Changed MCAT Date From September to January! Advice Needed

[PrinceElvis97]

Hello All,

So I am currently an incoming senior at a public institution in CA. Long story short, I have been studying for the MCAT since mid June of my summer break in the hopes of taking the September MCAT. I have been predominantly using TBR books along with Kaplan. Early on in my studying I did many practice passages from the TBR books along with reading the content. However midway through my studying, in late July, I realized that I was making a very slow progress so I made the decision to just read and get through the content and focus on passages and practice questions at the end.

As my test date approached I finished going through the content but I realized that I forgot a ton of information especially in gen chem and physics. Obviously the mistake I made was spending too much time on content review and not enough on practice passages. However, maybe I am just a slow learner because doing both took a long time for me.

Anyway, I am determined to take the MCAT in January and I don't want my studying min the summer to go to waste. For the rest of my break (until september 27th) should i just focus on going through the content again and make sure my foundation is solid in everything? Then once school begins I can focus mainly on doing a TON of practice passages along w/ exams?

For anyone who was in the same boat as me, how did you plan out your schedule to study during the school year? Considering that my foundation will hopefully be good w/ the studying I did this summer, can I pull this off? My schedule will be 13 units and I will try to limit my extracurriculars, also I will have SAT,SUN, MON totally free...

Should I try to spend an hour each day on the MCAT or load up and do 4 hours on SUN and 4 hours on Monday? My plan was every other week I would take a full length exam and 12 week quarter so I can get through 6 exams and then I will have 2 weeks of winter break followed by the test date a week or so later. So in all i should be able to do 9 exams.

Thanks for your help!Also i am not working and in total I will probably only do like 5-8 hours of EC'S a week.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Hello All,
So I am currently an incoming senior at a public institution in CA. Long story short, I have been studying for the MCAT since mid June of my summer break in the hopes of taking the September MCAT. I have been predominantly using TBR books along with Kaplan. Early on in my studying I did many practice passages from the TBR books along with reading the content. However midway through my studying, in late July, I realized that I was making a very slow progress so I made the decision to just read and get through the content and focus on passages and practice questions at the end.

As my test date approached I finished going through the content but I realized that I forgot a ton of information especially in gen chem and physics. Obviously the mistake I made was spending too much time on content review and not enough on practice passages. However, maybe I am just a slow learner because doing both took a long time for me.

Anyway, I am determined to take the MCAT in January and I don't want my studying min the summer to go to waste. For the rest of my break (until september 27th) should i just focus on going through the content again and make sure my foundation is solid in everything? Then once school begins I can focus mainly on doing a TON of practice passages along w/ exams?

For anyone who was in the same boat as me, how did you plan out your schedule to study during the school year? Considering that my foundation will hopefully be good w/ the studying I did this summer, can I pull this off? My schedule will be 13 units and I will try to limit my extracurriculars, also I will have SAT,SUN, MON totally free...

Should I try to spend an hour each day on the MCAT or load up and do 4 hours on SUN and 4 hours on Monday? My plan was every other week I would take a full length exam and 12 week quarter so I can get through 6 exams and then I will have 2 weeks of winter break followed by the test date a week or so later. So in all i should be able to do 9 exams.

Thanks for your help!Also i am not working and in total I will probably only do like 5-8 hours of EC'S a week.

This is just so uncanny, but I think there is the perfect person for you to ask here at SDN. Literally, they are in your exact situation. You can find their post by clicking here. I have posted most of it below for you to read and compare. Hopefully they can share their plan with you, although they may have decided not to repeat the MCAT given their good score from before. I think you should read their post and then if you feel they are in the same situation, you might be able to PM them for advice.

Hello Everyone,
Please bear with me on this post as I'm in a bit of a quandary. I am an incoming senior at a public institution in California. ... in hopes of taking the MCAT in late September. However, I don't know where I went wrong with my planning because currently I still have about 10% content review to finish. Furthermore, I feel like I forgot many gen chem/physics concepts that I read during the initial stages of my review this summer.

I want to postpone my MCAT to the January date, and wanted to know how you recommend I break down my studying because I will be in school. I will be taking 17 units, and I will have Sat, Sun, Mon and possibly Friday off without any classes.

Should I spend the rest of my summer break (until september 27th) just drilling down and perfecting my content including the earlier stuff I studied, just so I feel 100% comfortable. Then once school starts, I can mostly focus on doing review problems ( which I didn't do much of this summer) while sparingly reviewing concepts over the weekend? Please advice me on what I should aim to finish of by the end of this summer, and what my focus should be in the next 3-1/2 months before the January MCAT. I just don't want my studying this summer to go to waste.

Thank you

 

[Examkrackers]

Given that you said your uneasiness stemmed from content gaps, I would say that now that you have more time to work with you should focus on shoring up the content areas that you were weak on, then once the fall semester begins you should focus on drilling practice questions. One thing you could do now though is to make sure you do questions relevant to the content you are going over, using whatever resource you are using to ensure comprehension. Make sure to allow adequate adjustment time to AAMC's official style of questions and to adjust your test-taking strategy appropriately -- you want to make sure you are most prepared to take the test that you will actually see on exam day!

In terms of your actual day-by-day breakdown, I think this is dependent a great deal on your personal study habits that have gotten you this far. Are you a marathon studier, a little-bit-everyday studier, or somewhere in between? Will one strategy or the other cause you to burn out?

Be careful not to completely limit your extracurriculars and become a shut-in that only studies- Schools will want to see consistency with your involvement, and also your activities and pasttimes will hopefully keep you sane during this stressful period!