When mcat study fails reaches epic levels....

[WaxEarplugsFTW]

So, I have been so clueless at solving mcat problems over the past 7 months that I have resorted to recording myself "working" (aka blabing cluelessly).....

Will someone please watch a little of the fail and isolate why I am so clueless?

See, when I solve an explicit question about a specific topic, I can do those....that's how I got a 3.91 GPA.
That's easy, but how the heck do you make sense of passage questions? You'll hear me cluelessly reading the passages...

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[Sammy1024]

I watched parts of your video and I believe that your biggest issue is content. For example, in the passage with hypertension... in the first question, if you knew your hormones, you could easily go to the answer with aldosterone because all the other choices are hormones not produced by the kidney (elimination tactic). I think you really need to read up on content whether it's EK, TBR, Kaplan, TPR. (I don't think you should be using AAMC tests to study if you don't have a good grasp on studying because AAMC test are like gold, and should be saved).

Another thing I noticed is that you said you don't read all the words in the passage because it doesn't make sense. It might be useful to use that tactic to cut out time, but at the stage that you are at, it would better to take the time and read each word in the passage and then take a minute to figure out the point of the passage. You aren't understanding what the passage is about or which topics to link it to, so it makes the questions harder.

As for not understanding the questions, sometimes they're weird and don't make sense to me either, however you have to take it in chunks. You break the question apart and try to make it make sense.

Ex: Assuming Hypothesis B to be correct, which of the following endocrine disorders would cause hypertension that could NOT be rectified by physiologically normal kidneys.

So you should have attempted to understand this by going....
1. Hypothesis B is correct, so hypertension is caused by more resistance meaning more work by kidneys
2. which of the following endocrine disorders, the answer choices are endocrine disorders
3. hypertension that could NOT be rectified, answer would NOT be fixed
4. by physiologically normal kidneys, something to do with the kidney

I feel like you may be at the beginning stages of studying, and sorry if my answer is mean. I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but we've all been there and all hated the studying and the content but we still trudged through it. Please spend some time studying content and see if it makes things easier. Good luck!

 

[IslandStyle808]

I'm not to sure where to start here. I feel I maybe making assumptions here, but correct me if I am wrong.

I think you maybe trying to study from question stems to learn about the material. If so, this will hurt you because you need to understand the topics in chemistry, physics, biology, and organic chemistry. You really need to do content review and have an understanding of what your are reading, don't memorize it. Read either TPR or TBR because both books really give just the right detail and they ask questions so you can gauge your understanding. You need at least 1-2 months of content review to have a grasp of this stuff.

I also have noticed you are a very detail oriented person who looks at words singularly (this maybe why your verbal is taking a hit). Looking for key words won't help any because you need to look at sentences as a whole. You need to see the forest from the trees most of the time on this exam. By looking at the sentences as a whole, you will see the words take on a different meaning. Then looking at paragraphs as a whole gives you an idea of what you are reading (you won't know everything, but you will know what is going on).

Once you have this down, you can start seeing the inferences. THE MCAT IS ALL ABOUT INFERENCES. You have to make them when reading these passages, they purposefully cutout and rearrange pieces of information and expect you to put them together like a puzzle. For example, you where wondering about whether 2-furaldehyde is a semicarbazone. Look at Table 1, right down below. You will see that 2-furalddehyde is on the list. So I am inference from the title of the table that 2-furaldehyde is a semicarbazone. They won't give the information explicitly like in journal articles, as you have mentioned in the video (journal articles are meant to be straightforward unlike the MCAT).

Here is my do list for you
1) Do content review (look on SDN to see the best content sources)
2) Read content for 1-2 months (make sure you do all questions within the chapter)
3) After first pass, then you start doing passages (timed)
4) After doing a passage run, note your mistakes and the answers (understand the answer, don't memorize it)
5) After a 1 month of this, then start doing practice tests
6) Make sure to analyze these tests and see patterns
** If you want to take the exam in 3 months then I suggest you don't work or go to school during this time, if you need to then study for 5+ months**

Sorry if my answer is a little to blunt, but I hope that it helps in someway. You just need to find a good plan of attack for the exam and just go for it. You can do this!