WikiPreMed Questions

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whoknows87

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quick Question in regards to WikiPreMed questions, if you are a familiar with the site there is a section that gives you practice questions broken down by section and difficulty, Biology, Physics etc, Level 1, 2 , 3 ,4

I was just doing the The nervous system questions and some terminology was not covered in EK Biology ( what I'm using for content review) is WikiPremed going in too much depth or is EK BIO lacking ?

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Sorry for the confusion. There's a key at the bottom of the question server that explains the levels of the terminology.

One: The most fundamental terms of basic knowledge.

Two: The working undergraduate scientific vocabulary you MUST KNOW for the MCAT.

Three: Advanced terminology that can appear in context within MCAT passages.

Four: Very advanced terminology for enrichment and preparation for medical school.
 
So I should just stick to level 1 and level 2 questions and master those terms , I ask because I'm comparing it to EK Biology content, some terms aren't even mentioned in EK
 
Although it would be wonderful, there just isn't a clear boundary between what you 'need to know' for the MCAT and more advanced material, especially in the biological sciences. The transition from level 2 to level 3 in the question server at WikiPremed represents my own subjective sense where there is a shift from black to grey, above which it's still good to know the term but that it's okay not to stress, to have a learning goal of 'familiarity' or 'exposure' instead of absolute fluency.

Some students go into the MCAT knowing that there are neurons and 'glial cells' in the central nervous system while others know about ependymal cells, astrocytes, and oligodendroglia. While you 'need to know' the former, knowing the latter will make you more surefooted with this content, and the second group is 'advantaged'. Knowing more correlates to doing better. You are more comfortable in the passages, so there isn't some misty netherworld over the horizon containing everything you've never seen, so I try to present the material with some nuance. Advanced terms the MCAT may throw at you in passages is a bigger set than those which could govern a fact based questions and as you move into very advanced regions of knowledge the imperative to know the term versus just having been exposed to it grows less, and so you don't need to stress so much about level 4 terms at all, but reading through them will help you anyway.

Basically, with the WikiPremed question server, as you move from level 1, 2, 3 to 4, just gradually let yourself off the hook as you go higher and higher. With the level 4 terms, it's good to get a bit of exposure. To try the term out. Give yourself a sense of what expert knowledge feels like, but don't stress about it. When I was making the glossary, I put the transition from level 2 to level 3 where the change went from 'need to know' to 'should know'.
 
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