Has anyone noticed this when studying for the mcat? Solution?

[Kemosabe]

---

Members do not see this ad.

There are a lot of little details that are simple to understand once you figure them out, but very few resources explain them clearly, and knowing these little details or missing one little piece of information can make a pretty sizable difference in your mcat score. Like when I took my first mcat a few months ago I guarantee that not knowing a few details in the biosci section which were easy to get once I learned them afterwards cost me a point or two.

Anyone else notice this and what is the solution? I'm currently having this issue with the physiology section of the mcat. I spent a good 5 hrs studying physiology of the respiratory system going between books, google, and khan academy because there were a lot of simple things I'm supposed to know that just weren't explained clearly in any of the resources. What is a solution to this issue and what are some resources that explain things very clearly? I'm mainly having this issue with physiology though I can easily imagine having it with psych.

I feel like if you know enough background information and can integrate it well you're almost guaranteed to do well on most of the sections except the verbal type section.

 

[efle]

I'm surprised by this, the prep company books did a pretty good job of briefly touching on everything you're supposed to know for the old PS and BS. What did you find you needed to know that was missing from prep books?

 

[Kemosabe]

I'm surprised by this, the prep company books did a pretty good job of briefly touching on everything you're supposed to know for the old PS and BS. What did you find you needed to know that was missing from prep books?

lots of little details that have come back to haunt me. Things like UV/Vis Spectroscopy, clear concise things about what causes inhalation and exhalation, little details about physiology, anatomy, and hormones that sort of stuff. It's really frustrated me.

 

[efle]

lots of little details that have come back to haunt me. Things like UV/Vis Spectroscopy, clear concise things about what causes inhalation and exhalation, little details about physiology, anatomy, and hormones that sort of stuff. It's really frustrated me.

Odd, I distinctly recall being annoyed that I had to memorize all that out of Examkracker Bio Review. At any rate I imagine switching between a bunch of sources can't be very effective, just pick one solid review company and stick with the one?

 

[DrHart]

While I don't think I could find a ton of examples to support this, I feel the same way. I guess it's more like... in general, the review books move very quickly through the material - and they probably have to in order to fit so much information in the book. But there are tidbits here and there that seem to be very important. The best example that comes to mind is the blood buffering system for biochem. If you don't have a complete understanding of pH, diffusible gasses, enzyme kinetics, le chatlier's principle, enzyme regulation, etc. etc. even misunderstanding just one of these aspects can lead to incorrect assumptions/answers.

One thing I noticed about the AAMC practice test was that if you were forced to make a decision (for example, whether a substance is an acid or base), this decision would influence other questions/answers - question stems of which were not very useful in gleaning any more insight. So if you chose wrong, it wasn't just one mistake, it was two or three

 

[efle]

While I don't think I could find a ton of examples to support this, I feel the same way. I guess it's more like... in general, the review books move very quickly through the material - and they probably have to in order to fit so much information in the book. But there are tidbits here and there that seem to be very important. The best example that comes to mind is the blood buffering system for biochem. If you don't have a complete understanding of pH, diffusible gasses, enzyme kinetics, le chatlier's principle, enzyme regulation, etc. etc. even misunderstanding just one of these aspects can lead to incorrect assumptions/answers.

One thing I noticed about the AAMC practice test was that if you were forced to make a decision (for example, whether a substance is an acid or base), this decision would influence other questions/answers - question stems of which were not very useful in gleaning any more insight. So if you chose wrong, it wasn't just one mistake, it was two or three

They often use a set of questions of different degrees of difficulty to test your knowledge of something, like a basic (pun intended), moderately difficult and legit hard question about pH. If you have some misunderstanding at the fundamental level about pH then it costs you a lot

 

[Kemosabe]

Odd, I distinctly recall being annoyed that I had to memorize all that out of Examkracker Bio Review. At any rate I imagine switching between a bunch of sources can't be very effective, just pick one solid review company and stick with the one?

You sure? bc I don't remember seeing details about UV/Vis spectroscopy in that at all. What about terpenes?

 

[efle]

You sure? bc I don't remember seeing details about UV/Vis spectroscopy in that at all. What about terpenes?

UV Vis and Terpenes were both in my books. I'm pretty sure the odds of Beer's law appearing is far far higher than terpene stuff and Beer's should definitely be in any set of review books

 

[DrHart]

They often use a set of questions of different degrees of difficulty to test your knowledge of something, like a basic (pun intended), moderately difficult and legit hard question about pH. If you have some misunderstanding at the fundamental level about pH then it costs you a lot

say for example you are asked to calculate a pH using the HH equation. You can only do this if you jump through a couple other hoops to determine [HA] or [A-] <-- say this is moderately difficult to do, for the sake of argument. You miscalculate and now your value leads you to believe that the substance is basic, when in fact it is actually acidic.
The following question two questions are gen chem and biochem and both can only be answered correctly if you assume the substance is acidic. Even though you have a good understanding of pH, the ideas/concepts behind the following two questions, you get them wrong based on your initial miscalculation on a moderately difficult problem.
It isn't necessarily about a fundamental misunderstanding of a concept, but rather the skewed result (missing 3 questions for the price of 1). I've come across this a time or two on the AAMC practice test. I guess it's just part of the game.

 

[efle]

say for example you are asked to calculate a pH using the HH equation. You can only do this if you jump through a couple other hoops to determine [HA] or [A-] <-- say this is moderately difficult to do, for the sake of argument. You miscalculate and now your value leads you to believe that the substance is basic, when in fact it is actually acidic.
The following question two questions are gen chem and biochem and both can only be answered correctly if you assume the substance is acidic. Even though you have a good understanding of pH, the ideas/concepts behind the following two questions, you get them wrong based on your initial miscalculation on a moderately difficult problem.
It isn't necessarily about a fundamental misunderstanding of a concept, but rather the skewed result (missing 3 questions for the price of 1). I've come across this a time or two on the AAMC practice test. I guess it's just part of the game.

I think they consider pH calculation using HH to be part of fundamental pH understanding, just like you need to correctly use some of the basic physics equations to answer followups. But yeah, they can punish you a lot for small gaps in knowledge too, like randomly having one of the toughest passages be on a subject you're weak in. Or, if you're at the way high end of the distribution like 13+ verbal or 14+ sciences, getting a random single more question right or wrong starts to be worth a full point on the scoring curve. It's all part of the stupid, stupid game.

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

This is why I have told people that the difference between knowing "a lot" of the content and knowing "all" of the content is that you are basically taking an entirely different test. If you can't immediately find an answer to a question, you don't ever have to think "maybe I don't actually know it," instead you know that you learned every concept so you can immediately get to work thinking about different cognitive approaches to the problem that may allow you to solve it.

 

[Kemosabe]

This is why I have told people that the difference between knowing "a lot" of the content and knowing "all" of the content is that you are basically taking an entirely different test. If you can't immediately find an answer to a question, you don't ever have to think "maybe I don't actually know it," instead you know that you learned every concept so you can immediately get to work thinking about different cognitive approaches to the problem that may allow you to solve it.

Learning everything is what I've been working to do so I don't run into this issue, but it's just about the most daunting task possible, as there's so much depth to the material, even though the scope for a lot of topics may appear superficially small. How would you recommend going about this and how did you go about this? If I were to just follow the amcas outline I'd have to say there's a lot of material they implicitly expect us to know that may not be mentioned in it. I've been using multiple books and multiple resources and have been working on the most extensive content review I've ever done, but it always seems like there's just enough I don't know to affect my score. I'd really like to hit a point where I could reason through most of the material I haven't encountered without being left realizing "this is really simple if I just would have memorized ___" bc that's what makes it one of the trickiest tests around imo.

 

[CaliforniaDreamer]

Learning everything is what I've been working to do so I don't run into this issue, but it's just about the most daunting task possible, as there's so much depth to the material, even though the scope for a lot of topics may appear superficially small. How would you recommend going about this and how did you go about this? If I were to just follow the amcas outline I'd have to say there's a lot of material they implicitly expect us to know that may not be mentioned in it. I've been using multiple books and multiple resources and have been working on the most extensive content review I've ever done, but it always seems like there's just enough I don't know to affect my score. I'd really like to hit a point where I could reason through most of the material I haven't encountered without being left realizing "this is really simple if I just would have memorized ___" bc that's what makes it one of the trickiest tests around imo.

I can tell you what I did for the old test, although obviously it won't all apply to the new test. The new test doesn't really have the depth of resources, nor the confidence in those resources that the old test did. I basically only used TPR textbooks, online portal, and the hyper-learning text. I mainly studied Chem and physics (I was a bio major). I only did a couple verbal passages for practice the entire time, if you aren't good at verbal I have no idea how you can improve, other people probably have strategies for that. I did not read all the textbooks, but I did review them and I did read everything I had the slightest chance of not fully understanding. I did thousands of practice problems, and studied all the concepts contained within them after I was done. I only used one TPR full length, I thought it was pretty useless compared to the AAMC ones which seemed much easier. My TPR FL score was the lowest I ever received (7 points lower than the score I got before I started studying on AAMC 10). My AAMC FL average was pretty much exactly what I got on the real thing. I spent the summer studying, not very hard either, just a comfortable pace.

I narrowed down concepts using the AAMC concept list and my growing knowledge of the material. I went over every problem I missed. I went over every problem (missed or not) on every practice test. I did the same thing with friends who were also studying. Basically if someone asked me a question and I didn't know the answer, that was a huge problem in my mind. I can't say much else about my study plan, the rest was more how I took the actual test. It worked for me at least.