Get to know the Loyola student behind the perfect MCAT score

What does it take to get a perfect score on the Medical College Admission Test? For Rohan Jaiswal, the answer starts at age 3, at his brother’s chess tournament. 

At the tournament, Jaiswal fell off a chair and broke his arm. He was brought to the hospital and the care he received was the first spark: from that point, he knew he would become a doctor. “I wanted to be that type of person for other people,” he says.  

During his senior year of high school, Jaiswal suffered another health setback: a collapsed lung. “There was nothing that caused it,” he said. “With my stature”—Jaiswal is 5’11, with a thin build—“plus being a young adult male, you’re at a higher risk for having what’s called a spontaneous pneumothorax,” he said. 

Later, he enrolled at Loyola. “I knew going into it that medical school was going to be my track and Loyola has amazing pre-health resources in terms of research, clinical experience, and being in Chicago. It was kind of the perfect mesh of all these different factors for me.” He double majored in biology and molecular and cellular neuroscience. Jaiswal says that the dual majors have allowed him to have both a broad knowledge base and a specialized focus. 

But then, in his sophomore year of college, it happened again—another collapsed lung. The first two times were minor but then, a few months later, it happened a third time. This one was serious, and he needed surgery. 

“I spent a week in the hospital and a week at home,” he says. “It definitely made that semester more difficult but, in some ways, I feel like it pushed me not only academically but also on a personal level to really know what I was getting into. It helped me understand what medicine was to me and how I can help other people.”  

This experience solidified his goal to become a doctor. So he buckled down on his studies.  

In his classes, he focused on learning the material rather than getting the A. “I’m not studying for a grade,” he says. “I feel like I’m more process-oriented rather than results-oriented. What I mean by that is I’m there to learn the material and the grades will follow. Or at least that would be my goal.” 

Organization has also helped. “I make spreadsheets and calendars for everything,” he says. 

Sitting in the library, Jaiswal pulls his laptop out of his backpack and opens a spreadsheet that tracks every homework assignment he’d completed that semester. There are multiple columns for progress, dates, and more. He also made several spreadsheets to keep track of MCAT studying. “I admire people who can go through it without a spreadsheet,” Jaiswal said. “I feel like I need it.” 

Besides his organizational skills, Jaiswal says that professors like M. William Rochlin, PhD, helped him immerse himself in his studies. According to Jaiswal, Rochlin advises students to attend class and then go home and watch the recorded lectures multiple times. “I came to a personal realization that in order to really understand the material inside and out, you almost have to be able to teach it to someone else,” Jaiswal says. “He instilled that kind of studying method.” 

All of this diligence is not new for Jaiswal—he said his family has helped him build this work ethic since he was a kid. He cited his mother as a major source of inspiration. “Whatever you see here has come from her,” he says. “She said ‘Do the best you can. You have gifts and you’re meant to help people with them.’” He also credits his father for making sacrifices for him and his older brother “in countless ways.” 

Back in August 2023, Jaiswal began studying for the MCAT in earnest. As the January 2024 test date approached, his review sessions intensified. During winter break he was studying seven to eight hours every day. “A full-time job,” he said. He was getting great scores on practice tests, but his mother saw his potential to keep pushing.  

“She’d say, ‘That’s good, that’s good,’” he recounts. “I was telling her ‘I feel comfortable, I feel good.’” But his mother saw that there was room to grow.  

“She was like ‘Keep pushing. I think you’re capable of more. You’ve scratched the surface of what can you do,’” he says.   

On the day of the exam, his parents drove him to the test site, at their insistence. “When I sat down and the test was going to start, I was extremely nervous,” he says. “But then the question pops up and I’m just locked in on the exam.” 

Jaiswal says getting to that level of confidence comes from all of his hours of review. “If you put in the work in terms of preparation, when you look at a passage or a question, you’re going to see terms that are familiar to you,” he says. “You have to trust that the work you put in on the front end learning the material, when you see it, you’re going to know what to do.”  

His advice to those who get test-day jitters: “Outsource your nervousness to the work you’ve put in.” In other words, luck favors the prepared.  

A few weeks passed and Jaiswal was working as a clinical assistant at Weiss Memorial Hospital. He learned he’d received his MCAT results, so he told his supervisor he needed to step away for a moment. “I just needed to be in my own space,” he says. The result: 528 out of 528. A perfect score. “I saw the score, didn’t really believe it, called my mom, and got back to work,” he says.  

His mom was proud—and vindicated. “She was like, ‘I told you,’” says Jaiswal. 

With that score in his pocket, Jaiswal is now working on medical school applications. At first, he thought he wanted to focus on neurosurgery but after a summer internship at Northwestern University where he got to experience many specialties, he decided he wants to keep himself open for now. 

He also sees a potential future for himself that makes use of the nonprofit he started, called My Book Wish, which distributes books to people in underprivileged areas.  

“In the past several months, I’ve thought about what the tie is to medicine,” he says. “A dream that I want to fulfill with it is, under that umbrella of My Book Wish, starting a free clinic that not only incorporates educational access but prioritizes it.”  

This is a significant departure from neurosurgery, which Jaiswal still has immense respect for and interest in. “But,” he says, “being able to simply serve as an internal medicine doctor for a number of patients every single day, you can’t discount the impact that those people make as well.” 

Whether it’s community care, neurosurgery, or another specialty, Jaiswal is looking forward to a career of service. “There are so many ways to help people,” he says.