What should you do to raise your MCAT score above a 30 when other prep techniques aren’t working? Teach!

If your MCAT score or practice MCAT score is below a 30, raising your score is critical to improve your chances of being accepted into medical school.

But the typical advice about methods to raise your MCAT score aren’t all too helpful or specific: “Learning more, read more, and study harder.” In other words all of the stuff that you are already doing!

So what can you do when the conventional MCAT preparation advice isn’t boosting your score?

The key to deeper understanding and higher scores: Teach someone else the MCAT test questions and then actively defend your answers.

The key with this method is to be as specific as possible. Pick out questions from an MCAT Sample Test you have, or use fetch a question from this site: http://www.mcatquestion.com/.

It is important that you understand the question itself, the concept behind the question, and the answer to the question.

You should then take time with a study partner to teach them those three elements of the question and dig deeply into the answers they give. You will find that teaching it will dramatically improve your own knowledge on the subject.

Teaching is an active process that involves all of the senses, and as such immediately makes the material more memorable. Teaching also tends to use the body is more active and that too aids memory and understanding.

In conclusion, the very best way to start to get higher grades is to really engage with the process of teaching. By actively forcing you to explain a process to someone else you are inevitably forced to understand it more deeply.

What’s next? Give yourself free access to a massive library of online MCAT prep by joining the MCAT club.