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A lot of people have asked if I could lay out what exactly I did when studying for the MCAT. To the best of my ability to explain it, here it is. Before you take all this to heart though, keep in mind that all brains are different! The first "completely cold" MCAT I took, I got a 30, so I probably had a much more solid base to build on than some other may have. Also, I have always been extremely good at holding huge amounts of information and have a very good "working memory". Also understand the luck or "random" component of test day. If I were to take the test again, even after extensive studying, I'm 99% sure that I would score 2 or more points lower than I did the first time. That's just the nature of it, it's all about the averages and catching it on a good day. That said, here's a summary of the strategy I undertook with the explicit aim of scoring above 40:
I started dabbling in studying about a year ahead of time, but since it was so far ahead, the studying was pretty sporadic and relaxed, more just brushing up on some tough topics. I started to pick up the pace about 5 months before the test. For books, I liked Nova's MCAT physics and chemistry books, the Kaplan prep books, and the ExamKrackers series for practice with sample questions. Depending on how much science you've taken, it may be review and fine-tuning or very intensive and at times overwhelming. I can't stress enough that you should try to have all your pre-recs done before you take the test if this is possible. I really didn't have to study biology or ochem much at all because of my comfort with the material. When taking these classes, don't study to pass, study to understand and retain- this is always good advice IMO! For me it was more review and perfecting certain areas since I took many science courses during undergrad and really loved them.
As a strategy, I would say first be aware of every subject of every section that is tested- you cannot prepare for the unknown (the books I mentioned above gloss over basically everything you need to worry about, in about as much depth as is needed). I personally don't think that reading the same material over and over is that helpful, so ExamKrackers was extremely helpful for me; it has more questions than you will ever be able to do, and I think doing problems is much more effective at cementing the concepts and strategies in your head than passively reading. Obviously you need to study first, but you need to do a lot more than that if you want a very high score. This is how I recommend you go about it:
If you can in any way afford it, consider taking a course.
I did take a course, and while for me, the strategies and course itself were not so useful, the huge amount of online practice tests, quizzes, and workshops I got access to were probably what allowed me to do so well. If you don't want to read this whole thing, I'll say it here and you can peace out: the key is practice! We've all heard it before so it's easy to dismiss, but seriously, after a certain point you can study as much as you want and you wonder if it's even getting through. Doing the problems in the format of the test, reading the passages and getting your timing down will literally (ok not literally) tell you if the information really is getting through. Disappointment is excellent: a problem you get wrong on a practice test (granted you make an effort to understand why and address it afterwards) is a problem you will not get wrong on the real thing. Practice tests are also available from the AAMC for $35 a pop here if that's the only reason you'd take a course. If you think this is expensive, just wait till you get to applying and interviewing...but believe that it's all worth it in the end.
Start by reading Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Ochem, and Verbal prep books to varying degrees, trying to get the key concepts and problem solving strategies. Stay away from textbooks early on: they go into way too much detail and will overwhelm and misguide you. Use textbooks only later on when you're fine-tuning subjects and want a slightly deeper grasp or different wording (sometimes things just click when you read them another way, no?) This alone should take up to a few months, especially if you're in school or you work, but you should really try to be fairly disciplined.
The next step is to systematically find and eliminate your weaknesses.
This is where practice is absolutely key. ExamKrackers is a great great start: take a day (i.e. about 1-2 hours) to do a subject in one of the books, say electrochem, which will be about 100+ easy to difficult non passage-based questions. Just do a bunch in a row (50-100) and see how you did. Chances are, if you're like me or most people, you will get about 80% wrong. It's funny and gut-wrenching to make the jump from reading review material to doing problems, but it's a good thing to be humbled. Look at what you got wrong- know why and go back to the prep books in those topics. Do this kind of troubleshooting again and again (in Thermochem, Kinematics, Optics, Redox...) all the sections you have any problems with. This is how you do it. If you learn how to systematically whittle down your trouble spots, you will become increasingly confident that there are no topics or questions that even are trouble spots. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, that's a gooood feeling.
-At this point, I recommend writing on a few sheets of paper a list of all the topics, sub-topics, and equations (e.g. Thermodynamics, Ideal Gas Law, Nernst equation, Bernoulli's equation, Hardy-Weinberg, Kinematics, etc. etc.) and triage your trouble areas. Which topics are you clueless on, which ones are difficult to retain, which ones do you always make stupid mistakes on, which problems take you more than a few minutes to solve... Seeing everything summed up on a few sheets of paper makes it infinitely more manageable. Seriously! Remake this list again and again from memory, each time making little annotations, jotting the relevant equations from memory, making your own connections. This will make it a lot easier for you to jump around your head during the test. You should be more or less done doing heavy (i.e. novel) studying ~1+ month before the test.
Now take a full-length practice test if you haven't already done so, which I say you should have.
Use a Saturday and do it first thing in the morning. Do the whole test, do not take more than 10 minutes between sections, do not take extra breaks, take it in a private, quite place like a study room at a library. It should take up to 5 hours. At first it is exhausting, but you'll get used to it after a few times. Online full-lengths are great because they give you instant scores, as well as areas you did poorly on and explanations of the right and wrong answers. Also, while ExamKrackers is nice, it's a total misrepresentation of what the test will be like. You need to become great at doing the MCAT's passage-based questions. By this point your knowledge should be solid, even if you don't think so. Practice is what pulls it all back out after you think you've lost it. Your brain needs to learn how to quickly access the relevant information, what passage info to discard as useless, and how to not waste your time. The information is in there, so now it's training rather than studying. The trick is to get to the point where you don't really think or stress about it, you just do it automatically and quickly. From this point on, you should focus on doing well in online full-length and subject tests. Just do test after test. It doesn't matter if you bomb them, after getting the same problem type wrong 3 or 4 times you probably won't again
I pretty much quit everything for ~3 weeks before and devoted almost all my days to tests in some form (I decided to take it in June so I would have a month after graduation, a great move). The last 2 weeks I really did take a timed 5 hour test every day about 5 days a week, completely resting the day before the test. I wanted to get completely used to taking a full-length realtime test at 8am. It takes your body and mind some time to adjust to this, so it really matters.
This is what worked for me, but keep in mind that the actual number of the final score is a bit of luck. Out of all my practice tests, my highest was 42, and my average was more around 38. My real test just happened to come at the right time and covered the right material, and I straight up just guessed right in a few cases.
This strategy basically focuses on Physical Sciences, which remember is only one section. Biology was not really an issue for me, and for most people verbal is f-ing hard to improve on after a certain point. Get ExamKrackers 101 verbal passages and do all of them timed, groups of 6-7 passages in 60 minutes. Then take all of the online verbal tests you can. You'll get better but it's much harder to improve than something like physical or biology which is just memorizing/learning and getting your problem solving skills down. You need to learn to not read too deeply, pay attention to detail and nuance in the questions, and hold the important underlying ideas/points of a passage in your head while you're answering its questions, then leave it behind when you get to the next passage. If people want more on verbal, I can post a more in-depth musing, and same for bio/ochem or the writing sample. I hope this helps anybody who's completely overwhelmed and lost with where to start. Aim for the highest score possible rather than some arbitrary number like 43. Remember anything above 35 is fantastic. Also, remember everything else that matters in this process!!! The MCAT is traditionally the most obsessed about, and- believe it or not- it's your friend, since it's the one part of your application you can really improve in a relatively short period. It can also help to quell some questions about earlier science grades. But always remember that plenty of people have been rejected by every school they applied to even with 40+ MCATs and high GPAs. Patients are not multiple choice and schools are quite aware of this. As hard as you work on the MCAT, work on everything else- letters, grades, research, ECs, statement, and why the hell you want to be a doctor. Know yourself and it will show.
Good luck studying and not freaking out too much!
I started dabbling in studying about a year ahead of time, but since it was so far ahead, the studying was pretty sporadic and relaxed, more just brushing up on some tough topics. I started to pick up the pace about 5 months before the test. For books, I liked Nova's MCAT physics and chemistry books, the Kaplan prep books, and the ExamKrackers series for practice with sample questions. Depending on how much science you've taken, it may be review and fine-tuning or very intensive and at times overwhelming. I can't stress enough that you should try to have all your pre-recs done before you take the test if this is possible. I really didn't have to study biology or ochem much at all because of my comfort with the material. When taking these classes, don't study to pass, study to understand and retain- this is always good advice IMO! For me it was more review and perfecting certain areas since I took many science courses during undergrad and really loved them.
As a strategy, I would say first be aware of every subject of every section that is tested- you cannot prepare for the unknown (the books I mentioned above gloss over basically everything you need to worry about, in about as much depth as is needed). I personally don't think that reading the same material over and over is that helpful, so ExamKrackers was extremely helpful for me; it has more questions than you will ever be able to do, and I think doing problems is much more effective at cementing the concepts and strategies in your head than passively reading. Obviously you need to study first, but you need to do a lot more than that if you want a very high score. This is how I recommend you go about it:
If you can in any way afford it, consider taking a course.
I did take a course, and while for me, the strategies and course itself were not so useful, the huge amount of online practice tests, quizzes, and workshops I got access to were probably what allowed me to do so well. If you don't want to read this whole thing, I'll say it here and you can peace out: the key is practice! We've all heard it before so it's easy to dismiss, but seriously, after a certain point you can study as much as you want and you wonder if it's even getting through. Doing the problems in the format of the test, reading the passages and getting your timing down will literally (ok not literally) tell you if the information really is getting through. Disappointment is excellent: a problem you get wrong on a practice test (granted you make an effort to understand why and address it afterwards) is a problem you will not get wrong on the real thing. Practice tests are also available from the AAMC for $35 a pop here if that's the only reason you'd take a course. If you think this is expensive, just wait till you get to applying and interviewing...but believe that it's all worth it in the end.
Start by reading Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Ochem, and Verbal prep books to varying degrees, trying to get the key concepts and problem solving strategies. Stay away from textbooks early on: they go into way too much detail and will overwhelm and misguide you. Use textbooks only later on when you're fine-tuning subjects and want a slightly deeper grasp or different wording (sometimes things just click when you read them another way, no?) This alone should take up to a few months, especially if you're in school or you work, but you should really try to be fairly disciplined.
The next step is to systematically find and eliminate your weaknesses.
This is where practice is absolutely key. ExamKrackers is a great great start: take a day (i.e. about 1-2 hours) to do a subject in one of the books, say electrochem, which will be about 100+ easy to difficult non passage-based questions. Just do a bunch in a row (50-100) and see how you did. Chances are, if you're like me or most people, you will get about 80% wrong. It's funny and gut-wrenching to make the jump from reading review material to doing problems, but it's a good thing to be humbled. Look at what you got wrong- know why and go back to the prep books in those topics. Do this kind of troubleshooting again and again (in Thermochem, Kinematics, Optics, Redox...) all the sections you have any problems with. This is how you do it. If you learn how to systematically whittle down your trouble spots, you will become increasingly confident that there are no topics or questions that even are trouble spots. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, that's a gooood feeling.
-At this point, I recommend writing on a few sheets of paper a list of all the topics, sub-topics, and equations (e.g. Thermodynamics, Ideal Gas Law, Nernst equation, Bernoulli's equation, Hardy-Weinberg, Kinematics, etc. etc.) and triage your trouble areas. Which topics are you clueless on, which ones are difficult to retain, which ones do you always make stupid mistakes on, which problems take you more than a few minutes to solve... Seeing everything summed up on a few sheets of paper makes it infinitely more manageable. Seriously! Remake this list again and again from memory, each time making little annotations, jotting the relevant equations from memory, making your own connections. This will make it a lot easier for you to jump around your head during the test. You should be more or less done doing heavy (i.e. novel) studying ~1+ month before the test.
Now take a full-length practice test if you haven't already done so, which I say you should have.
Use a Saturday and do it first thing in the morning. Do the whole test, do not take more than 10 minutes between sections, do not take extra breaks, take it in a private, quite place like a study room at a library. It should take up to 5 hours. At first it is exhausting, but you'll get used to it after a few times. Online full-lengths are great because they give you instant scores, as well as areas you did poorly on and explanations of the right and wrong answers. Also, while ExamKrackers is nice, it's a total misrepresentation of what the test will be like. You need to become great at doing the MCAT's passage-based questions. By this point your knowledge should be solid, even if you don't think so. Practice is what pulls it all back out after you think you've lost it. Your brain needs to learn how to quickly access the relevant information, what passage info to discard as useless, and how to not waste your time. The information is in there, so now it's training rather than studying. The trick is to get to the point where you don't really think or stress about it, you just do it automatically and quickly. From this point on, you should focus on doing well in online full-length and subject tests. Just do test after test. It doesn't matter if you bomb them, after getting the same problem type wrong 3 or 4 times you probably won't again
I pretty much quit everything for ~3 weeks before and devoted almost all my days to tests in some form (I decided to take it in June so I would have a month after graduation, a great move). The last 2 weeks I really did take a timed 5 hour test every day about 5 days a week, completely resting the day before the test. I wanted to get completely used to taking a full-length realtime test at 8am. It takes your body and mind some time to adjust to this, so it really matters.
This is what worked for me, but keep in mind that the actual number of the final score is a bit of luck. Out of all my practice tests, my highest was 42, and my average was more around 38. My real test just happened to come at the right time and covered the right material, and I straight up just guessed right in a few cases.
This strategy basically focuses on Physical Sciences, which remember is only one section. Biology was not really an issue for me, and for most people verbal is f-ing hard to improve on after a certain point. Get ExamKrackers 101 verbal passages and do all of them timed, groups of 6-7 passages in 60 minutes. Then take all of the online verbal tests you can. You'll get better but it's much harder to improve than something like physical or biology which is just memorizing/learning and getting your problem solving skills down. You need to learn to not read too deeply, pay attention to detail and nuance in the questions, and hold the important underlying ideas/points of a passage in your head while you're answering its questions, then leave it behind when you get to the next passage. If people want more on verbal, I can post a more in-depth musing, and same for bio/ochem or the writing sample. I hope this helps anybody who's completely overwhelmed and lost with where to start. Aim for the highest score possible rather than some arbitrary number like 43. Remember anything above 35 is fantastic. Also, remember everything else that matters in this process!!! The MCAT is traditionally the most obsessed about, and- believe it or not- it's your friend, since it's the one part of your application you can really improve in a relatively short period. It can also help to quell some questions about earlier science grades. But always remember that plenty of people have been rejected by every school they applied to even with 40+ MCATs and high GPAs. Patients are not multiple choice and schools are quite aware of this. As hard as you work on the MCAT, work on everything else- letters, grades, research, ECs, statement, and why the hell you want to be a doctor. Know yourself and it will show.
Good luck studying and not freaking out too much!
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