This thread IS getting long. Maybe it would be helpful to create thread with tips for specific subsections? then people with highly unbalanced scores like me can only give advice on the sections they feel good about
I'm very happy to be able to post in this thread, BTW. good luck to everyone who has yet to take it.
1) Your individual scores and composite score
PS=9 VR=13 WS=Q BS=14 Composite=36Q
2) The study method used for each section
PS - Ah, my nemesis. Please don't let my score worry you. I have so many PS odds stacked against me. Avoided math all through high school and college, didn't take HS physics, trig, or calc. took college physics as a postbac over one summer (6 weeks each course) and honestly felt like i didn't learn a thing. I was lazy and we were able to use formula cards on the test. worthless. I tried to bring this up but i just couldn't help it, I hate it and I dreaded studying for it. Still, I managed to get up to 10's and 11's on practice, but I ran out of time on the real thing. I was finishing with time to spare on practices, so when i got the real thing and it was calculation-heavy, i didn't worry about spending a little extra time doing calculations by hand. i guessed on the last 4-5 and left one unanswered. Fail!
VR - I wrote an incredibly long PM to someone describing my verbal strategy . . . I am hesitant to post it here because it is LONG . . . but oh well this thread is long already. I'll try to streamline it:
OK here's the email i sent someone else: (it's really long)
*****It's tough to say because I think I've always been naturally strong in VR type tests (I got an 11 on my first diag, and have ranged from 10-14 since that.) That said, I do think I have been improving. I also had EK101 but only did about four of them and stopped. I actually got my lowest VR score after I had been practicing the MOST- it's weird but to me anyway, it feels like the more you practice, the harder it gets. especially if you are getting increasingly nervous and self-doubting with each mediocre score.
the highest practice score I ever got (14) happened when my computer crashed in the middle of the section- so what happened? to be honest, i think it was a combination of me being pissed off, having an adrenaline rush, and to a point not caring (like, this test is already screwed, so who cares!) in addition, i definitely think you have to internalize what EK tells you and be aggressive when you read. Pretend you're trying to prove an idiot wrong. Imagine you're arguing with Dwight Schrute. Be pissy and look at every answer as having a flaw. If you can identify the three answers that have flaws, the last one should be the 'good enough' one. Don't look at an answer and say 'that seems kind of right.' look at them and say, "no, that answer is stupid because even though the passage DOES say X, it doesn't prove Y, which is what the questions is asking. **** you, answer." then use the strikeout. i love the strikeout
i also use the option of marking questions for review. mark any one you aren't 80-90% confident about. The ones you are confident about, you should be able to get through pretty quickly. Then you will have time to go back over the ones you weren't sure about. but ideally you wont mark TOO many, if you have more than 10 or so marked, you probably won't get to them all. oh, and this should be an obvious, but be sure to go over all the answers after you take a VR. you have to get inside your enemy's mind in order to defeat them! If you know all the dumb ways they are trying to trip you up, you can avoid those traps them next time you see them. one example is when an answer will quote something directly from the passage. you might think, 'totally, the passage explicitly said that, so it must be right.' BUT, if it is irrelevant to the QUESTION, it will be wrong! Doh. I fell for this one at the beginning, not anymore.
in general here is my tactic when i go through them-
i skim very briefly, like, just for 5 seconds at the language to see what boring topic i have to read next. government? literature? geology? art? great, just kill me now. I hate the art ones. anyway, then I skim the questions (again, really fast) just to see what's ahead. sometimes you'll see the answer to a question when you're reading, and you can stop real quick to answer that one. there's no law against that. then once youve read the whole passage, when you come back to that question, you'll either be reassured that you were right or realize it was wrong and you can change it, but usually it will be right. also, before i read the whole passage, i speed-read the last paragraph. i feel one of the worst things about VR passages is you get halfway through and start to wonder, WTF is this passage even ABOUT? reading the last paragraph won't always answer this, but at least when you start reading it from the beginning you have a vague idea of where it's going.
When i read the actual passage i slow down and read thoroughly. well, i read pretty fast, so all these tactics might become difficult if you don't. but if you do, these suggestions won't really waste a ton of time. i actually finished with about 6 min left on aamc10's verbal.
another thing that happened to me when i took aamc 10 is that the first passage, for me, was like . . . i dont know. i could not wrap my brain around it, i thought i was doomed. i tried to read it but i just couldn't focus at all so i best-guessed the questions and MOVED ON. once i had done a few of the easier ones, i felt warmed up, and i had enough time to come back to the first one at the end. and it seemed more clear and easier the second time i read it. if you're hitting a particular passage like a brick wall, make some intelligent but fast guesses and mark them so you can come back to it at the end. you only have my permission to do this for one passage though
slug through the rest. basically what im saying is if you are getting killed by one passage it IS okay to cut your losses and move on, but you MUST a)answer the questions first (and try to make the smartest guesses you can without wasting too much time) and b) do try to make an effort to come back to it. if you finish VR with 5-6 min left, thats enough to go back and reread the killer passage slowly and check it against the answers you've already chosen.
the one thing that makes verbal different that the other sections is that
ALL the answers are THERE. its not like PS where if you forgot a formula that you needed, you're SOL. in VR, they are there, you just have to be discerning enough to figure them out. but if you look hard enough, fast enough and smart enough,
you'll be able to find them. and dont get too stuck on any one strategy, either. not even EK would endorse all the advice i just gave you, but what worked for me is the fact that I . . . do what works for me. which involed skimming and skipping around and alternating between rushing and taking my time. find your balance. and again for emphasis- process of elimination is SO IMPORTANT. do NOT look at a question and try to find the best answer first. you need to look for the worst answers first and strike them out as fast as possible. then once you're down to two answers, your job isn't to figure out why the right one is right but why the wrong one is wrong. leaving you with the right one.
-also if you can get an Examkrackers 101 verbal passages book, i highly recommend it. it's good practice. take verbals with a stopwatch (i just used my ipod) and hit 'lap' every time you finish a passage. in general you should be able to do a passage in 8 min, but it varies so you'll probably have at least one hard one that takes 10 min and an easy one that takes 5 or 6.
oh and one more very important thing. in aamc practices, verbal passages have a search function where you can find a specific word. THE SEARCH FUNCTION IS NOT ON THE REAL THING! like a *******, i didn't know this. so use with caution.
BS - I am a biomedical graduate student, so i've been exposed to lots of intense upper level bio, research papers, etc. so i'm afraid i can't help you much here. although you don't 'NEED' to take anything more than Bio 1 and 2, that's not to say that taking additional classes won't help you. it obviously helped me! i almost feel like i had an unfair advantage having taken biochem, cell bio, immuno . . .
And as far as Orgo is concerned, I've only taken Orgo 1 (most schools will now accept Biochem in place of Orgo 2.) I highly recommend this! the EK book for orgo was nice and short and as far as i'm concerned it worked just fine. i also took it at a community college, so take that CC haters!
3) What materials you used for each section(Kaplan, TPR, Examkrackers, AAMC, etc)
All I used was EK. (EK complete set, Audio Osmosis and EK verbal 101.) I kinda feel like there's only so much content review you can do- EK is short and sweet. if you need to go more in depth than that, you must either a) really want a 40+ or b) did NOT learn the content well enough in the course. doing content review for MCAT prep is a huge drag if you're weak in the concepts. everyone says this but it's true- learn it well the first time, in the course, this will go a looooooong way.
4) Which practice tests did you use?
AAMC only. I skipped around and didn't take them in order. people say some are harder than others but im still not sure, i think it just depends what you know.
5) What was your undergraduate major?
Art. the only premed reqs i had done when i graduated were bio 1 and 2 and a semester of chem. when i decided to do this, i enrolled as a grad student and took the rest of my prereqs in evenings/ over the summers.
6) Any other tips you may have for those of us who still have this test lurking over us?
Practice tests ARE important but so is content review . . . if you don't know it, all the practice in the world won't help you! You should start with content review for a couple weeks, then take a practice test to gauge where you are. continue doing content review and practice exams. use the practice exams to identify your weak spots, focus on them, and your scores should improve. Again, my real PS score doesn't reflect that but at least in practices I was able to improve it 3-4 points.
7) How long did you study for the MCAT?
About a month hardcore. But I had audio osmosis for about 6 months prior to it and listened to it whenever i thought of it . . . in the car, wherever.
Don't make this mistake! 
Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions or if you need to talk at all.
