I want to study for the experiment-based Bio section on MCAT, so I am going through some free online medical journals, and so far I am using PLoS ONE, but is there any other free journal websites like this that would help prepare me for bio section?
What are some free online journal out there besides PLoS ONE to study for bio section?
- Thread starter m25
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2014
- Messages
- 245
- Reaction score
- 41
If you are a college student, you can obtain your college's VPN number, so that when you're off campus you get the university-based access to all the literature for free. If not, if you are nearby a college campus, just go to the campus and you'll have access to the journals just by being inside campus. This is how it works at least at my college.
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2013
- Messages
- 38,497
- Reaction score
- 75,457
Journals are a pretty poor way to study for the bio section. There are relatively few experimental designs covered on the test, and they are usually prototypical ones. The sorts of things you'll see in many journals are likely to be cutting edge, with technology that won't be featured on the MCAT for years to come.
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2013
- Messages
- 3,469
- Reaction score
- 2,287
I don't know if that is a good use of time to study for the bio section, but if you are interested in cardiac physiology, the AHA publishes their journal online for free.
http://circ.ahajournals.org/
http://circ.ahajournals.org/
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2013
- Messages
- 623
- Reaction score
- 242
As has been said above, this is a waste of your MCAT prep time.
If you enjoy reading journals, then by all means continue to do so, but don't fool yourself - reading a journal is not a substitute for real MCAT practice. Journal reading is going to be far too passive an exercise. Journal articles don't come with tricky multiple-choice questions at the end, etc. etc.
If your goal is to improve your performance on difficult experiment-based passages, then just do more difficult experiment-based passages. If you find that you have a tough time following the logic / critical thinking to solve the questions, you'd actually be better served by practice material from a college-level logic textbook or philosophy textbook than a biology journal.
Good luck!
b.
If you enjoy reading journals, then by all means continue to do so, but don't fool yourself - reading a journal is not a substitute for real MCAT practice. Journal reading is going to be far too passive an exercise. Journal articles don't come with tricky multiple-choice questions at the end, etc. etc.
If your goal is to improve your performance on difficult experiment-based passages, then just do more difficult experiment-based passages. If you find that you have a tough time following the logic / critical thinking to solve the questions, you'd actually be better served by practice material from a college-level logic textbook or philosophy textbook than a biology journal.
Good luck!
b.
You need to use an MCAT prep book to prepare or your preparation time will be wasted, sorry to say. If this is a financial issue and you say so then someone might have mercy and give you a very reasonable offer or additional advice.
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2013
- Messages
- 1,202
- Reaction score
- 748
I agree with the posters above. You need to start from a prep book and get thorough exposure to AAMC style questions and then possibly work backwards to reading a few articles from Bio journals and possibly coming up with possible questions on that article.
A lot of the strategy in dealing with "experimental-heavy" bio passages comes down to basic induction/deduction. My undergraduate labs (biochem, orgo, etc.) prepared me well for these types of skills. All you need to do is to use those existing competencies in the scope of the MCAT.
A lot of the strategy in dealing with "experimental-heavy" bio passages comes down to basic induction/deduction. My undergraduate labs (biochem, orgo, etc.) prepared me well for these types of skills. All you need to do is to use those existing competencies in the scope of the MCAT.
