The Right Way to Review Your MCAT Practice Exams

Taking full-length exams is essential for MCAT prep. But just completing them isn’t enough. If your scores aren’t improving, or if you keep making the same mistakes, the issue probably isn’t your content knowledge. It’s how you’re reviewing. Most students take a test, glance at the explanations, and move on. That’s not review. That’s repetition without reflection. To actually improve, you need to treat each exam like a training session, not just a score report.

Quick Version

Doing full-length exams is only part of the process. The real gains come from how you review them. That means breaking down why you missed questions, identifying your thought patterns, and adjusting how you study. Use structured reflection, track your mistakes, and look for patterns in timing and reasoning. You will not improve just by practicing more. You improve by reviewing better.

Review Is Where the Learning Happens

The value of full-length exams is not in the score. It’s in the mistakes. Review is where the learning actually happens. But quickly scanning explanations won’t get you there. You need to ask why you got the question wrong, not just what the right answer was. Did you misread the passage? Miss a key graph? Get stuck on unfamiliar terminology?

One study found that structured post-exam feedback improves metacognitive awareness and helps students correct their thinking¹. That matters on the MCAT, where most mistakes come from reasoning, not knowledge gaps. The better you are at identifying your own thought patterns, the better you’ll get at correcting them.

Use Reflection to Build Smarter Study Cycles

After each full-length, take ten minutes to reflect before diving into answer keys. Use a simple exam wrapper. Ask yourself what went well, what did not go well, and what needs to change next time². This reflection forces you to slow down and think critically about your process. If timing was the problem, your strategy needs adjusting. If you keep missing certain question types, you need to target those in future practice.

Research shows that reflection after exams promotes self-regulated learning and helps students break out of unproductive study loops³. Without it, it’s easy to keep reviewing content you already know while ignoring the real problems.

Track Your Mistakes

If you want to improve, you need to start logging your errors. For each missed question, track whether it was a content issue, a reasoning mistake, or a timing problem. You don’t need to write an essay. Just identify the cause. This helps you avoid the illusion of competence, where you feel like you’re improving but your weak spots remain untouched⁶.

Over time, this log becomes a map of where your effort should go. If most of your mistakes are reasoning errors, then more content review won’t help. You’ll need to practice breaking down passages more clearly, slowing your reading, or double-checking answer choices. The more honest and specific you are with your log, the more useful it becomes.

Another study showed that students who understood why reviewing exams is effective were more likely to do it thoroughly⁴. Once you realize that the bulk of improvement happens after the test, you stop rushing through review just to feel productive. You start using review to correct course.

Review by Section

Each MCAT section demands a slightly different approach. In CARS, most errors are reasoning-based. You need to focus on tone, logic, and what the question is really asking. In Chem/Phys and Bio/Biochem, break down each miss into two questions. First, did you understand the content? Second, did you apply it correctly? Many mistakes are not about content gaps but misreading the question or overcomplicating it.

After each section, reflect with a few key questions⁵. What content caught you off guard? Which timing strategies worked? Where did logic break down? This kind of targeted review helps you sharpen both your test strategy and your content knowledge.

Use a Weekly Review Summary

Don’t let your practice reviews sit in isolation. After every exam, update a weekly summary of your most common mistakes. Track what types of errors keep showing up. Do you always miss graph-based questions? Are you rushing through passage intros? Are your scores dipping in the second half of the test?

A weekly summary shows you trends that individual reviews might not⁶. This kind of long-term feedback loop is what helps you build accuracy, endurance, and confidence. Over time, you’ll stop wasting energy on what feels productive and start doing what actually moves your score.

Final Thoughts

Full-length exams are important, but they don’t make you better on their own. It’s what you do afterward that matters. If you’re not reviewing with intention, you’re leaving points on the table. The highest scorers aren’t just consistent with practice. They’re relentless with review. They ask hard questions about their thinking, track their patterns, and adjust every single week.

If you want to score higher, stop thinking of practice tests as the finish line. They’re the starting point. The improvement is in the review.

If you still find yourself struggling, or just want to boost your score further, our MCAT tutors may be able to help. Sign up for our professional MCAT tutoring service today for in-depth, strategic approaches to help you get the scores you want. Sign up to our newsletter below, and good luck on your studies.

Sources

¹ Winstone, Naomi E., and Emma Pitt. “Approaches to Feedback on Examination Performance: Research, Policy, and Practice.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 50, no. 1, 2025, pp. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2476622

² Andaya, Geraldine, et al. “Examining the Effectiveness of a Postexam Review Activity to Promote Self-Regulation in Introductory Biology Students.” Journal of College Science Teaching, vol. 46, no. 4, 2017, pp. 84–92. https://doi.org/10.2505/4/jcst17_046_04_84

³ Rivers, Michelle L. “Metacognition About Practice Testing: A Review of Learners’ Beliefs, Monitoring, and Control of Test-Enhanced Learning.” Educational Psychology Review, vol. 33, no. 1, 2021, pp. 233–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09578-2

⁴ Tullis, Jonathan G., et al. “Metacognition of the Testing Effect: Guiding Learners to Predict the Benefits of Retrieval.” Memory & Cognition, vol. 41, no. 3, 2013, pp. 429–442. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-012-0274-5

⁵ Mayhew, Emily J., et al. “Use of Exam Wrappers to Enhance Students’ Metacognitive Skills in a Large Introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition Course.” Journal of Food Science Education, vol. 16, no. 1, 2017, pp. 12–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4329.12103

⁶ Miller, Tyler M., and Lisa Geraci. “Training Metacognition in the Classroom: The Influence of Incentives and Feedback on Exam Predictions.” Metacognition and Learning, vol. 6, no. 3, 2011, pp. 303–314. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-011-9083-7