forego content review in favor of practice?

[teenyfish]

I'm working full-time, studying for the MCAT. I put in about 20-25 hours per week of studying - mostly at night and on the weekends. I'm about 3 years removed from most of the pre-reqs, but much of the content is at least familiar to me. I'm planning on testing in late January, early February, and have about 3 weeks of content review down but my progress is slow. I'm taking notes and I don't know if it's the most efficient way to do this. Would it be better to just start working on problems, and review the content as it comes up? I'm just worried that I will miss some areas.

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[Prometheus123]

I'm working full-time, studying for the MCAT. I put in about 20-25 hours per week of studying - mostly at night and on the weekends. I'm about 3 years removed from most of the pre-reqs, but much of the content is at least familiar to me. I'm planning on testing in late January, early February, and have about 3 weeks of content review down but my progress is slow. I'm taking notes and I don't know if it's the most efficient way to do this. Would it be better to just start working on problems, and review the content as it comes up? I'm just worried that I will miss some areas.

To answer your question, yes.

 

[theonlytycrane]

Yes- start with the AAMC question packs and move into the section banks. Also work through the khan academy psych/soc and verbal sections.

 

[Gilakend]

I think what material you use will depend on how far out you are from test day.

 

[joe_1395]

I don't think you should start on the AAMC MATERIAL YET, Try getting other materials to practice the content that you are reviewing. If you are testing in January, I would start AAMC material around november (Question Banks, CARS Packs, SB) so you have enough time to review and assess what type of mistakes you are making. You should take AAMC FL1/2 in december if you are planning on testing in January.

 

[teenyfish]

Thanks - I had a question about using AAMC material because I didn't want to "waste" it - but I might try and grab some practice tests and work through those. I just don't want to waste any materials.

 

[Altius Premier Tutor]

Yes. Emphasize practice over content review--but you can't get away with neglecting content review entirely. Also, content review is usually thought of by students as memorizing a bunch of facts and formulas--which is nearly worthless. You need to study content with the goal of understanding basic science in a broad, conceptual way. You need to be able to understand how and why things happen, be able to visualize or draw the process out, and be able to teach it back in its most basic form to someone else. CONCEPTUAL CONTENT REVIEW = THE ONLY CONTENT REVIEW YOU SHOULD DO.

As for AAMC materials, YES, I would absolutely start them early. A huge majority of the upset, struggling, test-day-surprised, and eventually low-scoring students I encounter on SDN don't figure out what a real AAMC MCAT passage or question ought to look/feel like until very close to the test when they finally break them out, or worse, until test day when they say "What the heck was that? That wasn't like my study materials!"

The good news is, you can BOTH do AAMC materials early on AND save them for their predictive value near the end. Just stick to the AAMC Section Bank and the AAMC Sample Test (unscored) for early on. Find the best third-party exams and do them in the middle. Save AAMC1 and AAMC2 (both scored) for closer to the exam.

 

[teenyfish]

Thanks! I plan on finishing the content that I'm sketchy on in October, and then do practice Nov-January. Hope to complete 8 FL and the qpacks and section banks during that time. I just feel like the content review for me is useless unless I'm applying it to something.