Well. I spent a long while trying to decide if I should push it back or not. After meeting with the pre-med adviser today I was able to get a pretty straight answer about how bad it would be to take the MCAT in May, rather than April, and was told it wouldn't matter much. And that's all it took to tip things for me, so the new date is May 26th instead of April 29th. I was actually able to keep the same location and test time, although I had to pay another sixty dollars to make the change.
I figure that if I don't get into school because I applied late, but got a decent MCAT score, that's a much better situation to be in than if I were to take the MCAT early and not get in anywhere because of a bad score that would stick on my record permanently. The extra month will be much needed: whether it's sufficient or not remains to be seen.
What keeps me hopeful is that I'm really more qualified for this than I ever was for law school. I got into law school pretty much on a whim, just because there was nothing better to do. I had no prior extracurricular activities or work that were relevant, and no particularly great letters of recommendation or personal statements. Getting into medical school is much tougher, but in the last few years I've picked up a job in a Chem lab, have worked in a hospital, have met people who'll give me good letters of rec, and have a great "why do you want to be a doctor" statement lined up from my own experiences with epilepsy. So .... maybe I can pull it off.
Anyhow. As far as actual MCAT studying goes, that's officially kicked off now. I've been trying to study at least four hours or so for at least five days a week now, if not more, and it's pretty exhausting. Especially with work at the chem lab just starting up as well. Work at the chem lab isn't time exhausting, but it's mentally draining. I feel really dumb not knowing exactly how stuff works there yet, and have lots of questions.
O. Chem is draining too. I'm behind on my mechanisms, and there are so many. But now I can study a bit more for O. Chem specifically, since the MCAT is a bit further off. Hopefully that will end up helping me out both in my class and on the MCAT itself.
When talking to my adviser I got a list of things I need to start setting up, and dates they need to be set up by. It was interesting, and helpful. I'll go talk about those in another post though.
