[MCAT Success Story] — MCAT Master Interview With A 100th Percentile Scorer: Priya Swaminathan

July 7, 2022

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MCAT Mastery Podcast: Show Notes

About The MCAT Master Interview Series

Welcome to the MCAT Master Interview series!

We’re on an ongoing mission to put together THE formula for achieving a top MCAT score.

We’ve been doing this by gathering the most effective MCAT study strategies from verified top scorers, and then we bring them to you in the form of blog articles, daily emails, YouTube videos, strategy courses, through tutoring sessions and anything else that can help you along on this journey to reach YOUR maximum MCAT score.

We’ve been researching and holding interviews with top MCAT scorers for many years now, until recently we thought "Why not let you all in and give you a seat at the table during these interviews!”.

So, that’s what this series is for ????

We hope by listening to these interviews, you learn proven MCAT study strategies you never thought of, that you can start implementing right away!

And most importantly, we hope you feel an increase in inspiration and motivation because the MCAT journey can be very tough and it can be easy to fall into negative mental cycles...

But as you’ll learn from these success stories, every top scorer had to deal with the struggles, the challenges, and through perseverance, through strategy, through mindset work, they all made it to the top score that was right for them. ???? ???? ????

We have a real treat for you for our first MCAT Master Interview episode!

In this episode you'll meet one of our MCAT strategy mentors here at MCAT Mastery who is also a 100th percentile scorer, Priya Swaminathan!

About Priya Swaminathan

Priya - MCAT Tutor

At the start of her prep, Priya was overwhelmed by the MCAT. She majored in Spanish and never took any science classes beyond the requirements. After a lot of frustration and stagnant scores, she decided she needed to push her test date back.

With additional time to revamp her approach, she focused on improving her mindset and strategy, which led to a steady upward trend in her score. 

She stuck with it and took her score to a 524 (100th percentile!) by test date (with a 99th percentile CARS score!). 

Priya - MCAT Score Screenshot - MCAT Mastery Tutor

Priya scored in the 100th percentile, which is incredible, and in this interview, we’re going to launch into exactly how she did that!

We’re going to learn more how Priya studied and increased her score, how she kept herself motivated, how she scheduled her prep, what strategies she used for each section, and so much more…

Topics Discussed

  • [2:10] Getting to know Priya
  • [4:11] What Inspired Priya to become a doctor
  • [5:36] Why she rescheduled her original test date back
  • [7:53] Her score goal for the MCAT
  • [9:11] Her study plan schedule and resources
  • [13:57] The biggest challenges she had to overcome
  • [16:23] Her most effective strategy to achieve her score goal
  • [19:05] The most common struggle of students and how she’s helping them increase their scores
  • [21:51] How she studied for each section of the MCAT
  • [37:17] Key pieces of advice for students who are preparing for the MCAT
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Memorable Quotes

  • The biggest struggle for me was just dealing with the mental part of it and building confidence with it as well.
  • By managing my stress, I was able to keep my studying consistent, and positive and effective over time.
  • I made my own Anki flashcards, like every day when I was studying
  • Taking a step back from that approach, that you need to do all of content before you do practice and trying to do a more practice-focused approach is helpful, because then you know, you can just fill in those gaps as they come up.
  • When they give a concrete example, or like a hypothetical situation in a passage, I would take note of that, because a lot of times they would ask questions about it later.
  • Even just familiarizing yourself with what the questions are going to look like and how to approach that is is super important.
  • Keeping that faith and confidence in yourself is really important as you practice and prepare.
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Resources Mentioned

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Join over 11,000 premeds in the MCAT Mastery Community learning how to improve their scores for free at https://medlifemastery.com/freecourse

Learn more about each mentor on The MedLife Mastery Team here.
Work with an MCAT Mastery Mentor: https://medlifemastery.com/mcat-tutors

Additional Reading -- MCAT Success Stories:

Your MCAT Success Mentors

About the Author

We're a team of future doctors passionate about giving back and mentoring other future doctors! All mentors on the team are top MCAT scorers and we all are committed to seeing you succeed in achieving your physician dreams ????To help you increase your MCAT score to the competitive mark quickly, we have collaboratively created these self-paced MCAT strategy courses and are also available for one-on-one tutoring!

70+ MCAT Strategy Video Lessons + Notes - Free!

The Free Top Scorer MCAT Strategy Video Course

Learn from multiple 515+ scorers on how to:

  • Master MCAT content quickly and for the long-term
  • Breakdown MCAT questions and identify correct answers
  • Plan your MCAT prep schedule to ensure you stay committed
  • Take and review practice exams in the most strategic way
  • Cultivate the right MCAT success mindset
  • Know how to study as a retaker to ensure this is the last MCAT prep
  • And much more!
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