Advice for Prep for 3rd MCAT

[meddy15]

Hey guys,

I am taking the MCAT for the third time and the first two times did not go well as I have thought. So, obviously i need a lot of help. I plan on taking it next may. So, I am deciding how to prepare for this. First time, I took Kaplan. Second time, I studied on my own. I always wanted to take Princeton Review and I am thinking of taking it this time. Is it worth it?? Do they have online tests and good in book material??? For verbal, I also plan on buying Examkrackers 101 passages and practice hard for it. I know I can do it. I am hoping for a 8-10 point improvement, is it possible??? I think it is, i hope. Any advice would be greatful on how to improve. Any one else experienced the same thing I did, let me know your stories. Please give me some hope!!!

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[durrrr]

I think just trying random prep courses or different books isn't the best solution.

You need to sit down and think about why you aren't scoring as well as you can in each section. And then from there, work out a solution.

 

[RaVen777]

4 in VR... It sounds like you are having a hard time with it. Is English your native language?

 

[SN2ed]

Don't give up and do as many practice problems as possible.

 

[Bananas Foster]

Hey guys,

I am taking the MCAT for the third time and the first two times did not go well as I have not broke into the 20's yet. I got an 8 in BS, 6 PS, and a horrible 4 VR. So, obviously i need a lot of help. I plan on taking it next may. So, I am deciding how to prepare for this. First time, I took Kaplan. Second time, I studied on my own. I always wanted to take Princeton Review and I am thinking of taking it this time. Is it worth it?? Do they have online tests and good in book material??? For verbal, I also plan on buying Examkrackers 101 passages and practice hard for it. I know I can do it. I am hoping for a 8-10 point improvement, is it possible??? I think it is, i hope. Any advice would be greatful on how to improve. Any one else experienced the same thing I did, let me know your stories. Please give me some hope!!!

Now, I may be incorrect but doesn't Kaplan offer some sort of higher score guarantee? Couldn't you have kept studying with them for free? Why did you choose to study on your own the second time?

You really need to take close look at how you're studying, and what's impacting your performance. I would actually suggest talking to your professors, they might have a good handle on where a good score for you might be and what some handicaps you need to address. YES, 10 point improvement is possible (and necessary) but obviously something fundamental needs to change.

 

[SN2ed]

The poster could have disliked Kaplan and chose not to take them up on their offer. Though I think the Kaplan class is completely worthless, the material they give you is nice.

 

[FloridaSun]

My advice would be not to take the MCAT until your practice test scores are ~where you want them.

 

[SansNom]

I agree with the above posters. I think that you really need to sit down and reassess what you're having trouble with. One thing is if you're not a native english speaker you may need to put in more time on VR (I suppose that'd be true even if you are a native speaker at this point). But, what I'd say is if you taken some time to really plan out how you're going to approach this thing, you have so much time you can definitely kick it's butt.

I'll tell you when I decided to re-take I spent about a day going through all my old Kaplan practice exams and materials and writing down an outline of the most important stuff (stuff I was getting totally wrong), concepts I was still shaky on etc. and it really strengthened my planning and execution.

The other thing I would suggest is that if you don't do organizing your time well, you'll get crushed if you leave it till the last minute. If you are that type, take a course as you've been doing, but actually make sure you do all the pre-work and homework; if you really want to be a doctor you need to make that commitment that everything else comes after you've finished the MCAT class pre-work and homework and practice. Anyway, I took the Kaplan course again and it really helped me not because of the classes but because of the materials and the fact that I had set timings where "ok I need to have this much done by next Orgo class etc." Hope that helped and seriously look at the 30+ MCAT scores thread, it has a ton of helpful advice. Good luck