Courses to take in light of upcoming MCAT changes?

[spenceast]

So with the MCAT changing in 2015 to include some psychology/sociology parts, would it be practical to take a sociology 101 (intro) course to help prepare for those changes? I am already majoring in psychology so I figure I wouldn't need that side of the preparation, mainly just the sociology side. I wouldn't need sociology credits for anything else, it would solely be to prepare for the new MCAT.

What would you guys recommend?

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[Lya]

To be honest, even though I am not entirely sure what 2015 MCAT will be exactly like, my guess is that it might be more or less another verbal section. I could be very wrong, and you may take socio courses, but I wouldn't be surprised if these courses end up not much helpful for MCAT.

With that said, if I were you, I would still take socio/psych courses.

 

[Aerus]

Do you mean Sociology 101? If not, we don't know what the course codes mean, so you aren't really going to get a useful answer.

Short answer: Take sociology and biochemistry classes to prepare for the 2015 MCAT.

 

[spenceast]

Do you mean Sociology 101? If not, we don't know what the course codes mean, so you aren't really going to get a useful answer.

Short answer: Take sociology and biochemistry classes to prepare for the 2015 MCAT.

Yes, that's what I meant...sorry, I edited the original post to clarify it as Sociology 101.

 

[Narmerguy]

To be honest, even though I am not entirely sure what 2015 MCAT will be exactly like, my guess is that it might be more or less another verbal section. I could be very wrong, and you may take socio courses, but I wouldn't be surprised if these courses end up not much helpful for MCAT.

With that said, if I were you, I would still take socio/psych courses.

To some extent, this is true for a lot of the science MCAT passages as well. However, I would read some of the information about the new section before feeling so cavalier:

Begin page 91: https://www.aamc.org/students/download/266006/data/2015previewguide.pdf

 

[NickNaylor]

In addition to the "usual" pre-reqs, the new test will also cover content from intro sociology, intro psychology, and research methods. The research methods info will likely be included in your usual lab courses.

 

[kyamh]

Do we have a more detailed topic breakdown yet? I can't help thinking that, although sociology/social science concepts will be included, to tackle most of these concepts on the MCAT requires little more than common sense for a decently well read student. I've taken plenty of introductory (and intermediate) courses in the social sciences like sociology, women studies, psychology, and political science (yay liberal arts!). While these courses generate interesting discussion, most of the difficulty lies in learning how to effectively communicate your argument through writing and how to formulate an argument to begin with. The actual material isn't usually something you don't already know, unless you have been living under a rock and not thinking about the experience of others in this world, you might just not know the official term.

 

[deleted407021]

Since you are a psych major, you should be taking a research methods class. That will strengthen and greatly add to the scientific article analysis skills introduced to you in principles of biology. A prerequisite to that may be a psych statistics course, which will teach you how to understand data within those articles. These skills are becoming ever more valuable and the AAMC is making a point of emphasizing the material on the new MCAT. All the upper division psychology you take will only augment you knowledge base for the social science section. The test will also focus more than ever on human physiology, since all questions pertain to "living systems". The link posted above gives some sample questions. For this reason, a physiological psych course would be a good idea as well, although it will only really focus on neurobiology. I think it would be overkill to take an an anatomy course, as you could easily familiarize yourself with basic human anatomy with a bit of self study. You won't really need anything past the prerequisites, but I have been told multiple times that the more you have under your belt, the better prepared you can be for the exam, which makes sense.

 

[NickNaylor]

Do we have a more detailed topic breakdown yet? I can't help thinking that, although sociology/social science concepts will be included, to tackle most of these concepts on the MCAT requires little more than common sense for a decently well read student. I've taken plenty of introductory (and intermediate) courses in the social sciences like sociology, women studies, psychology, and political science (yay liberal arts!). While these courses generate interesting discussion, most of the difficulty lies in learning how to effectively communicate your argument through writing and how to formulate an argument to begin with. The actual material isn't usually something you don't already know, unless you have been living under a rock and not thinking about the experience of others in this world, you might just not know the official term.

Yes, this information is available from the AAMC in their large document about the upcoming MCAT. It's not provided in the best format because there's no specific breakdown of topics by actual core subject, but you can work it out yourself if you're interested in it.

 

[jeghaber]

Do we have a more detailed topic breakdown yet? I can't help thinking that, although sociology/social science concepts will be included, to tackle most of these concepts on the MCAT requires little more than common sense for a decently well read student. I've taken plenty of introductory (and intermediate) courses in the social sciences like sociology, women studies, psychology, and political science (yay liberal arts!). While these courses generate interesting discussion, most of the difficulty lies in learning how to effectively communicate your argument through writing and how to formulate an argument to begin with. The actual material isn't usually something you don't already know, unless you have been living under a rock and not thinking about the experience of others in this world, you might just not know the official term.

I took the psych/soc trial section when I took the MCAT last year and this is exactly what it seemed to be, at least back in January 2013 when they first started the trials. I was a cognitive neuroscience major so I was more or less acquainted with all the material, though a few years removed from the intro courses. I was so pooped from the actual test that I didn't read a single passage but instead just skimmed the questions and selected answers based on what I vaguely remembered the answer choices to mean. Most of it was straightforward terminology, for both psych and stats questions. It was very much BS-like in that if I knew the material well enough, the passage was mostly redundant. I finished the trial section in ~15 minutes and apparently got 87% of it correct. If you've taken a few intro courses and are able to wrap your mind around a new set of vocabulary (not that difficult not extensive since most things are named intuitively), I can't imagine this new section being too difficult.

Now this addition of more biochem in place of orgo on the other hand...have fun with that one, guys. I'm glad I took it before that ugly beast was integrated

 

[deleted407021]

Necrobump!

I'm interested in knowing if instead of taking sociology 101, if anyone knows that an upper level social psychology course would suffice. The course descriptions seem similar in that they cover different social groups like gender and race.

Thanks!

Oops. I thought this was in the MCAT forum.