Ouch.

I got my scores on June 19--just as indicated on the official MCAT site. I spent the first 24 hours feeling deeply depressed. The next 24 hours was spent mostly feeling mad at myself. As day 3 rolled around, I was able to step back and say, "Okay. Now what?"

My scores were intensely unbalanced. I got a 12 on verbal reasoning, which put me around the 96th percentile. I've heard people say verbal is the hardest score to bring up. I hope that is true because both of my science scores were 7! Yep. S-e-v-e-n. Both. Scaled? Why that would be 21-41st percentile for physical sciences and <gulp> 20-27th percentile for biological sciences.

Depressed: I just placed an awful lot of schools out of reach. This is so much worse than I anticipated with my practice tests.

Mad: I just placed an awful lot of schools out of reach. My plan to submit early was un-done by realizing I must retake. I knewthat I wasn't getting in the study time I needed, but didn't feel like I could carve it out of my schedule. This is a painful lesson to learn. Not creating the study time may end up costing me an extra year.

Now what? Going to a DO school was always an option for me, but it feels different when I think of it as the only option for me. There are still a couple of MD programs that may work, if they will review my file again after my MCAT retakes. This just bumps the AACOMAS up on my priority list. I had previously ruled out Texas since they only take a max of 10% of studnets from out of state, but two of the schools there are looking more appealing. Filling out the online applications is far more time consuming than I anticipated. AMCAS, AACOMAS, TMDSAS. All are different. All are long.