Content Review vs. Practice

[tvbbnumber41]

Just out of curiosity I wanted to see if you guys had similar experience. For a few weeks I found myself trying to read through all the books, going over every single topic trying to memorize everything. It was honestly driving me insane and I pretty much gave up. I went pretty hard on biochem, but everything else I skimmed.

I focused 80% into practice questions and exams and I noticed my scores have risen significantly the past week. In addition, I noticed that C/P and B/B have MOST of their questions relating to a passage that really does not require background information, but more so familiarity with the content.

Even with psychology I was trying to memorize the 300 page Khan academy, and found myself forgetting everything a few days out, so I started to take practice tests and learned that there are few topics of high yield that I should focus on and everything else is questions that you can infer from the passage or from word stems.

Am I going crazy? It kind of worries me to keep reading about how people who get high scores read over multiple different exam preparation books, some going as far as reading course textbooks. To me that seems like a waste of time, but I could be missing something here. I wanted to see if anyone had an opinion, or maybe I'm not seeing something?

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[pms_testosterone]

Have a superficial knowledge of all the topics on the test so that you're not surprised by anything.
Detailed knowledge is not necessary, except for a very few exceptions (e.g. amino acid structures).

 

[NextStepTutor_3]

@tvbbnumber41, in general I completely agree with you. Too many students try to learn absolutely every detail from their content books before moving on to practice, and this is both a waste of time and a bad idea. Spending a month or more on content review alone means that you review MCAT science content without having an idea what the test/questions/passages actually feel like, and it tends to result in hyperfocusing on very small details rather than foundations and overarching concepts (which are the bread and butter of the MCAT). In my experience, students who do this spend a ton of time during their first 1-2 months learning the material, but often still score the same or lower on their first FL in comparison to their diagnostic. Then that tends to lead to enormous frustration.

And yes, reading college textbooks is also generally a really bad idea (except in extremely specific circumstances, and with the possible exception of psych/soc textbooks for some students). College courses focus on the nitty-gritty details far more than the MCAT does, and this leads to the same obsession with detail rather than underlying science foundations.

You definitely still need a balance of background knowledge and passage/strategy practice, but I recommend almost completely integrating the two. Keep doing what you're doing with practice questions and tests, but make sure you keep track of the reasons you miss each question. This way, it can alert you to potential weak areas where you may need to return to your prep books.

On your final point - it's rarely advisable to go through multiple prep books on the same subject. Some students do this because they fear that one book might be missing some points, so they'll get those points from the other book. In some cases, this may be true - but you'll end up seeing a much more massive amount of information that is presented in both books. If you alternatively use one book set and supplement it with tons of practice, you're likely to see any little points that you may have overlooked and practice your reasoning at the same time.

Good luck

 

[Swagster]

I have to disagree with the above poster about textbooks. They can be extremely helpful for reviewing material. What I found most useful in textbooks were the applications and anectdotal information. They can be a helpful resource for managing the material and because I was familiar with their layout, I was able to speed through the sections I needed. I would not recommend textbooks for everything, but I found my biochemistry course reader and my genetics book to be highly beneficial.

As for prep materials, review from one but practice from at least two. There are many threads here about what are the best, but for my money I found TBR and EK to be the winning combo for all of the sciences and EK/TPR the winning combo for CARS.