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- Mar 1, 2014
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Hello everyone,
For all of you that took the 6/21/14 MCAT I hope you all did well! I just wanted to sort of "give back" to SDN after all the aid it lent me through my months of studying. I want to share my story with all of you and how I ended up with a 30 while being able to go to the gym 5 times a week and hangout with my friends on the weekend (because yes, Pre-Meds are cool people and we do have social lives
)
So my day would consist of waking up early (around 8am), study till lunch, eat, study, eat, gym, and either study if I wasn't burnt out or hangout with my friends (I still had time to see people and do things with them 3 days a week)- and you should make time because DE-stressing is JUST as important as studying..you think I'm crazy but I promise its true.
I want to take a trip down memory lane back to January of 2013-2014...my MCAT studying began...over winter break I took a TPR hyperlearning course that squeezed every single piece of content into a couple weeks using TPR books. Some of the teachers were good, others were absolutely terrible so unless you REALLY think you need these types of courses, I'd say save your money and study yourself, especially if money is tight. If money isn't tight and you have the time, I say why not but I cannot confidently say this course helped me a lot at all- I was planning on taking my test in April (I think April 11th was the date)....
With finals around the corner and a tough college schedule as a junior, I just could NOT find the time to study MCAT to the greatest extent that I could while still keeping my GPA high in school. So rule #1 Give the MCAT your absolute full attention, no distractions, no school- this means taking time off or studying over the summer. Since I wasn't ready I pushed back my date to June 21st, and this was a huge shot to my ego and self confidence, I already thought I was a failure- I was wrong, and none of you should ever think that way.
I bit the bullet and did content once, then I did content again....YEA, you read that right, call me a dummy but doing EVERY single piece of content TWICE really helped solidify everything, I was making connections with every single subject and these types of connections between chem and physics or bio and physics or any of the above helped me solve the more "reasoning type" problems. Rule #2- Murder the heck out of content before you start practicing, make sure you know EVER-Y-TH-ING...
(A note on TPR books- They were OK at best, I heard examcrackers is better but honestly I have not had experience with those books. My comments on TPR are some explanations are unclear, formulas get jumbled around sometimes, and sometimes they go TOO in depth, sometimes not enough, it was all over the place...but once again, not sure about TBR or examcrackers or anything else so I can only comment on my TPR experiences)
Practice tests are just as important, I started scoring 21s and eventually was scoring 28-32s regularly. Rule #3- Go over practice tests EXTREMELY carefully...when you see what answers you got wrong go back to content and go through the ENTIRE section again- once again this just solidifies more and more---content, content, content (but practice too
)
So that's really it for now...if you guys have any specific questions feel free to post/contact me...I might make some edits in the future
Oh and just a note on verbal problems= the best advice I got for verbal (other than practicing a lot) was to really critically analyze each paragraph at a time. This uses a boatload of brain power but you need to read very carefully and very critically. At the end of each paragraph ask yourself "Ok, what is this paragraph saying" then at the end of the next paragraph ask yourself "Ok, why is this paragraph here and how does it relate to the past paragraph(s)"
Addition: Guys, don't burn out. I mean common...give yourselves a break you bust your butts and burning out is no good. Go to the gym, go for a run, play video games, see your friends and don't live in a cave the entire time...time your meals, drink your water, don't rely on too many cups of coffee and get your sleep I cannot stress how important these things were to my studying habits (especially the gym)!....this might be a bit of a controversial subject but I have had experience with friends taking adderall or ritalin who said it helped with verbal. That's up to you guys but I just wanted to touch upon that in case you were thinking about it.
Hope this helps someone, in some way, even a little!
For all of you that took the 6/21/14 MCAT I hope you all did well! I just wanted to sort of "give back" to SDN after all the aid it lent me through my months of studying. I want to share my story with all of you and how I ended up with a 30 while being able to go to the gym 5 times a week and hangout with my friends on the weekend (because yes, Pre-Meds are cool people and we do have social lives
) So my day would consist of waking up early (around 8am), study till lunch, eat, study, eat, gym, and either study if I wasn't burnt out or hangout with my friends (I still had time to see people and do things with them 3 days a week)- and you should make time because DE-stressing is JUST as important as studying..you think I'm crazy but I promise its true.
I want to take a trip down memory lane back to January of 2013-2014...my MCAT studying began
...over winter break I took a TPR hyperlearning course that squeezed every single piece of content into a couple weeks using TPR books. Some of the teachers were good, others were absolutely terrible so unless you REALLY think you need these types of courses, I'd say save your money and study yourself, especially if money is tight. If money isn't tight and you have the time, I say why not but I cannot confidently say this course helped me a lot at all- I was planning on taking my test in April (I think April 11th was the date)....With finals around the corner and a tough college schedule as a junior, I just could NOT find the time to study MCAT to the greatest extent that I could while still keeping my GPA high in school. So rule #1 Give the MCAT your absolute full attention, no distractions, no school- this means taking time off or studying over the summer. Since I wasn't ready I pushed back my date to June 21st, and this was a huge shot to my ego and self confidence, I already thought I was a failure- I was wrong, and none of you should ever think that way.
I bit the bullet and did content once, then I did content again....YEA, you read that right, call me a dummy but doing EVERY single piece of content TWICE really helped solidify everything, I was making connections with every single subject and these types of connections between chem and physics or bio and physics or any of the above helped me solve the more "reasoning type" problems. Rule #2- Murder the heck out of content before you start practicing, make sure you know EVER-Y-TH-ING...
(A note on TPR books- They were OK at best, I heard examcrackers is better but honestly I have not had experience with those books. My comments on TPR are some explanations are unclear, formulas get jumbled around sometimes, and sometimes they go TOO in depth, sometimes not enough, it was all over the place...but once again, not sure about TBR or examcrackers or anything else so I can only comment on my TPR experiences)
Practice tests are just as important, I started scoring 21s and eventually was scoring 28-32s regularly. Rule #3- Go over practice tests EXTREMELY carefully...when you see what answers you got wrong go back to content and go through the ENTIRE section again- once again this just solidifies more and more---content, content, content (but practice too
) So that's really it for now...if you guys have any specific questions feel free to post/contact me...I might make some edits in the future
Oh and just a note on verbal problems= the best advice I got for verbal (other than practicing a lot) was to really critically analyze each paragraph at a time. This uses a boatload of brain power but you need to read very carefully and very critically. At the end of each paragraph ask yourself "Ok, what is this paragraph saying" then at the end of the next paragraph ask yourself "Ok, why is this paragraph here and how does it relate to the past paragraph(s)"
Addition: Guys, don't burn out. I mean common...give yourselves a break you bust your butts and burning out is no good. Go to the gym, go for a run, play video games, see your friends and don't live in a cave the entire time...time your meals, drink your water, don't rely on too many cups of coffee and get your sleep I cannot stress how important these things were to my studying habits (especially the gym)!....this might be a bit of a controversial subject but I have had experience with friends taking adderall or ritalin who said it helped with verbal. That's up to you guys but I just wanted to touch upon that in case you were thinking about it.
Hope this helps someone, in some way, even a little!
