Nontrad January 2017 MCAT Thread

[AnotherLawyer]

This is a thread for us to share our trials and tribulations. For me the biggest challenge is making the time to study every day. If I miss a day here and a day there, I'm behind and it's really hard to catch up.

How is everyone else doing?

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[fourandtwo]

Same here. I am a full time environmental consultant. So I'm waking up at 4am every morning, study for 3 hours before work. Then I come home and I immediately go back to study mode. In between I work out and eat. And at some point I just BURN out

 

[wholeheartedly]

I'm taking it later than January but there aren't a lot of nontrad MCAT threads so I'm going to crash this one.

I was joking in another thread that I'm having a hard time motivating myself to study on account of this election likely foreshadowing the apocalypse...

But yeah, I've had a lot of huge life changes in the past couple months (major move, issues with new place I'm renting, vehicle completely bit the dust can't afford replacement, haven't sold house yet, and new job/training at new job). It's all creating a bunch of extra stuff to deal with thats making it hard to get a good studying routine going.

 

[AnotherLawyer]

I just registered. I think this will serve as a large dose of motivation.

 

[AnotherLawyer]

How's everyone doing? By some miracle, I'm on track to get through EK by mid-November, which was my plan. I'm then going to switch to the AAMC practice and just do a ton of practice problems plus review. I also saw a new AAMC full length came out.

 

[ayjaystudent]

This is a thread for us to share our trials and tribulations. For me the biggest challenge is making the time to study every day. If I miss a day here and a day there, I'm behind and it's really hard to catch up.

How is everyone else doing?

How many hours a day do you study for MCAT? And how many days a week?

 

[AnotherLawyer]

My target is four EK chapters per day. I normally do the reading at night after the kids go to sleep. That can take anywhere from an hour to three hours, depending on how focused I am and how familiar I am with the material. I then do the 30 minute exam the following day at work during lunch. I review the exam the following day at work right before I go home. I do this Sunday - Wednesday. Sometimes Thursday, otherwise Thursday is a make up day to catch up on anything I missed, which is typically reviewing exams I took earlier in the week.

Once I'm about 10 weeks out I am going to switch this around and do my work for several hours in morning, which will better match MCAT conditions. I'll review in the evenings. It will be a much more intense pace, and it will suck, but I will deal with it for that short time.

 

[futuredrummerdoctor]

Nontrad here, studying for the march 31 mcat. good luck, everyone!

 

[raewants2beadoc]

Does a score on a practice exam prior to actual MCAT prep give any indication of where you are starting from?

I'm almost finished with physics 2 and biochem 1 (which completes my prerequisites).

I decided to take the AAMC sample and scored a 500.

I have not started preparing for the MCAT yet. I was hoping to just get a baseline score.

It is possible to realistically being this score up significantly with a few months of self study??




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[AnotherLawyer]

Does a score on a practice exam prior to actual MCAT prep give any indication of where you are starting from?

I'm almost finished with physics 2 and biochem 1 (which completes my prerequisites).

I decided to take the AAMC exam 1 and scored a 500.

I have not started preparing for the MCAT yet. I was hoping to just get a baseline score.

It is possible to realistically being this score up significantly with a few months of self study??




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First of all, stop using precious AAMC material before even starting your preparation. There are only two AAMC tests that will give you a score, which is the best predictor of your actual score. Now you only have one left.

You can definitely bring your score up. How quickly and easily depends on your score breakdown. If your CARS score lags everything else, then your weakness is likely critical reading and thinking and that takes more work to fix. If your CARS score is better than everything else, then your content knowledge is lagging your critical thinking. That is typically a quicker fix.

 

[raewants2beadoc]

First of all, stop using precious AAMC material before even starting your preparation. There are only two AAMC tests that will give you a score, which is the best predictor of your actual score. Now you only have one left.

You can definitely bring your score up. How quickly and easily depends on your score breakdown. If your CARS score lags everything else, then your weakness is likely critical reading and thinking and that takes more work to fix. If your CARS score is better than everything else, then your content knowledge is lagging your critical thinking. That is typically a quicker fix.

Oh hell, I posted that wrong... I actually took the sample and not exam 1. It was the cheapest one. I'm so glad it was only the sample! I truly didn't realize there are only 2 AAMC practice exams at this time. Thank you for pointing that out!

My CARS was a lot higher than my other scores. There was a lot of material on it that I haven't seen before. So I suppose I need content review more than anything??

I plan to order TBR books soon. It's looking like my last trimester isn't going to be too difficult. So maybe I'll get to start studying sooner than I thought.

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[BluMist]

I thought the sample test was not scored. How did you figure that you scored 500?

Oh hell, I posted that wrong... I actually took the sample and not exam 1. It was the cheapest one. I'm so glad it was only the sample! I truly didn't realize there are only 2 AAMC practice exams at this time. Thank you for pointing that out!

My CARS was a lot higher than my other scores. There was a lot of material on it that I haven't seen before. So I suppose I need content review more than anything??

I plan to order TBR books soon. It's looking like my last trimester isn't going to be too difficult. So maybe I'll get to start studying sooner than I thought.

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[raewants2beadoc]

Nevermind.... I think I completely misunderstood what I was looking at and figured that completely wrong.

 

[raewants2beadoc]

I thought the sample test was not scored. How did you figure that you scored 500?

I was looking at the AAMC charts for % -> scaled score.

Chem 47% ~ 124
CARS 74% ~ 126
B/S 49% ~ 124
Psych 56% ~ 125

A few of the spreadsheets I've found on SDN have a slight variation in the scaled score.

I know it's not exact...

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