Never just memorize formulas for C/P. It's a waste of time. Understand what they're asking and the units. If you know the units you can solve almost any question. The mcat will trick you. They'll put extra variables in their question stem or passage. If you know the units on joules, watts, newtons, etc you'll be golden. You see straight through the extra variables. Believe me, there will be answers that include all variables and it will be tempting. If you know the units, the correct answer will be blatantly obvious. The mcat isn't too physics heavy anymore. Relate it to the body. Your principles are important. I think I had a couple questions on different principles of general chemistry and physics. I had 2 physics passages and a few discretes. Overall, I had maybe ~13 physics questions. Some I would argue are actually chemistry, but not according to the AAMC. Also, convert to scientific notation every time. Know logs and natural logs. If you divide by natural log and you get e^3 the answer is going be be somewhere between 8 and 27. Rarely will the mcat trick you here. They don't expect you to do that in your head, but they do expect you the be able to reason. Eh and free body diagrams are pretty important too. Just understanding newton's laws.
For chemistry, you have to understand your amino acids backwards and forwards. Not just the structure. What is the pKa of the side chain? What will happen at physiological pH? Which are charged? Which are polar? Which are non polar? The acronym I use is GALVIM (non-polar aliphatic), PFW (non-polar... some aromatic), NSTYQC (polar uncharged), DERKH (polar charged). Of the charged, at physiological pH RKH will be positively charged. DE will be negatively charged. Think about active site interactions. At physiological pH, which amino acid in the ligand would likely interact with an active site that is rich in Lysines? Well, it's probably gonna be aspartic or glutamate. I'd say it's worth knowing basic principles of gen chem like periodic table trends, what each quantum number means, nuclear chemistry, where each type of radiation falls on the UV VIS spectrum and their relative wavelengths/frequencies. Know your carbohydrates and the bond interactions, understand naming of compounds and counting of carbons. I feel like there's so much to understand that I can't write everything. Those are just some of the things I can recall right away off the top of my head. Not a ton of orgo. I had one question that had two compounds, and then the our answer choices were all 6 step mechanisms. I laughed and just picked an answer. I don't have time for a 6 step mechanism on test day. Neither do you or anyone else. It's just there to throw you off and mess up your timing.
Best of luck in studying! If you wanna chat about more stuff you can PM me.
