Anxiety doing C/P Calculations

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Rei02sDinnerParty

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Hi gang! I was wondering if I could get some feedback/advice on next steps. I'm preparing for the August 5th exam and I'm really struggling with the math involved with the chem/phys section. EK FLEs 1 and 2 have really killed me here and even when I review my answers, I often don't see how I could be able to apply those formulas and the math they involve in the limited time-span offered.

So to me it's a combination of A) figuring out which formulas get me what I want, and B) doing the associated calculations, confidently and quickly.

Thx fam :'(

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takes practice. With practice, comes shortcuts to solving problems.
doing well on physics and gen chemistry on mcat takes practice questions..and a lot of them. Buy Princeton Review Hyperlearning Science Workbook or if you are really struggling buy BR physics and gen chem books and do all the practice passages. After you are done with these passages, go buy the qbanks from aamc and do all of those questions. I guarantee you will improve. I am taking the mcat on aug 5, and I know what you mean (even though i have most of the equations memorized). I am going to be doing A LOT of practice before my exam.

Also btw most exams I know of are not heavy on calculations or calculations that take a lot of time. Did EK fls have a lot of calculations on PS? I am actually looking to buy them myself.
 
Look through the "official" MCAT threads for recent dates and see how many people right after the test complained about challenging calculations on their actual MCAT. If you find five people at SDN who felt that way this year (January through June exams), I would be surprised.

Rounding, approximating, logs, exponents, and ratio recognition all will come with practice. If the answer choices on what you are studying from are unrealistically close, then don't fret too much. If you follow common sense rules when rounding and estimating, all of the questions should have a clear best choice.
 
I would suggest that you do this.

Look at some practice problems and write the numbers out how it should be set up. Now once you see how the numbers are set up, try rounding and and don't use a calculator. Look at the answer choices. If they are spread apart (which most likely they will be), the answer you have should be fairly close to the test's answer choice. Try practicing with scientific notations (2.3 x 10^-5), converting decimal #'s to fractions (0.33--> 1/3), logs (log(0.02)/(0.05). Make up numbers off the top of your head and arrange them in difficult ways. Ex. (0.082)(273)/(9.3 x 10^-3)(1.4) and just practice. That's really the only way to get better and do them faster.
 
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