Am I on the right track?

[goblue102]

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I'm taking the MCAT on August 18th and I started my Princeton Review Course on May 10th. Since I started the course I have been keeping up with the homework by doing science passages in the TPRH Science Workbook and Verbal workbook. I am consistently doing simply okay on the passages (typically getting 2-3 questions wrong per passages of 7-8 questions) and I have done pretty bad on two full lengths that I've taken.

I took AAMC 9 (as recommended by my TPR course) before studying AT ALL and before my course started and I got a 21 (6PS 8VR 7BS)

I just took TPR Diagnostic 1 today (after completion of about 1/4 of the course) and scored a 22 (5PS 7VR 10BS)

I'm wondering if I'm on the right track and if I should start studying longer/harder or refine my studying habits. I'm aiming for at least a 32 on the real MCAT in August.

 

[quadomatic]

There's no reason to do AAMC tests midway through the course. If you do poorly on a section, it might be because you just haven't reviewed some set of material, and so your score is no indication of how well you would do on the real thing (assuming you would actually review all the material prior to the test).

 

[MDminded]

AAMC 9 is one of the tougher exams. Why you took it before any content review...I'm not sure.

Your diagnostic is going to be low. You haven't finished reviewing. Don't take it to heart. You'll see that general consensus on SDN is going to echo this statement.

Refine your studying and study more. 5 PS is pretty low, which means you've probably got some weak areas in formulas and you are probably intimidated by the Greek symbols. Just stick to the content review, figure out things on a conceptual basis, make relationships between concepts, and do as MANY passages and practice problems as you can.

I repeat - DO AS MANY PASSAGES AND PRACTICE PROBLEMS AS YOU CAN.

Your VR is an average starting point. Work on doing a little bit of verbal every day - at least 2 passages in 14 minutes.

Your BS looks great. Keep up the great work, and review whatever tripped you up in your practice exam.

I repeat - DO AS MANY PASSAGES AND PRACTICE PROBLEMS AS YOU CAN.

Talk to your Princeton instructor. You are paying them to be your resource through this period, so ask them what helped them in being successful.

Some people advise you take practice exams periodically through your studying, others say save it for last. Depends on you. Do you need to build up to the experience of a test that lasts for 5 hours? (How's your endurance - mine sucked, so I definitely had to build up to it. In this period, I used all my non-AAMC exams. Then towards the end, I burned through AAMCs.

The key to the practice FLs is review. I didn't know what that truly meant until now. Understand WHY you answered every correct and incorrect answer the way you did. If you got it wrong, why was it wrong? Were you tired? Did you understand the concept? Did you use the right logic to answer the question correctly? Were you halfway there to the answer? (Use SN2ed's guide to review for more questions that help you self-analyze in a healthy way. Search some of his threads and you'll find the treasure pot)

Hooooope that helps!

Good luck!