HELP! One Month Left Until MCAT. What should I Do over the next 1 month?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

mcat228

New Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Jul 16, 2011
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
So I have been studying for the mcats for 2 months now with Kaplan Classroom course. My diagnostic on Kaplan was a 25 (9/8/8). I took my First kaplan FL1 yesterday and I scored a 29 (10/8/11). I took my first FL after doing all the content review in the kaplan books. My original goal for the mcats was a 34, but I don't know if I can get my score up there in a month. My test date is Aug 18. I don't know how representative the kaplan FL 1 is of the real thing, I missed 21 questions on PS, 11 on V, and 11 on BS to get the scores that I made. I also ran out of time a lot so I had to guess randomly on a large number of passages.

That being said I def. want to improve on my PS section and Verbal. I feel comfortable with BS section. BS is my strongest area.

Over the next 4 weeks I am going to do 9 FL AAMC tests. I don't want to do anymore kaplan tests because its curve is really inflated. Since I want to work on PS what materials should I use? I have all the EK 1001 books, EK Bio and EK Chem, all the TBR books, and all the kaplan books (my cousins gave me the EK and TBR books and I got the kaplan books when I enrolled in a kaplan class.

How do you guys think I should prepare? Any sort of schedule you guys can think of will really help.

For Gen Chem I was planning on reading the lectures from EK Gen Chem doing all the problems in there and working through all the lectures. So far I have worked through 3 of the Gen Chem EK lecture tests and I have only scored 10s on them (according to their scale).

I don't own the Physics EK book and I don't want to spend another 35 bucks on it. What should I use to review Physics

I know that for Verbal its all about practice. So I am going to work through the entire EK 101 Verbal book and do some kaplan verbal section tests.

I am not doing anything but the MCATs for the next month.

Thanks,
mcat228
 
Stop taking the Kaplan's !!

Take a FL AAMC to see where you're at! You have to see what this beast is like!

Take one asap. Haven't you finished with content review?
 
^^^ Yes I have been done with content review for a week now. After getting my weak FL 1, I decided to go back and reread EK Gen Chem book and do all the lectures tests and problems in that book. I should be done with that tomorrow. The day after that I am going to through my kaplan physics quicksheets and physics foundation review. I will take my second FL on tuesday. It will be AAMC 3. For the next month, on days when I am not doing a FL, I will complete one verbal section test. I have done 4 Verbal section tests in the EK 101 book and my scores have been slowly improving. (8, 9, 9, 10). We will see how this trend goes.


What should I do about physics and Gen Chem review? What practice materials should I use? Should I do more than 10 practice tests total? I have already done one (kaplan) and I plan on doing another 9 (all AAMC)



SN2ed, HELP!!!, lol.
 
Dude, take the AAMC and see where you're at. Don't do kaplan anymore, because in my experience they are very unrepresentative of the test.

What I mean by this is, after taking those tests so seriously I would feel the score would be representative of my actual MCAT so I would freak out. I looked back at some of those questions I missed and they're just ridiculous compared to what AAMC is going to ask--way too specific, inference heavy, ambiguous and time-consuming.

The AAMC tests are not like that at all. You need to take that AAMC, see where you're at and use EK for any weak areas. EK is best for crunch time, no doubt.
 
update: took aamc 3 today and scored a 34 (11/11/12). I am happy with this score on my practice exam. I guess I should just stick with AAMC exams from here on out. Screw kaplan.
 
Top