Hi, my name is Will and I had recently taken the NMAT in December 2011 in LA. I did not do well; I got a 31 percentile. Although other schools have different preferred rates I need a higher score for UERM which officially prefers a 70 percentile. The test itself was different from the practice exam and I practiced the practice exams under the time conditions.
I am really considering review courses such as Kaplan even though others didn't need them. Does this hold true?
Any replies would be appreciated. Thanks.
Hey Will,
I took the MCAT this December as well, albeit it was in the Philippines (Fil-am studying abroad). For the MCAT, you simply need to have a plan of attack.
I knew I was weak in the sciences (haven't taken many of the sciences since 3-4+ years ago) and it was difficult because the science for nursing is waay different from the science for pre-med (aka, weak gen/orgo chem background, no gen bio background, physics was back in highschool). So what I did was I got a few textbooks online that were easy to comprehend and starting 4 months before the exam, i started learning everything I could in a month. Each month would be a subject so 1 month i'd read all of a biology textbook AND watch some khanacademy (because I'm a visual and auditory learner and having that other perspective is always helpful when you're stuck.)
I did all of that, doing the chapter reviews and trying to put everything together in my head. To supplement the textbook and the khan academy, if a text had an exam crackers book, i'd take a peek at that.
There's really nothing you could do with chem and physics, it's simply rote memorization of formulas. O yea, start doing your calculations as much in your head as possible.
For the exam, which I had a hard time concentrating in (I was in a T-shirt and shorts in an air conditioned room, think ice age, in the corner, in front of an A/C. I was freezing and shaking the whole time, thought i was developing Reynaud's syndrome or something
), for the first part, i did everything except the math section first. I took extra care in perceptual acuity and only finished halfway through the math section (if even. I didn't watch my time there
)
A tip for the inductive reasoning section: Convert the letters into numbers. It all starts to make sense.
For the sciences, it was just basics, but when studying, aim for the understanding of concepts and memorization of formulas. The best way is to derive the formulas yourself. The physics section at KhanAcademy did that perfectly and helped me understand it.
Teach yourself everything. It'll stick better and It's preparation for medschool.
O yea to really test your knowledge, use the MSA NMAT Reviewer along with the provided review. It's harder than the exam, so if you can answer those decently, you shouldn't have too much problem.
For someone who got a C+ in physics in highschool and had poor sciences in college, teaching myself everything actually proved that I really wanted to do med and it was great developing a new way to learn. And if you're wondering, I got a 96 so you can definitely do it with a little review.
Goodluck!
Here's to hoping we might see eachother on campus one day.
