Any other highly recommended PCAT guides?

[pharmguy77]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Just finished Dr. Collin and it was good for conditioning and time management. Before that I did Kaplan 2009 and Read cliffnotes for orgo and biology. Is there anything else to help?

 

[BadgerPharm]

Just finished Dr. Collin and it was good for conditioning and time management. Before that I did Kaplan 2009 and Read cliffnotes for orgo and biology. Is there anything else to help?

As far as recommendations for study material/tips, the 99%tile thread contains a plethora of information. I highly suggest checking it out.

I also used Doc C's material and read bits and pieces of Kaplan's bio and I certainly fared well. The pearson practice tests are excellent means to gauge performance.

 

[pharmguy77]

Hey thanx a bunch, i'll definitely check out Pearson.

 

[DH1987]

Yeah...definitely go through everything in the Collins packet - particularly the Biology, Chemistry, and Quantitative sections. Basically, what I did was study Collins for the three sections that I've mentioned above, then used Pearson to test myself. According to Pearson, I still had many weak spots in Biology, so I used Kaplan to help me patch up areas in Biology that I was weak on.

If you're like me, and have never taken Statistics (my Pharm. school doesn't require it), I recommend looking up terms on the internet such as "Standard deviation", "box and whisker plots", "median/mode/mean", "variance", etc.

For Reading Comprehension, I really don't have any good advice, because this is the one section of the test that I bombed. There are some 99%ers here who recommend "ExamKrackers 101 Passages in MCAT Verbal Reasoning". Others recommend using the Pearson PCAT Practice Tests. I did both (though only for about a few days) and scored a 45 on it. But I was also mentally drained (I didn't get to take my break due to odd circumstances), and maybe if I spent more time on it I would have done better.

For verbal reasoning, I didn't spend a lot of time on this, because I only had two months and wanted to focus more on my Chemistry and Biology, which I felt were my biggest weaknesses. The best way to prepare for this is to improve your vocabulary. If you think you've got time to improve your vocabulary, then I'd recommend this site: http://www.soundkeepers.com/GRE/

Anyway, following this plan, and studying for a total of about two months, between 4-8 hours a day, depending on if I had to work or not, these were my percentile rankings:

Verbal Reasoning: 82
Biology: 99
Reading Comprehension: 45
Quantitative Ability: 83
Chemistry: 93
Composite: 92

I also had a 2.9 overall GPA before studying for the test, and had never taken Calc II, Statistics, or OChem II. It had also been several years since I took some of the classes that included the test material. If you have a high GPA and have recently taken all of the classes, you might have an easier time reviewing, because you already knew the material well before you even began studying for the PCAT.

Anyway, good luck!!!

 

[chemtopharm]

I recommend the "Organic Chemistry as a Second Language" series, good stuff. 👍

There's also one for GenChem, but Collins covers that pretty well.