my experience to getting a 520 (no glue no borax NO ANKI)
Hey y'all I made a post earlier today about my mcat strategies and got some requests for my whole study plan so I am detailing that below month by month. I also read that wack message from JW posted by someone earlier so I will also be listing fun things I did each month to show everyone the mcat doesn't have to suck the joy out of your life. I am super grateful that my parents support me financially so I was only working about 32 hours every week the whole time.
June 2025 - graduated from college, decided to start studying in June, enjoyed my life
July and August 2025 - downloaded the Kaplan mcat books online for free (annas archive) tried to start an official "content review" phase where you do 2 full chapters each day until you finish all the books. This went horribly I did not learn ANYTHING.
picked roses; visited my older sister for a week; went to a 3 day music festival; went on a 3 day trip to Vegas and saw Zedd :o)
September 2025 - realized I was getting nowhere. Started my 3x a week EMT class and began working as an MA in addition to my existing scribe job. finished my idiotic "content review" phase and started to do about 25 uMama questions a day. as you can see I was terrified to take a practice FL so didn't until October 10th.
dad's birthday, sleepovers
October 2025 - just a bunch of ineffective studying with uDumbo but not reviewing my answers but I'll let it slide since I was working a lot and doing well in my EMT class.
pumpkin patch date with friends, Diwali, halloween, beach trip
November 2025 - the ineffective studying continues. listen I was out of my home at 7 AM and usually wouldn't return until 10 most days this month ok.
movies, went to the city with family, Friendsgiving, EMT friend hang outs
December 2025 - realized I was not studying smart. I had never actually sat down and learned the biochem pathways nor a lot of physics concepts since I was busy with EMT school. Got an A in my EMT class and successfully passed the NREMT! Decided to rework my study schedule and planned to not study at all on days I was working as an MA or scribe and dedicate Fridays to practice FLs.
obsessed with Heated Rivalry, volunteered a lot, New Years party, office outings, EMT grad
January 2026 - With EMT school done I started content review phase #2, filling gaps in biology, gen chem, and organic chem by reading PR books and taking notes on my ipad. Realized that I didn't know a lot of the biology on the mcat as my degree was in molecular biology. So I didn't actually know about the digestive system and stuff like that. My EMT instructor was amazing so completing EMT training did help significantly with understanding things like respiration, CV system etc. 15-30 uBanana daily depending on how motivated I was. January 2nd onwards, I basically took a FL every Friday until test day.
This month I also started doing brain dumps of biochem/biology/physics formulas anything like that whenever I had like 5-10 min at work or while watching shit tv.
sleepovers, office outings, bff bday weekend, planned sister's bday cake
February 2026 - this was a serious month. used uGlobe pretty randomly in terms of topics for the day, just focused on doing as many questions and careful review as possible. did all questions tutored and untimed. Realized I didn't know a bunch of psych concepts and used the 86 page doc to identify these and learn them. Ok this is really crazy to admit but I did not take psych in college and relied on my AP psych knowledge to carry me. I did not do the Psych (or Cars) questions either, hence my huge psych content gap. UdaBaby done by Feb end and with content gaps filled I could start learning some low yield topics (things like the shuttles connecting biochem pathways)
also started working on app cycle stuff like personal statement and letter request emails
dimsum, tried innout protein style for the first time, friend sleepovers, movie
March 2026 - I did 30 AAMC section bank questions every day and then did a very careful review of each question. Learned each question forward and backwards including terms in the incorrect answer choices. Stopped being stubborn and finally learned the different sociology theories and stopped relying on vibes to pick the answer. See my score jump after I took time to thoroughly review for a second time the first three aamc Fls I took.
starting this month every couple days I would also regurgitate physics and gen chem formulas via my brain dump method any time I had 5-10 min.
coffee and poke, friend sleepovers, mall trip, movie
April 2026 - In the last 10 days I identified a list of low yield topics to learn. This is your time to do a free point grab and learn any random low yield factoids you have been avoiding because they are "low yield". this should be relatively low pressure.
day prior to exam: touched grass. ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. picked my test day outfit and packed my lunch, ID, and personal items. went to bed at a reasonable time. did a brain dump on the following high yield topics with my mom and wrapped it up by 5 PM
all physics and gen chem formulas, glycolysis, gluconeo, glycogenesis + lysis, FAS, Beta ox, Krebs, TCA, and ETC, reviews of the muscular, neph, endocrine, immune, eye and ear, lung, heart, and digestive system, math (sin/cos/log values and the SI prefixes), amino acids, psych/soc 50/50 terms and anything else I was freaking out about
I did not do anything too crazy for fun in April, prior to my exam but definitely celebrated well afterwards with my friends and family ❤️
Disclaimer and final thoughts: As always, take all advice on the internet with a grain of salt. If you have take one thing from this post it is: do not freak out if you have a 3 point fluctuation this way or that way. do not freak out if you get off your study schedule. do not put too much pressure on even having a study schedule or doing the exact same thing every day like Patrick Bateman or something. It's just an exam and you are an amazing student who has aced many exams in the past so there is no special secret way to study. Your aim is to learn the content for the mcat before the mcat, so just do that in any way you can!
If you read allat u the real mcat.
See below my real exam score and practice FL progression.
| Full Length | Date | C/P | CARS | B/B | P/S | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diagnostic | 7/5/25 | 122 | 126 | 123 | 129 | 500 |
| Kaplan Free FL | 7/26/25 | 126 | 130 | 125 | 124 | 505 |
| BP 1 | 10/11/25 | 125 | 128 | 128 | 129 | 510 |
| BP 2 | 1/2/26 | 126 | 124 | 127 | 129 | 506 |
| BP 3 | 1/18/26 | 127 | 125 | 127 | 127 | 506 |
| BP 4 | 1/23/26 | 127 | 127 | 129 | 128 | 511 |
| BP 5 | 1/30/2026 | 128 | 127 | 129 | 129 | 513 |
| BP 6 | 2/6/26 | 128 | 126 | 128 | 127 | 509 |
| AAMC 1 (Free) | 2/13/26 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 128 | 512 |
| 43 | 51 | 49 | 49 | |||
| unscored | 2/20/26 | 127 | 132 | 128 | 128 | 515 |
| AAMC 2 | 2/27/26 | 127 | 130 | 130 | 125 | 512 |
| AAMC 3 | 3/6/26 | 129 | 129 | 129 | 128 | 515 |
| AAMC 4 | 3/13/26 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 518 |
| AAMC 5 | 3/27/26 | 131 | 128 | 131 | 132 | 522 |
| AAMC 6 | 4/1/26 | 129 | 128 | 132 | 130 | 519 |