Full time job and MCAT studying

[MedGrl@2022]

How are you supposed to study for MCATs with a full time job? How much time should you set aside a day? The reason I am asking is because some of you are saying to study 6-7+ hours a day and I am wondering if that is even feasible when you have a full time job

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[BrokenGlass]

How are you supposed to study for MCATs with a full time job? How much time should you set aside a day? The reason I am asking is because some of you are saying to study 6-7+ hours a day and I am wondering if that is even feasible when you have a full time job

It's tough for sure. Unless you already have a pretty good understanding of the material, it's hard to do it in 2 months with a full-time job. I am sure some people can pull it off, but more often than not it takes more than 2 months (I am assuming you are aiming for August MCAT) to prepare for the test if you have a full-time job.

Keep a positive attitude and maintain your focus on the damn test. It's gonna be tough but not impossible.

 

[MedGrl@2022]

It's tough for sure. Unless you already have a pretty good understanding of the material, it's hard to do it in 2 months with a full-time job. I am sure some people can pull it off, but more often than not it takes more than 2 months (I am assuming you are aiming for August MCAT) to prepare for the test if you have a full-time job.

Keep a positive attitude and maintain your focus on the damn test. It's gonna be tough but not impossible.

I am aiming for the January exam... I do not have a full time job yet... but I need one to pay back student loans from my bachleor's degree... I have taken the MCATs last august and did horribly... i think i may lack on both content and practice... I am real nervous because I don't want to be horrible

 

[BrokenGlass]

I am aiming for the January exam... I do not have a full time job yet... but I need one to pay back student loans from my bachleor's degree... I have taken the MCATs last august and did horribly... i think i may lack on both content and practice... I am real nervous because I don't want to be horrible

Then you have plenty of time. And if you are not ready in January, you can take it in April or May (since it's for the 2009 application cycle). Whether or not you can study 5 hours a day with a full-time job depends almost entirely on how bad you want to get a good score. I work full-time and it's not easy to study for the test after work, but it's also not impossible. Bottom line: how bad do you want it and how much are you willing to sacrifice for it?

 

[BrokenGlass]

How are you supposed to study for MCATs with a full time job? How much time should you set aside a day? The reason I am asking is because some of you are saying to study 6-7+ hours a day and I am wondering if that is even feasible when you have a full time job

Also, it depends on the job. Some people work full-time, but they can devote a lot of time to reading MCAT prep books and doing practice questions at work because they work in a lab for instance or in the library. If you can get a job like that, it would help.

 

[AppleseedCast]

I will be doing something similar. I will probably retake (will know for sure in a few days), and I am currently working over 40 hours a week. I am shooting for August so it will be difficult, sure.. but sacrifices must be made sometimes. Best of luck.

 

[Nikki2002]

I was very fortunate in that I was able to cut my hours way back during the summers when i was studying. it would be very difficult to study for the mcat while having to work full time...


OP--maybe there is something you can do with your loans to decrease the payments so that you could work less and focus on the jan. mcat. If you haven't already, call the loan company and find out all of your options.

 

[The Kahuna]

I just decided to take the September MCAT, so I changed my full time position to 20 hrs/week. I'm still on the full time schedule for this week, and I've only been able to study 4 hrs/day max after work thus far. Go part time.

 

[sehnsucht]

How are you supposed to study for MCATs with a full time job? How much time should you set aside a day? The reason I am asking is because some of you are saying to study 6-7+ hours a day and I am wondering if that is even feasible when you have a full time job

I studied starting January for the May 31st MCAT and basically did nothing but MCAT related stuff until exam day. I also had a couple classes but nothing too bad. Scheduling started getting tight around the end of the sem in early may but I just had to adjust my weekends accordingly to study for finals and still have an hour or two to work on MCAT stuff.

Studying for the MCAT required a lot of planning because I needed to cover everything for a thorough review. I was rusty on a lot of the concepts, you see. So to maximize my study time, I bought Ek Audio Oasis and listened to the entire series from Janury till May. My car's CD changer only had EK audio CDs in it and I listened to the lessons to and from work. My commute to work is about an hour each way so I was able to make use of my time well. Evenings were reserved for reading my TPR Hyperlearning and Nova Physics books. I read a little of each book every night and did every exercise in the workbooks. After I was done with those, I moved on to my AAMC practice tests and I did all of those until I nailed my timing down pat. I sometimes did 2 full length exams a week if work wasn't too heavy, one if I had a lot of experiments to run for my research projects.

 

[SpartanBlueJay2]

I also started studying for the 5/31 MCAT in January. I was at the tail end of my research-based master's program at the time and was in the lab 40-60 hrs/week. Between January and May I probably averaged 2-3 hours of studying a day, but there were some days I didn't study at all and then I would study 5-6 hrs on Saturdays and Sundays. I finished my master's experiments in April and started a full-time research tech job, in which I also work 40-60 hrs/wk, plus I also went back to volunteering 5 hrs on Saturdays. Even though I wasn't studying 6 hours every day, I definitely was burned out by May. I didn't study bio much since I've taken alot of grad bio classes and taught grad anatomy and physiology, so I guess that saved me some study time. I spent alot of time on physics and organic chem, and a good amount of time on verbal (probably should have spent more time on verbal). I won't know until a week from today what my score is, but I felt decent about the sciences, but lousy about the verbal, so we'll see. Overall, I think 6 hrs/day is overkill if you're studying over several months.