About a year ago now, I was beginning to study for the MCAT exam. It wasn’t scheduled until May 13th, 2023. Every pre-med student understands the importance of the MCAT and has heard intimidating stories from peers. That is why I wanted to take a moment to talk about how I managed my mental health while studying for the exam.
At the start of my third year at ASU, I understood that I would have to take the MCAT in the near future. I was unaware of how difficult it would be for me as I did not understand what goes into preparing for the MCAT. With friends, I would always joke about getting a 528, a perfect score.
When I decided to take my first practice exam, in late December 2022, I scored a 492. I began to question whether I had it in me to score high enough to get into medical school. I did my best to ignore these doubts and tried to push them away from reach. Around a month or two later, I took another practice exam, and my score was practically the same at 493. I was in shock. These doubts came rushing back and I grew frustrated at myself. I thought something was wrong with me and that I wasn’t smart enough to do well on it. Study sessions slowly became even more exhausting as I felt high levels of anxiety. I was constantly convincing myself that I was running out of time to see improvement in my score.
After my second practice exam, I did not know what to do. I kept approaching my studies with hopelessness. I found myself procrastinating to avoid studying because of the anxiety that I associated with studying. At times, it felt like I wouldn’t become a doctor.
Around this time, I started looking at different ways to prepare for the MCAT and to manage my anxiety and stress. I learned about MCAT Mastery now known as Medlife Mastery, which offers many free resources for students. Here, I found a free email list where you receive daily emails on MCAT success stories, divulging their secrets and advice for preparing and studying. Many of these stories were from other students who were in a similar spot where they were far from their MCAT score goal, but in the end, they were able to turn it around. In these emails, they also would explain what they did to improve their scores. I began to implement some of their strategies, and they did help me feel more confident in my studying habits. What helped me the most was that I was able to cultivate confidence and belief in myself. That is exactly what I needed at the time, just this reminder that it is possible to improve my score.
Another strategy I took was journaling. There was a journaling prompt that I kept coming back to. I asked myself questions like: What have I liked about the pre-med journey so far? What am I worried about? Why do I want to become a physician? How will it feel when I am finally a doctor? At times, I answered in bullet points, and other times I wrote paragraphs.
When looking back through my journal entries during this time. I can tell that journaling helped orient and motivate me. I was able to express the impact I want to have as a doctor and why this matters to me. I think this was extremely important to me as it helped me look past the urgency of the MCAT by making me look at my entire time as a pre-med student. In a different blog, I go more in-depth into journaling. If journaling sounded like something you would like to explore a bit more, take a look at my Introduction to Journaling blog.
One of the most important things you can do while studying for the MCAT is to ask for help. It can quickly become isolating as you may study on your own like in my case, I did not know many people who had taken the MCAT or were taking the MCAT alongside you. With the people I did know who had taken the MCAT, I found myself asking for help whether it was on MCAT content, study tips, or about the experience. I found that they had similar experiences where they may have felt exhausted, anxious, or lost in the process. Having those conversations provided a sense of community and support for each other that I found necessary at times. On top of this, your peers have a unique perspective about studying for the MCAT that helped me.
After taking the MCAT, I felt exhausted (obviously), but I also a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Having to wait a month for my score filled me with a lot of anxiety, but also excitement. I am happy with the score I received and how I performed on the exam.
The stress while studying for the MCAT can be overwhelming and exhausting. There are plenty of resources including your peers, pre-med clubs on Sun Devil Sync, or pre-health advising. If you are feeling like nothing is helping to reduce the stress, ASU has plenty of resources available to students which you can learn more about here.
I also wanted to say if you are studying or planning to take the MCAT, Good Luck! You are more than capable of doing well on the exam, it just takes a whole lot of dedication and time
ASU Alumni, Neuroscience and Psychology Major
Robert Carbajal