guidance from people who have been through it. How did you actually manage these costs? Did you put it on credit cards, take Grad PLUS or private loans, pick up extra shifts, something else entirely? I am trying to find the smartest way through this season without just grinding myself into the ground working more hours. Part of me is considering picking up night CNA shifts again, but I would love to hear what actually worked for you.

And if you are earlier in the process I urge you to save way more than people tell you to. It is not just the primary. It is secondaries times every school, MCAT, MCAT prep, CASPer, PREview, score reports, transcripts, and interview travel later. Save for all of it now.

I’ve heard from several friends recently something like, “i’m doing 100+ questions a day and my score isn’t moving.”

I feel bad bc I remember that feeling

the thing that finally moved my score wasn’t doing more questions. it was treating every missed question like a clue about my brain, not just a fact i didn’t know.

for context, i studied about 6 months while working 50 to 60 hour weeks, so i straight up didn’t have time to grind endless q-banks. i had way fewer resources than most people. i ended up scoring a 512, with a 98th percentile CARS score. the biggest difference was getting obsessive about reviewing my mistakes instead of collecting more questions.

here’s exactly what i did:

for every question i got wrong (and every question i got right but guessed on), i wrote down one thing: why did i actually miss it? not the topic. the reason.

i used five buckets:

content gap: i didn’t know the concept.

misread: i knew the material but missed a word, answered a different question than the one being asked, or blew past an “EXCEPT.”

reasoning error: i got it down to two answers and convinced myself to pick the wrong one.

trap answer: i fell for the tempting distractor.

timing: i would’ve gotten it with another 20 seconds, but i rushed.

once a week i’d tally them up. that’s where the magic happened. my misses weren’t random. a huge chunk of mine were misreads and trap answers. that’s not a content problem. i could’ve done another thousand questions and probably would’ve kept making the same mistakes because i wasn’t fixing the actual issue.

once i realized that, i started slowing down on the last line of every stem and asking myself, “what are they actually asking?” that alone eliminated a ton of mistakes.

each bucket has a different fix.

content gaps become flashcards.

misreads become a process change.

reasoning errors mean figuring out exactly
where your logic broke.

trap answers mean studying why the wrong answer looked so convincing.

timing means practicing pacing, not memorizing more content.

if you only change one thing this summer, make it this. stop measuring your studying by questions completed and start measuring it by whether the reasons you’re missing questions are changing over time.
your full-length score is a lagging indicator. the pattern behind your mistakes changes first.

i eventually built an entire review system around this because updating it by hand got old, but i still have the original blank tracker if people want it. happy to share it if there’s interest.

what’s everyone’s biggest miss bucket? mine was definitely misreads and trap answers.

this sub will genuinely make you feel insane lol. So many 520s while some of us are fighting for our lives to break 500. No hate to those that are capable of the 520s, but here's a more average score journey:

my very first practice test (the diagnostic) was a 496. and then i was stuck under 500 on my practice tests for MONTHS. just watching everyone post their glow up scores while i felt stuck and kinda cooked ngl.

i studied may to august 2025 for my first real attempt. like 3 weeks before test day my practice scores finally climbed from 500 to 507, and a 507 is exactly what i got on the actual test

wasn't happy with it so i retook. studied again january to may 2026, was averaging 510 on my full lengths, and walked out with a 512 on the real thing.

so yeah. a 496 diagnostic to a 512, across two attempts and basically a year of on and off grinding. no 5 week miracle, no natural 515.

posting this bc the 520 highlight reel lowkey does damage. it makes normal progress feel like failure. most of us are not 99th percentile on day one, most of us grind for months just to move 10-15 points, and that is completely normal.

if you're stuck under 500 rn you're not behind and you're not stupid, you're just in the part nobody posts about.

anyone else wanna drop a normal, non-flex score journey? feel like people need to see more of them 🙏

it's late june, everyone's deep in the summer slump, and the default advice is always "just lock in." honestly i think that's how people fully fall off.

when i was studying i was working full time, so i rarely could do the 12 hour study days people post about. on a good day i had maybe 2-3 focused hours. i used to feel so behind because of it. turns out it was kind of a blessing. i was forced to do short, actually focused sessions and then real rest, instead of grinding out 8 mediocre hours and hating my life.

what i learned the hard way: consistency beats intensity every time. 3 locked-in hours a day for months will smoke 8 exhausted hours that make you dread waking up.

and honestly the biggest shift wasn't even about studying. once i started actually making time to work out, sleep a real amount, cook decent food, and just go outside and touch grass, my whole mindset changed. i was happier and weirdly way more focused when i did sit down to study. running myself into the ground did the opposite, i was miserable and retained nothing.

so if you're fried right now, you probably don't need to study more. you need to take care of yourself and protect your ability to keep showing up.

anyway how's everyone actually handling the burnout? are you taking real breaks or grinding yourself into the ground?

I never had the "study all day" summer. I was working 40+ hours a week and carrying a full class schedule the entire time I prepped. That meant I had maybe a couple hours a day, not eight, so I had to be ruthless about what I actually spent time on.

Looking back, that constraint might be the thing that helped me most. I couldn't afford to chase every resource people recommend, so I just didn't.

The resources that got me a 512:

Content: honestly mostly free YouTube videos and the MilesDown review sheets. I started with a $30 Princeton Review workbook off Amazon, but a lot of my actual content learning came from just doing practice questions and reviewing what I missed. Also 300 page doc for psych/soc

Anki: the AnKing deck, but I only got through about half of it. The rest of my Anki time went to making my own cards from questions I actually missed. I added about 3,000 cards from practice questions

Practice: Princeton questions early, then AAMC questions, plus every AAMC practice test. Some UWorld mixed in.

That's the whole thing. No five-resource content phase, no money I didn't have. When your time is that limited, you stop collecting resources and actually study because you literally can't afford not to.

The biggest lesson for me: doing a smaller amount and actually reviewing it beats hoarding resources you'll never finish. Honestly the cards I made from my own misses taught me more than the half of AnKing I rushed through.

If you're working or in class full time and feel behind the people studying full days, you're not. You're just forced to be efficient, and that's more of an advantage than it feels like.

Anyone else doing this while working or in school full time? How are you fitting it in?

Disclaimer: I do not have a perfect CARS score, but I struggled initially, so these are some of the biggest things I did to improve.

First, read. Anything and everything, as much as you possibly can. As you read, make sure you're searching for the meaning, tone, author's position, etc., even with random things. You'll start to notice nuances and get better at understanding literature.

Second, and probably most important, search for the main idea as you're reading the passages. A main idea is a one sentence summary of the whole point the author wrote the passage. The author's emotions, opinions, and the arguments used all build to one main idea. Once you finish the passage, answer the question almost entirely from the main idea (unless it's referring specifically back to the passage). This increases accuracy and also improves timing.

Third, practice AAMC material. This idea is beaten over the head on this subreddit because it is so important. Practice writing out a main idea, understanding the passage, and answering as you would during the test.

One more big one: never answer from your own outside knowledge. CARS does not care what's actually true in real life, only what the passage says. So many wrong answers are technically "correct" in reality but not supported by the passage. Always make sure your answer comes from what the author wrote, not from what you already know.

Some other notable tips: try to act like you're super interested in the topic, set 10 minutes for each passage give or take (try to finish reading in 5-6), and do so many passages that you start seeing the same question patterns over and over until it becomes obvious (this will only happen if you have a proper system to REALLY review the questions and passages).

And lastly, don't stress. Try to change your perspective. This isn't a horrible attack on your mental being. Rather, it's a break from all the science and an opportunity to expand your knowledge on random topics. It's surprising how often I can join a conversation because I read a random Jack Westin CARS passage about it.

this comes up every score release but i never see people actually talk about it.

everyone treats retaking like the only question is "is my score good enough." but nobody says the quiet part: it's also a timing gamble, and once the cycle's moving, waiting has a real cost.

where the timing actually bites:

• apps start getting sent to schools in late june, and it's rolling
• rolling means every week you're not complete = fewer interview slots left
• schools don't even review you until your score is in, so submitting early with no score doesn't buy the head start people think it does

so here's the trap. say your score comes back borderline. if you retake in august, the new score doesn't land til september, and now you're "complete" in september when a chunk of seats are already gone. a higher score might not be worth showing up that late.

then there's the money. good summer dates fill fast, so some people register a backup retake date as insurance before they've even seen their score. but bailing isn't free:

• cancel 30+ days out: you eat ~$180
• cancel later: you lose the whole $355
• rescheduling runs ~$55 to ~$200 depending on timing

so you're basically paying a few hundred bucks for an option you might not even use.

idk man. feels like the real question isn't "should i retake," it's "is a higher score worth applying later, and is holding a seat worth the cost."

how are you all playing it? do you hold a backup date before you even see your score, or just wait for the number? and if you've retaken before, did landing later in the cycle actually hurt you, or was the higher score worth it?

Scores drop the 9th and I genuinely feel sick about it. I've felt a hole in my stomach since I walked out of that pearson testing center

Anyways. How are we actually feeling? Did we use this past month to build some healthy routines and a halfway solid mindset? Or have we been rotting away, waiting to have our worth decided by a 3 digit number?

If you're testing next weekend, this is the week a lot of people quietly sabotage themselves. Here's the honest version of what the last 7 days are actually for.

Your score is mostly set by now. The last week doesn't build new knowledge, it protects the knowledge you already have and sharpens how you execute on test day. Once you accept that, the right moves get obvious.

What actually helps:

• Review your own mistakes, not new material. Go back through the full lengths you already took and re-derive why the right answer is right. You're reinforcing patterns, not learning facts.
• Do a couple of timed passages a day to stay in rhythm, especially CARS. Rhythm matters more than volume this week.
• Lock your test-day logistics now. Center, snacks, break plan, timing per section. Removing unknowns is worth points.
• Taper. Your last full length should be 4 to 5 days out, not the day before. You rest before a race.

What just burns you out:

• Cramming content you've never seen. If you don't know it by now, memorizing it the week of costs more focus than it gives back.
• Taking a full length 1 to 2 days before. You learn nothing and walk in depleted.
• Scrolling other people's scores. Pure anxiety, zero information about you.

The real skill in the last week is triage. Knowing the two or three things worth touching and ignoring the other forty. If you're not sure what yours are, pull up your last two full lengths and find the mistakes that repeat. Those, and only those.

Good luck to everyone testing next weekend. What's your taper plan looking like?

It's that time of year where the plateau posts start showing up, so here's the thing that actually moved my score when nothing else did.

For weeks I did the obvious loop. Take a full length, feel bad, watch some videos on the stuff I missed, take another one, repeat. My score just sat in the same 3 point band the whole time. I kept telling myself it was content gaps. It mostly wasn't. I had a review problem.

Here's what finally clicked for me. More practice doesn't move a plateau. Practice just makes data. Your score moves when you actually look at that data and change something because of it. If you're taking FLs but reviewing them the same shallow way every time, you're just making more data and then ignoring it.

So I stopped going through my misses one by one in a vacuum and started sorting every single one into one of three buckets:

1. Content gap. I genuinely didn't know the fact or concept. Fix is obvious: relearn it, then do 15 to 20 questions on just that topic.
2. Reasoning error. I knew the content but used it wrong. Fell for the trap answer, overthought it, made an inference the passage didn't actually support.
3. Execution error. Nothing to do with knowing the material. Misread the stem, rushed, ran out of time, talked myself out of a right answer.

The reason this matters so much is that each bucket has a totally different fix, and most of us dump all our energy into bucket 1 when the real problem is buckets 2 and 3. You cannot fix a misreading habit by watching another Khan Academy video.

What I actually did after each FL:

I logged every miss in a basic spreadsheet. Topic, which bucket, and one sentence on why I actually got it wrong. Not "careless," the specific thing. "Picked the extreme answer." "Didn't catch the except in the stem."

Then after 2 or 3 FLs I looked for the pattern. Not 40 random mistakes. Usually it was like 3 or 4 things over and over. I keep choosing the strongest worded answer in P/S. I keep misreading least likely and except questions. I keep rushing the last C/P passage and giving away points.

Then I turned each pattern into a rule I could actually run on test day. Example, my habit of picking the most extreme answer became "in P/S, when two answers are close, the moderate one is usually right, check the extreme one against the passage before you pick it." That's not content. That's a decision I can repeat under pressure.

Then I scheduled the fix like it was homework. Content gaps got targeted question sets. The reasoning and execution patterns got written on a sticky note I reread before every practice block until the habit actually changed.

The thing that unlocked it for me was realizing my wrong answers weren't a list of facts to go memorize. They were a map of how I think when I'm stressed and rushed. Once I could name the 3 or 4 ways I kept beating myself, I could finally stop doing them. That's what broke the plateau. Not more content.

Couple of honest caveats. This assumes you've already built a base. If you're missing stuff because you truly haven't learned it yet, you're not plateaued, you're still in the content phase, so keep building. And give a pattern a few FLs before you trust it. One bad section can be a fluke. The same mistake three exams in a row is a system.

If you're deep in the summer grind and stuck right now, try this for your next two full lengths. Don't change how much you study, change how you review. Sort the misses, find the pattern, write the rule, schedule the fix.

Curious what other people found once they actually started tracking. What's the recurring mistake that was quietly costing you points?

Hi Maren community,

Earlier today our Anki connection was down (couldn't read decks or push flashcards). It's fixed and live now.

If you haven't used it: connect Anki and Maren shows your deck health (due, mature, leeches) on your dashboard, and pushes flashcards built from your missed questions straight into your decks.

Thanks to everyone who flagged the bug today. You all are the ones that make the Maren community great!

https://preview.redd.it/aajzy38ybs4h1.png?width=1938&format=png&auto=webp&s=b93d959c8d2cd9a5895389054ac50477a781aa1f

Both times I took the test, I ran out of time or nearly ran out of time before finishing all of my resources. Am I just terrible with time management or has this happened to other people? How do you decide what to prioritize when you realize you won’t finish everything? Like do you focus on AAMC, Uplanet, weak sections, reviewing missed questions, Anki, content gaps, etc.?

Not mad because it just means I spent more time reviewing resources so I was learning but still.

Hey everyone,

I’m the founder of Maren (joinmaren.com), an MCAT prep website built to help students figure out what to study next instead of getting stuck trying to piece everything together alone.

I’m giving away 10 free 3-month Maren Max subscriptions ($180 value) to people who are actively preparing for the MCAT and willing to actually use the website.

No catch. I just want more students using Maren during real prep so I can learn what’s helping, what’s confusing, and what needs to be better.

Maren is meant to help with things like:

-making a realistic and personalized study plan that you’ll actually be able to stick to
- figuring out what areas need the most work
- making prep feel less overwhelming
- getting clearer next steps instead of just “study more”
- turning practice results into a more focused plan

If you’re studying for the MCAT and want to try it, comment or message me and I’ll send over a code. I only have 10 to give out for now.

All I ask is that you use it honestly and send me any feedback you have, even if it’s critical. That’s actually the most helpful kind.

Good luck to everyone studying right now. I know this process can feel like a lot, and I’m hoping Maren can make it feel a little less scattered.