Advice for increasing my pcat score the second time around

[gzahalan]

Hi everyone,
I recently wrote the Jan 09 PCAT and my percentile rank scores were as follows:

Verbal Ability: 45
Biology: 76
Reading Comprehension: 57
Quantitative Ability: 67
Chemistry: 81
Composite: 69

Writing:
(a) Conventions of language = 4.0
(b) Problem Solving = 3.5

I studied for approximately a month and a half every day and I did well on the practice PCAT tests (from Pearson, Kaplan, McGraw-Hill, etc.). I am applying to the University of Toronto with these scores. It is the first year that UofT requires the PCAT and I believe that these scores are not as competitive as I'd like them to be. Hence, I'm writing the August 09 PCAT and need some advice for boosting my scores. Does anyone have any other suggested material, besides Kaplan, McGraw-Hill, and Barron's books? For any of those who did their PCAT over again and saw a substantial increase, what were your methods and do you have advice for me?

Thank you for your time.

-gzahalan.

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[gzahalan]

To Add: I also purchased the Orgoman's PCAT destroyer book.

 

[baker89]

gzahalan, I also applied to UofT for September 2009. I did quite well on the PCAT and the reason is, I did lots of practise questions. I used Kaplan, Barron's and Cliff's Notes. I found Kaplan was lacking in the math and orgo chemistry part, but had really good practise questions. Barron's was way too easy...I wouldn't recommend using this in the future. Cliff's Notes had 5 full sample exams, with explanations to all the answers. I found this book really good. Also, I bought a bunch of questions (~500) from this site: http://www.testprepresearch.com/pcat/. If I remember right, the package from this site costed around $20.

I find it just good to get your head jogging a little bit and just do lots of questions quickly, but correctly. That is what the PCAT people are looking for.

I hope this helps!