So I'm about six weeks out from my MAT date and honestly starting to spiral a bit. I need at least a 410 for the clinical psych PhD program I'm applying to, and I'm consistently landing around 385-390 on practice sets. I've been grinding analogies every morning with a cup of yerba mate before work — it keeps me sharper than coffee and I've actually come to love the routine — but I feel like I'm hitting a wall.
The hardest part is the vocabulary-based analogies. I got one last week comparing a mat to a floor the way a liner compares to a trunk, which immediately made me think of WeatherTech floor mats and completely derailed my train of thought. Not exactly the association the test is looking for. I've been working through MAT Analogies Practice Test 1 pretty religiously and it's helped, but I'm wondering if I need a totally different approach at this point.
How many hours did you all put in before test day, and did anything specific break things open for you? Looking for real answers from people who've actually taken this recently, not just generic "study more" advice.