The single best advice: I know this is cliché but do as many problems / passages you possibly can in 3 months. Sleep, eat, breathe, and do MCAT problems. Every single hour of every single day.
But in addition to that, you should also do the following:
1. Study for 3-5 months, 6-10 hours a day.
2. Practice verbal every day
3. Use notecards heavily to remember random facts and things you often forget (especially equations)
4. Be quick with basic MCAT math
5. Stay healthy- eat well, go out once a week for a couple of hours at the least, and most importantly, get in 7 hours of sleep a day. It also really helps to have a friend/family member you can vent to when the days get tough. Make sure it's someone supportive of your pursuit to medicine and someone who makes you feel good after speaking to them.
6. Limit all distractions: fb, twitter, cell phone, etc. the entire time you are studying. If some idea, reminder, or incident comes into your mind and starts distracting you while you are studying MCAT, write it down on a piece of paper and think about that topic, idea after studying. This helps calm you down.
7. Make a to-do list every day and tell yourself that you have X amount of hours to do it for that day. Like 8 am to 4 PM. After that, you are going home to relax. (And seriously relax for a couple of hours). I liked to go to the gym at that time. But when I got back, I went straight to doing problems! haha
8. Study in a quiet environment where others are studying. It doesn't have to be too quiet but make sure you are are not easily distracted there. (The location should not be too comfortable yet it should be a safe place and one where you find generally accessible). Do not, I repeat, do not, study at home.
9. Do a test every 5 days as soon as you go over all the content. Going over content and doing questions is great. But if you're not stimulating the real test often, you will not be ready under those conditions. You want to make sure the exam is second nature when you dive into it on the big day.The review of content should not take longer than 4 weeks. You should do a test every 5 days for 3 months straight. Make sure you include the AAMCs in 3-11 order sporadically throughout the other exams (GS, TBR, TPR, Kaplan). Use any resource to do questions. No passage/ question is a waste of time.
Good luck!!!! Message me if you have any questions.
Jack
