MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep 2024 is this Friday, October 26, 925 Eastern. I'm starting the day in my track, the pre-med track, planting the seed of your personal statement. We have three tracks going all day long and a couple hours of amazing exhibitors where you can learn more about their programs. Again, MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep, October 26, register for free. It's a virtual event and all the sessions will be up after. So even if you can't make it live, go register and get access to the sessions. Go to MappedCon.com right now, register. That's M-A-P-P-D-C-O-N.com. If you're applying to medical school in 2022 to start medical school in 2023, join me Wednesday or Thursday, Wednesday night at 9.30 p.m. Eastern or Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern at premedworkshop.com. Go register today. I'm going to show you how to tell your story in your application. Again, that's premedworkshop.com. If you are applying to medical school in 2022, be there or be square. The Medical School HQ podcast, session number 59. Hello and welcome back to the Medical School HQ podcast. The podcast to learn how to excel as a premed student, learn what it takes to survive medical school, and turn your dreams of becoming a physician into reality. We're bringing you the most unbiased, honest, and accurate information available online today. Folks, my name is Ryan Gray, and as always, I'm excited to bring you another great episode of the Medical School HQ podcast. Today, I have an awesome guest who will hopefully teach you a ton about MCAT retakes. And some of you may be in the boat of needing to retake an MCAT. Some of you might not have taken the MCAT yet, but hopefully this information will put your nerves at ease and lessen some of that anxiety. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by the Academy at the Medical School HQ. We're an online membership site for helping you through the premed process. With live monthly video question and answer sessions, monthly live webinars covering everything from the MCAT to financial aid, you can't afford not to join. Start off your new year right by investing in your future and joining the Academy. Just go to jointheacademy.net to find out more. Let me introduce today's guest. His name is Brian Snedeker, and he is the academic director at Next Step Test Preparation. Brian is a former premed himself. He actually went to medical school for a couple years before having that epiphany that he really wasn't on the right track. And he took some time off and eventually started teaching and found his calling with teaching and educating the next round of physicians and lawyers and a lot of other students that have to take these standardized tests. That's where Brian found his calling. And Brian is going to talk to us today about MCAT retakes and what exactly it means to need to retake the MCAT, what exactly you as a student should be thinking about if you have to retake an MCAT, and trying to figure out where possibly you went wrong in studying for the first MCAT that you took. Obviously, the ultimate goal is to only take the MCAT once. The MCAT is such a beast that we only want to take it once, but there are situations where you're going to be forced to take it again. And so Brian and I talk all about that. We talk a lot about mindset. We talk a lot about what is next in your train of thought and where you should be going. So hopefully you're sitting down for this one and taking some notes. If you're out driving, that's okay. Stop by the show notes medical school hq.net/59 as an episode 59. And we'll have some show notes there and you can re-listen to the podcast. So let's get started. So Brian, thanks for joining us today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your path and what you're doing now. Okay, great. Well, you know, Ryan, of course, I'd like to start by thanking you for inviting me on to the show and thank med school hq for having me here today. My name is Brian. I'm the academic director of Next Step Test Prep and also the national director of our MCAT programs. I've been doing MCAT teaching and tutoring for over a dozen years now. I've personally taken the test a number of times, scored over 40 multiple times. So I come from a really deep background in the MCAT. As an undergrad, I was a pre-med like all your listeners are. And in fact, I got into med school here in my home state in New Jersey. I went for a couple of years, but med school ultimately really wasn't the right path for me and have been teaching ever since. And I love it. That's awesome. So you went to medical school, realized it wasn't for you and you left. Yeah, you know, it doesn't happen often. But there are those of us who realize that we have a different calling. So we follow that. Yeah. And that's okay. And I think that's an important lesson to take is even as a pre medical student, I think pre meds, once they start down that path, they think they have to finish it. But you don't have to. You're allowed to second guess yourself and go, you know what, maybe this isn't right for me. Let me take a little bit extra time to figure this out. So I don't waste money, waste time, and ultimately maybe take a spot in medical school for somebody else that is going to complete the path. Yeah. So it's good to know. So today we're going to talk about the MCAT and more specifically retaking the MCAT. And I think this is a question that a lot of pre med students have is, can you only take the MCAT once? What if I need to take it again? Is it really bad? Is it a red flag? I think this is a lot of anxiety for pre med students. And so I think talking to you and really ironing out some of these issues and discussions and questions that students have will help them along their way. Yeah. And Ryan, you hit it right on the head right there. You said anxiety, you know, that's one of the biggest things that students have to deal with when it comes to retaking the test. You know, I always tell students first, you got to recognize you're not alone, right? That up to 15% of folks retake the test a second time. A very small proportion, less than 1% will take it three or more times. So, you know, first, you're not going to alone. There are thousands and thousands of people out there retaking the MCAT. And when I talk to my own students, one of the first things I always say is, we've got to deal with the kind of anxiety around the question. You know, before you can even ask yourself, should I retake the MCAT, you want to get a little distance from your past score. Because that moment when you get the email and you open it up or you log into that AMC test history website and you see a score you are not happy with, that can just be really crushing for a lot of students. So, I would say, don't make the decision right away. You know, take a few days or even a couple of weeks, you know, talk to some folks, your parents, friends, pre-med advisor at your college, get a little bit of distance from that question and try to approach it in as rational a way as possible to decide if it makes sense for you rather than in a knee-jerk emotional way. Let me take a step back for a second. You said thousands of people are retaking the test. Do you know how many students are taking the MCAT every year? The exact number of MCAT test takers, of course, varies by year. It's in the tens of thousands. I don't have 2013s numbers in front of me because we're not quite at the end of 2013 yet, but it can run anywhere from about 50,000 people up to as much as 70 or even approaching 80,000 people. Obviously, it varies with things like the economy. It varies along the way. So, even 15% of those numbers, you're still talking about anywhere from as many as, you know, 6,000 to 8,000 people are retaking this test every year. Yeah. I think that was one of the things when I got my score back, and this was back, when did I take the MCAT? I took it in, I don't even remember, 2001, that when I got the score back, and I saw, if I'm remembering correctly, I saw the number of students that actually took the test, and I was amazed. It was around 60,000 even back then. And I'm thinking, well, there's only 26 or so thousand seats in medical school, and there's 60,000 people taking the MCAT. It was just amazing. The numbers there. One of the cruelest games of musical chairs you can play, where there's, you know, 10 chairs, but 35 people playing. Yeah. So it, obviously, a lot of people are taking the test, not everybody's getting into medical school. Go back and let's talk about, if I'm one of those students that opens up my score and goes, holy crap, that wasn't what I was hoping for. What are some of the things that you're seeing that are setting people up for this shock when they open up their score and aren't doing as well as they want? Well, one of the things just inherent to standardized testing is that it is almost impossible, you know, outside of some very extreme cases. It's almost impossible to know how you're doing while you're doing it. I mean, I've been doing the MCAT for a dozen years, and every time I take the test, I'm convinced, oh, I got a perfect 15 in verbal reasoning, you know, I could do this like it's my job, and I've never gotten a perfect 15 in verbal reasoning. So even us professionals can't tell how we're doing while we're doing it. So when you say that people can be kind of shocked by their score, some of that is just baked into the MCAT, right? You can never quite predict how you're doing. The most common mistake that leads to people being really surprised is simply not taking enough real practice tests, you know, that they'll take a prep class with one of these big companies and they'll take the practice tests written by the company, which can be good practice, but are not terribly good simulations. So when we talk to folks here next up, you know, one of the first questions we ask people is how many real official AAMC practice tests did you take the first time? And we hear people say, well, none or maybe one. So the shot comes from simply not having taken real official practice tests. And so not really having a good sense of where you're at relative to the real MCAT. So when you talk about taking a real test, what is your definition of actually taking a test? Now you already said take a real double AAMC one. But I hear a lot of students that will sit down for an hour, do whatever questions they can, get a Pavlunch, watch Grey's Anatomy, go back, do some more questions. Is that your definition of actually taking a test or would you define it differently? Yeah, so yeah, obviously that's not the way to go, right? I mean, we want to take a test. You want to simulate the real exam as much as possible. Fortunately, the interface at e-mcat.com, the official website for AAMC practice tests actually has a little radio button that you can click that says simulate a real exam. So it will deliver each of the three sections in order. And of course, on the real exam, you're only given a 10 minute break between sections. So to simulate the real test, you want to do exactly that, take your laptop, go to like a library, somewhere that's not your nice comfy bedroom, and take each of the sections in order under timed conditions, only take 10 minute breaks between them. For the physical sciences and chemistry section, don't use a calculator. You're not allowed to have a calculator in the real exam. In other words, try to mimic the real experience as much as possible. Okay. I think that's key is that the whole practice like you're going to play mentality to actually understand what the time crunch is and understand and be okay with not finishing a section, because it's almost more likely that you're not going to finish than finish. And so it's one of those things that you just have to be okay with and taking those timed practice tests under real situations is what's going to be helpful for you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our music teacher, when I was younger, who always used to say practice doesn't make perfect practice makes permanent. So if you're practicing the wrong way in a non test like way, you're only going to be reinforcing those bad habits. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. One other thing I want to bring up with practice tests, another thing that I see a lot and hear a lot is students that say, oh, I took five practice tests this week, just one a day, and I'm still not doing very well. What's going wrong? What is your thought on students that just take practice tests after practice tests after practice tests without looking back? Yeah, that's an excellent question. And this is one of those things where there's a lot of misleading information out there. You know, you can look on the internet, you can sort of talk to friends and the stories that people pass around are always the ridiculous ones, you know, because it's only fun to tell a story if it's kind of ridiculous. So, you know, they'll tell that story about that guy who took two full MCATs a day every day for two weeks and got a 43 on the exam or just something totally absurd like that. The reality is, of course, that taking a practice test itself does not raise your MCAT score. And that's the thing that's kind of shocking to a lot of people when I say that, like sitting down and taking AMC test 10 top to bottom will acclimatize you to the experience of the MCAT. It'll get simulated, get you to a sense of where you are right now. But taking the test doesn't actually raise your score. Taking the test is like, you know, taking a patient's temperature. It's just an assessment of where we're at now. And you don't cure the disease by taking the temperature over and over again. So the actual treatment is learning from the test. And that usually means for most students, they need to take anywhere from as little as three or four days to as much as two weeks in between each practice test to analyze it question by question and extract from the test what I call lessons learned. And I actually have my own students create what I call a lessons learned journal where they keep track. Because if you take a practice test and cannot then say, well, here's what I learned from that, then what was the point? You know, why take another test if you haven't learned anything? Yeah. And that's the key thing is actually understanding and figuring out, I call it course correction, knowing where you are right now, knowing where you need to be and getting back on track and correcting course. And I think you're doing the same thing with your lessons learned journal with, oh, I missed number 10. Why did I miss it? Did I not know the content? Did I miss read it? Was it just a stupid mistake? And that's the kind of information that students are just kind of glossing over. They go, Oh, I got a 28. Let me take another one and see if I do better. Oh, I got a 27. Let me take another one and see if I do better. And without ever analyzing what's going on. Yeah, exactly. And that the I always tell students it after you take a practice test, I don't want to hear your score. I want to hear what you learned from it. You know, tell me 10 things you did right that you'll do right again next time. And tell me 10 things you did wrong that you will not do again. Oh, I like that. I like that. Is your lessons learned journal a proprietary thing? Is it just kind of a generic thing that maybe we can put in the show notes for students to take a look at and see if maybe they can use something similar? Sure. I'd be more than happy to recommend it. I mean, in fact, I have a whole office hours thread set up on student Dr. Net that's, you know, free and public and open for everyone to read. And one of the big pieces of advice I talk about there is exactly that. Keep a journal of your lessons learned. Okay, cool. We'll have links to all that in the show notes, which students can get it. Medical school hq.net slash 59. So I'll breeze over the fact that you mentioned a student doctor network, but that's okay. We try not to use that three letter word here on the show. That's okay. That's all right. Let's continue on with the four letter word, the MCAT. Let's continue on. And the student opens up their score and goes, Oh crap, that wasn't very good. Where do they go from there? So then they, like I said, you take a deep breath or walk away from it, go do something fun. Don't think about the MCAT for a little while, you know, give it a few days or maybe even a couple of weeks, depending on your timeline. Now, when you come back to start thinking about retaking the test, there's a whole bunch of different factors to consider. But you know, one of the things I always like to encourage students to think about and the even students who come to us, potentially for tutoring, before we will even sign them up for a tutoring package, we want to say, look, let's think about kind of the reality of your situation. Are there alternatives and what are the risks? And the risk is big that you'll retake the MCAT and get either roughly the same score, you know, plus or minus one or two points, or you'll get even quite a bit lower score. And the numbers are pretty startling. According to the official data published by the AMC, students who start below a 26, a little more than half of them will get the same or lower score. And so what I mean by that is to really have an impact on your application, you want your second MCAT to be three points or more higher, just as a rule of thumb. So in order to get three points or more higher, less the minority of students, less than half will do that. The numbers get even worse if you started out okay. And if you started out saying that 27 to 32 region, but you're thinking, okay, well, I got a, you know, I got a 29, I really want to push up to a 33. If you're in that region, as many as two thirds of students will do worse or the same. And then finally, of course, for the students who start out really well, they get over a 32, it can be really hard at that point to improve your score. So as many as three quarters of students do the same or worse. And I just want to slap those students and say, why are you retaking the test? Yeah. Well, you know, you wouldn't think it, but every now and again, we get a call. I got a 33, but I want a 36. And you just, I have to go to wash you. I have to go to Harvard. Right, exactly. Oh, man. So, you know, to make sure you're not in that group, you know, in that two thirds group or that half group, of course, we want to talk about the things to do. But again, before we even get there, I always want to talk to students about, you know, kind of what are the options? You know, what is your score versus what your goals are? Can you just apply with what you've got and see how you did? A lot of students will sometimes, they wouldn't even occur to them. You know, they'll say, my goal was over a 30. I got a 28 or a 29. I'm not even going to apply. And although that puts them at a disadvantage, that's not a total game killer, depending on the rest of their application. And then, of course, you know, the other alternatives that I'm sure your listeners are familiar with going to either Caribbean school or maybe investigating whether D.O. school is a good choice. You know, schools where your MCAT score might be a little more in line. And then finally, I always encourage people to think about kind of, you know, why do you actually want to be a doctor? You know, what's the goal? Because if a goal is simply to get into health care, there's all sorts of other options out there. There are tens or if not hundreds of thousands of people leading very fulfilling, challenging, satisfying professional lives, but doing so without an MD, you know, physician's assistance, nurses, podiatrists, right, that an MD is not the only path to being a health care professional. Yeah. And for you, we haven't talked about this, but I know my listeners have when I talk to them, and this is their ultimate goal to be an MD, whatever their reasons are. I tell them, don't let a 21 on the MCAT dissuade you from becoming a doctor. If that's what you want to be, then then don't have a fallback plan because that will allow you to kind of slack off a little bit more, just full throttle or nothing at all. And but you mentioned something about if you're not scoring well enough, you can go to a D.O. school and D.O. schools inherently are a little bit easier as far as the MCAT score. But if you look at overall competitiveness now at D.O. schools are actually getting harder and harder to get into over allopathic schools. So that's kind of interesting little twist. Caribbean schools, definitely the for-profit schools in the Caribbean will take a little bit lesser MCAT score. But I think students need to realize that the MCAT score, and I think this will help the listeners out there, the MCAT score does not dictate how well you're going to do in medical school. It doesn't dictate how well you're going to do on your boards. And it obviously is not going to dictate how good of a doctor you're going to be in the future. I was talking to somebody recently at a conference and one of their students, it was a Caribbean school, one of their students got the highest score on the USMLE step one in the country, in the whole United States, not just the Caribbean. And it was a student that couldn't get, I want to say 19, it was either 19 or 21 on the MCAT, just could not score above that on the MCAT. And the reason was she wasn't a native English speaker. And the MCAT is a huge test on comprehending the questions that are being asked. So you need to know English pretty well. And when it comes to tests and medical school and tests and on the board, the USMLE step one, step two, step three, those tests are a lot different. So just for students out there struggling and ready to wave the white flag, if you do poorly on the MCAT, it's not a premonition of how you're going to do later. Yeah, the smartest person I have ever personally met, shaking hands with, was actually a girl I went to high school with, and we stayed in touch all through college and so on. And she was one of these people who could get a 4.3, like A+s without an iota of work, a person who could sit down and do the Sunday New York Times cross-repuzzle in ink and never make a mistake, just absolutely brilliant. And she, exactly that situation, just could not seem to get above kind of the low 20s on the MCAT, just it was not something that she could really get the knack for. And she ended up going to some extraordinarily prestigious PhD program in neuroscience. So not a person with any academic trouble at all, but the MCAT is just as a strange beast. And it's the hardest test a lot of our listeners and meds and pre-meds are ever going to face. Yeah. All right. So I wanted to give a little motivation for those out there, smacking their head. All right. So the student opens up their score. They see the 26. They've taken a little time. They've thought about it. They definitely want to go to medical school. What do they do now? Okay. So the first thing that I always tell students to do, and you'd think that this would be obvious, but it's sort of becoming increasingly less obvious, is call the medical schools. These people want to get their information from a quick Google search. The instinct that we have for information seeking is go to the internet rather than pick up the phone. But this is one of those cases where you need to get information straight from the horse's mouth, right? Call the medical schools you're interested, you know, ask to speak to someone in the admissions office and say, look, here's my situation. I got a 26. My, you know, very briefly, here's what's going on with the rest of my application. Get recommendations straight from the med schools. And in line with that, go to the pre-med or pre-health advisor or committee at your undergraduate school. There are excellent source of advice and are free. So, you know, call med schools, call your pre-health committee to figure out kind of exactly what's going on with your situation. Yeah. So listeners out there, no, not every medical school will want to talk to you or want to give you advice, but many of them out there will. Yeah. Yeah. I always tell people it's kind of surprising how much candor they will have when speaking with you. But right, you might get shut down at some schools, but, you know, I can't hurt to pick up the phone and call. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then so let's say you do that, right? I mean, you talked to your pre-health committee, you talked to some med schools, and then they say, yes, you absolutely have to retake the MCAT. And so there are certain factors to consider, right? I mean, the first is just the time and the resources, right? I always tell people, you don't, let's say you take the test and get a 26. You don't have 26 points stored in some sort of MCAT bank somewhere, right? The 26 is done, gone. And if you're going to reprep an aim for a 32, you have to earn all 32 of those points again. So reprepping is not necessarily easier a second time because you've already laid a foundation. In fact, I warn people that a lot of times retaking is even more work because now not only do you have to prep for that 32, you've got to overcome any bad habits that you might have developed the first time through. So I agree that the commitment is worth it. The payoff is worth it, right? I mean, that folks definitely, the pep talks really help, and we just want to go in with our eyes open and understand that it's going to be a pretty big, pretty daunting task to reprep. Yeah. And they're overcoming the negative kind of things that they set up for themselves when they got the 26, but they're also during the studying is probably going, this sucks. Why am I doing this again? All that just the bad attitude that during the whole time, which is hard to overcome as well, the psychology of it. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, my number one piece of advice when it comes to reprepping for the MCAT is actually my number one piece of advice for the first time you're prepped for the MCAT. And it's a direct outgrowth of what you were saying, right, that while studying the thought in their head is, Oh man, I hate this. I could be doing so much else with my summer, which is simple actually, and surprisingly simple, which is study groups. And I think when a lot of people hear that there's, it might be a little almost disappointing, like that's the number one piece of advice when it comes to the MCAT study groups. But the reality is that when it comes to success on the MCAT, and I personally have taught or tutored thousands of MCAT students over the years, I always say the two biggest factors, and I can tell right in the beginning, you know, how a student is going to end up going with this process, because the two biggest factors for success on this are number one attitude, and number two study groups, the kids who can keep an upbeat optimistic attitude and get themselves a really good study buddy, or maybe, you know, maybe three group of three, those are the students who get that social support that they need to really stick to it and ultimately overcome the challenge. What is it with study groups that you think make the big difference? Well, you know, when your listeners eventually get to med school, and because they're, they're savvy enough to be listening to med school HQ, we know they're going to get there, right? They're going to get into that MD program. One of the things that they hear right away in the beginning med school is this adage, see one, do one, teach one. So the idea being that to learn how to do something, you see someone else do it, then you do it yourself, and then teach it to someone else, and that's that third one, teach it that really helps you learn. And so when it comes to a study group, the key advantage of a study group is it lets you teach each other. You can teach your study buddy, they can teach you back, and that's one of the biggest kind of misperceptions people have about study groups. Because when you're in college, there's always that, well, I don't want to be stuck with that lazy kid. You know, I work really hard. I do all my homework. If I set up a study group, I would just be wasting time explaining obvious stuff to that lazy kid over there who spent all weekend getting high. So unfortunately, students inappropriately bring that attitude to the MCAT. The reality on the MCAT is you want to be working with someone who has a very different skill set than you, because the act of teaching them will solidify your knowledge better than anything else possibly can. Okay. Yeah. And I am a firm believer in teaching is the best way to learn. And so you want to go? In my mind, I'm thinking, who can I go get? There's not taking the MCAT. I just want to teach a random person. If you have a very patient parents, there you go. You can teach your parents or younger siblings or anybody else spouses, significant others. There you go. Yeah. You know, and that, you know, one of the things that often does generate success on the test is people who have experience working as TAs or like as a tutor resource. You know, if there's like an academic help center on their college campus, and they've been tutoring general chemistry, by the time the MCAT comes around, their gen chem is super sharp. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and when it comes to the study groups themselves, I always recommend trying to get three people together. One person who's the strongest in physics or physical sciences, one person who's the strongest in verbal, and one person who's the strongest in biological sciences. I mean, that's your dream team of a study group. Nice. All right. Yep. As a final point, I'll add the key thing that I hear often with study groups is people will say, yeah, but you know, I live in suburban Des Moines. You know, there aren't a whole lot of MCAT test takers out here. Not a knock on Des Moines. It's just, it can be hard to find folks, depending on where you are in the country. And I always encourage people, don't be limited by geography. Okay. You know, where it's the 21st century. So between Skype and an online free whiteboard, you can do with no expenses at all. You can run a phenomenally good study group. So, you know, check out Facebook, you know, your school's Facebook page or MCAT pages, check out the "He Who Shall Not Be Named" website. You know, chat with folks via Med School HQ, but use the internet as a tool to find the best study group for you. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Definitely. Skype is a wonderful thing. So. All right. So, let's talk about the moving forward. And a student comes to you and says, okay, I want to retake it. Here's what's going on. What are you doing with those students that magically makes them get that 32 plus whatever score that they want? Yep. So, the, of course, it's, I'd be nice if it was magic, right? If I had Harry Potter's wand, I would just wave it. But ultimately, it's going to be hard work for the student. And the trick is always, you know, doing the same thing is going to get you the same results, of course. So, you've got to figure out, what did I do this time? Now, what do I need to do differently? So, and we had already talked about practice tests, right? That's a real common mistake, not either not taking enough tests or not learning from them. So, in fact, I would say that's the most common, that the first thing a student needs to do is figure out what they're doing with their practice tests. And are they using them correctly? A very common concern with well-prepared students is, well, I've already taken the AMC's. You know, where do I go from here? I've already taken these exams. And I like to remind people that there's nothing wrong with retaking them depending on the timeline. So, retaking the same assessment, the education literature would call that the practice effect, where you reassess with the same assessment. And performance goes up, even though the underlying skill hasn't changed. But the education literature makes it pretty clear that the practice effect fades after about four months or so. So, if you're retaking the MCAT about four months later, or retaking a practice test on that timeline, then you should, in fact, be retaking the AMC tests. After that, of course, there's a whole host of resources out there between the various test prep companies that sell practice tests. So, you can always get your hands on those. Okay. And then the second thing is with books, right? I mean, everybody's got their MCAT books already. You know, I've got prints and exam crackers, Kaplan, gold standard Berkeley, whoever, there's all these MCAT books out there. And a lot of times when students call us after not doing well, they'll say, "Well, I already have, you know, book X. Shouldn't I be buying book Y and Z?" And I always like to caution, you know, medical students and pre-med students are very prone to an illness I call by another book, ITIS. You know, there's just constantly this need to buy more books, rather than simply use the books they already have. So, your med students would be familiar with, you know, if you already have the BRS pathology book, do I really need to buy high yield pathology? And the fact of the matter is that just using the books you have correctly will get you where you need to go. That's human psychology and everything. I'm a big photographer. And so, I always have that mentality of, "I need that better camera because that'll make me a better photographer." Whereas the camera that I have now is perfectly fine and I just need to learn to use it better and learn all the settings better. And it's always the, I heard something recently, the number one selling magazines for all like the outdoor magazines and the car and driver magazines, it's always the product issues. Like what's the 10 best new products of this season? Because people think that products will make them better at doing whatever it is. Yeah, exactly. I mean, to go back to that. Instead of investing time and learning. Yeah, yeah. To go back to my music teacher, he always used to say it's a poor musician who blames his instrument, right? You can't blame the books if things aren't going well, right? We've just got to work with. So, working with what you've got, right, the real trick there is that people seem to be afraid of repetition. You know, they don't want to feel like they're doing the same chapter over and over again. But when it comes to MCAT books, you can't treat them like a science textbook, where reading it through once is fine, you have a general recognition. You've got to treat an MCAT book more like your football playbook or a musical score, where you know it perfectly backwards and forwards. So typically, you know, the recommendation when it comes to books is you have to use that book the right way, take a multi pass approach, start by skimming the chapter, then read it again, but just study the diagrams, then read it again and read it slowly and carefully and take notes, just like a science textbook, then read it again and answer the questions, then put it away for two days. So all of that information has time to get encoded into your long term memory. Come back to it two days later and read to all the questions again. That repetition creates the mastery that's essential for MCAT retakers. Okay, that's interesting. I like that. And then, you know, of course, finally, once you've got yourself settled with materials, you know, you've got your books, you've got your practice tests, you feel like you kind of have a decent game plan going, then the question becomes what sort of outside help do I need? You know, do I need a class, do I need tutoring, something like that? So again, I always encourage people before slapping down any new money, take a look at the resources that you've already got. So a lot of the way a lot of the big test prep companies will work is they'll offer some sort of free repeat or, you know, free access to something for students who are retaking the exam. And of course, if you have access to that, take advantage of it. Sometimes those negative emotions that we've talked about can get in the way, you know, let's say you had a really bad experience the first time. So you don't want to go back to that same company. But you got to set that aside and take what the company is offering you. So if you have a free repeat of that Princeton Review Course, you should make use of it. Having said that, if you took a course and the teacher wasn't so good, then shop around, you know, go sit in on a bunch of different classes until you find a teacher you like. Yeah. And that was huge with my experience with taking Kaplan at University of Florida was was my teacher came in. He's like, I scored a 42. Let's go over the material. Oh, you should know this. You should know this. You should know this. And he didn't teach us anything because he assumed we should know it. And that's hard. And I've discussed it with Chris from the Princeton Review back in session 16. And also with his name, I can't think of his name off top of my head, the the Kaplan guy, back in session 35. We discussed it. And it's hard. And it's hard for these test prep companies. And probably for next step as well, getting tutors and getting instructors, you initially want to screen them based on what they scored on the MCAP. But that doesn't mean they're going to be a good teacher. And so always understand for students out there that are going and taking a Kaplan or a Princeton Review or using a private tutor that just because somebody else scored well on an MCAT doesn't mean they're going to be a good teacher for you. And for you is the big thing there. Yeah. And that for you mentality, that drives our entire existence here at next step. And we don't teach classes. All we do is one on one tutoring, because we find that the best learning environment. And there's, again, the education that you're going back a century showing that one on one tutoring generates better results than classes. And part of the thing that drives our business, and Ryan, we were talking about this a little bit earlier today, that only 15% of the population is retaking the MCAT. But here at next step, as much as 40% of our business is MCAT retakers. And so we have a lot of experience with the fact that retakers can't just sit through the same lecture course that's just not going to do it. You know, they have needs that are particular, they have strengths and weaknesses that have already been defined by several months of prep. And what they need is one on one guidance. So I just personally had one of my own tutoring students who we spent 38 of her 40 tutoring hours doing nothing but verbal. And she was a retaker. And of course, no MCAT class in the world is going to spend 38 of 40 hours doing verbal. But that's what that student needed. And as a consequence, she raised her verbal score on the real MCAT from a four to a nine. And so retakers, as they kind of analyze their situations need to say, okay, is the class going to be what will help? And especially will the class be free on a retake? Or do I need that one on one guidance to target my strengths and weaknesses? Wow, a four to a nine, that's awesome. Yeah, you know, she was another one of these people who very, very sharp, I mean, walked in with a 13 in the physical sciences. But English was, I believe her third language. And so she just struggled and it took us months and months. But we got there. That's awesome. So let me let me ask you, and I don't know if you know this or not, but what percentage of students overall taking the MCAT have taken some sort of test prep preparation company or course? Yeah, that I can't tell you because there's so many options out there. You know, obviously, Kaplan and Princeton review are huge. And exam crackers is pretty sizable as well. And they take up a goodly chunk of MCAT test takers, you know, well more than half, maybe two thirds. But you know, if you define test prep pretty broadly, you know, bought the Berkeley Review books, took tutoring with a little company like Next Step, you know, the majority of students have done some sort of test prep. It's going to be few and far between the kid who just walks in totally cold. Yeah. And what percentage at Next Step, when they're coming in seeing you for retake, how many of them have took Kaplan or Princeton Review or another one of the big courses? A very big majority. I mean, not just of retakers, but of everyone. You know, when my phone rings, there's a better than two thirds chance, maybe even a three quarters chance that the person giving me a call is someone who either took exam crackers, took Kaplan, took Princeton, or, you know, took some other little local company. And then the that, you know, kind of lecture-style classroom course didn't get them where they needed to be. And in fact, our company name was sort of an inside joke at first, because so many people called us and said, okay, well, what's my Next Step? The class didn't do it for me. So we said, well, let's just name the company Next Step, because that's where we end up helping most people. Such that for us, it's actually a rare treat to get to work with somebody who's coming in totally new to the thing. That way, we don't have to overcome all those bad habits that they learned elsewhere. Okay. So you think it's more it's not that we're saying Kaplan is bad and Princeton Review is bad. We're just saying for these individual students, like we mentioned before, it wasn't good for them specifically. Yeah, exactly. You know, we're all used to taking lecture classes all through junior high high school college. So for a lot of students, it gets the job done. You know, a lecture class will work, but not everybody. And that's where little boutique tutoring style companies come in. So for a student out there that knows that they're going to take a course and has the money to throw down on a course, what would you tell that student getting ready to pick a course to help them make the best decision for them, whether it's a lecture style course or if it's more one on one tutoring like Next Step? When you're making your initial prep decision, this is something that I always tell students. The first thing you have to do when you talked about you're making course corrections, you know, the first thing you have to do, you know, in Google Maps is type in your destination and where you're starting and then you can plan out a route. So the mistake students so often make as they come to this and say, well, you know, I've heard of this company, my friend took it, and they just slapped down a couple thousand bucks right off the get-go without even asking themselves if that's a smart choice. So I always tell students the first thing to do is go to emcat.com, take AMC test three. That's the free one. I don't know, you know, one and two just disappeared into the ether when we went to the computer. So we start with number three. You take that test under those real simulated conditions we talked about before, and then the AMC will give you four free outlines of all the science topics that'll be on the test. Again, you can get that straight from the preparing for the endcat section of the AMC's website. So take the exam, see how you do, and then read through those outlines to see what your comfort level is with the material, and then make an assessment based on where you are now versus where you want to go for what makes the most sense. The reason that I say that is I used to teach for Kaplan for many, many years, and I can't tell you how many times students would walk into the room and I could tell right from the beginning that they had wasted two thousand bucks taking the class because they walked in with a 32, so they didn't need a prep class, or, you know, they walked in at a 14, which means they need to take some more college courses, like a prep class is not going to be good enough for them. So I always tell people that taking a diagnostic test after you've signed up for a course is already too late. Start by assessing your current situation, then make your decision. And I like how you mentioned to take the double AMC test three and not the Kaplan diagnostic or the Princeton Review diagnostic. Go to the source and take their, what you're making their diagnostic test as in test number three. Yep, exactly. And then you take a look and you say, "Okay, you know, I just need to bring my score up a few points. I'll be fine with self-study. You know, I can buy those Berkeley Review books or an exam cracker study kit and I'll be totally okay." Or, you know, maybe they need to boost that score half a dozen points. You know, that's the place where either a course or a one-on-one tutoring starts to make a little more sense. Or, you know, I need to boost my score up 10 points or more. That's when you start talking about, "Okay, we need a really lengthy, you know, five to six month intensive study program and you're probably going to need one-on-one tutoring for that." Yeah. All right. So you have any other last thoughts for the pre-med out there that's either thinking about starting to study for the MCAT or is a re-prepper? Yeah. You know, the most important thing that I said earlier, it's attitude and study groups. And so I always like to end by talking about attitude. You've got to stay positive. And when I say stay positive, I want to be clear. I'm not talking about some, you know, touchy, feeling, new-agey kind of stuff. I mean, this is an actual kind of cognitive behavioral skill that you have to stay positive. And so one exercise, I always tell people that they need to do to stay positive is what I call a positive review of your MCAT material. What I mean by that is, most people will sit down and say, "Okay, I'm going to take a 70-minute physical sciences section." And then when they go to review it, they'll review it like this. They'll go, "Number one, got that. Number two, got that. Number three, got that. Number four, got that wrong. Oh my God, why did I get that wrong? I'm so dumb. I can't believe I got that wrong." That is, they skip over the stuff they got right and just focus on the stuff they got wrong. And so they end up walking away from the review going, "Man, I was terrible at that. I constantly get it down to two and I get the wrong one." And focusing on the questions that you get wrong creates negativity. So instead, I tell students at least once a week, do some timed practice. And when you review it, only review the questions you got right. So you go, "Number one, got that right. Fantastic. I'm brilliant. Why did I get that right? Number two, got that right. Fantastic. I'm so lucky. Why did I get that right? Number three, got that wrong. Let me skip it. Number four, got that right. And by literally changing their focus, they can change their reality. And the MCAT goes from being a negative experience to a positive one, or at least a neutral one. So there's a famous quote by Henry Ford that I personally believe in. And it sounds like you would as well with this example of the positive review. Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." Absolutely. And that's the thing is the MCAT becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in that regard that your attitude shapes your reality. And this is, again, I always caution people. I'm not talking about the secret. You can visualize money and make money come to you. That's not it. The MCAT as a game is entirely in your head. When you're selecting those answers, that's all processes in your head. So by controlling your attitude, you're controlling the ecosystem of your psychology, which completely shapes how you end up doing. That's awesome. So Brian, where can students find you and NextStep? Sure. So if they want to learn a little bit more about the tutoring services we offer, it's nextsteptestprep.com. And if they go there, they obviously click on the MCAT section. They can see all about our MCAT tutoring options. And then if they want to check out my blog, it's nextstepmcat.com. Awesome. And we'll have links to all those in the show notes as well. Brian, thank you very much for talking today. If Brian said, I'd like to thank you and thank Mid School HQ for having me on today. All right, folks. That, again, was Brian Snedeker. He is at NextStepTestPreparation, which you can find online at NextStepTestPrepar.com. Again, I'll have links to all this in the show notes at medicalschoolhq.net/59. And on that page, you can leave some comments for Brian, and we'll get him to answer any questions you may have about retaking the MCAT. We're also on Twitter at medicalschoolhq. You can say hello to us there. We want some feedback from you guys. What do you think about today's episode? Do you have any questions about the MCAT or any questions in general that we can play here on the podcast and answer for you on the podcast and help other students out there at the same time? You can go to medicalschoolhq.net/feedback to leave us a question. As always, I hope the information provided today will help better guide you on your path to becoming a physician. And just as importantly, I hope you join us next time here at the Medical School Headquarters. [Music]
