I started doing practice exams for biology only and Im doing really bad!!

[alexfoleyc]

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I'm doing only biology based passages. For example, each passage has 7 questions. I'm getting only 1 or 2 questions right. I only completed one yr of biology. What should I do? I'm doing kaplan practive exams. I also took the verbal reasoning portion and scoring 4s and 5s. ahh!! What should I do?

 

[SuperSaiyan3]

(study) x 10 x 500 x 232 divided by 1 to power of 288554.

 

[muhali3]

Take more than only one year in biology. It seems like you're studying way too early. You won't do well with just the introductory courses. You should at least take some Anatomy/Physiology, Microbio, and Genetics before trying Bio. You should only start MCAT prep after you've taken the classes which cover the topics on it, and if you don't want to take those classes you need to do some hard independent-studying before expecting to receive good scores.

 

[phEight]

Get the detailed based Biology prep-books. Those would be either TBR or the TPR hyperlearning series.

 

[LaCasta]

You definitely need to at least take genetics to do well on the bio section. Not just for the simple pedigree problems that you learn but mainly for the molecular bio you get out of the course. I don't think you need a physiology course, but if you have no prior exposure like I did, then you need to read a detailed review book like TPR.

 

[229141]

You definitely need to at least take genetics to do well on the bio section. Not just for the simple pedigree problems that you learn but mainly for the molecular bio you get out of the course. I don't think you need a physiology course, but if you have no prior exposure like I did, then you need to read a detailed review book like TPR.

Honestly- the classes that helped me learn this well were:

Physiology
Microbiology
Biochemistry
Cell/Molecular

My physiology teacher straight up told us he was teaching it in an MCAT prep style lol...was a great class

 

[unDRdog]

Have you tried to tweak your study habits? The fact that your verbal scores are also low could indicate that your getting bogged down in the text and not really "getting" the idea behind the question. I totally agree that the more bio classes you take, the better prepared you should be, however, many people have done well without having genetics, micro, etc... Are those classes necessary, maybe, maybe not... Unfortunately you only know how you study, retain, formulate and process info. If your putting in maximum effort with a prep book and not getting the content back out in the form of correct answers, I would suggest re-filing your data. Best of luck to ya..hope that helps...🙂

 

[MBHockey]

I'm doing only biology based passages. For example, each passage has 7 questions. I'm getting only 1 or 2 questions right. I only completed one yr of biology. What should I do? I'm doing kaplan practive exams. I also took the verbal reasoning portion and scoring 4s and 5s. ahh!! What should I do?

I've also only had one year of Bio. Bio I and Bio II, but I also took genetics alongside Bio I, even though it wasn't recommended.

I took a Bio section from AAMC #4 I believe back in January, after completing Bio I and Genetics, and not studying at all for the MCAT. I got a 9, and was horrified.

I purchased the Berkeley Review books for every subject and worked on them a bit during the spring semester, but really ramped up now that school is over. For the past two weeks I've been doing 8-9 hours of day of MCAT studying, most of which time is spent doing Biology. I also use EK Bio as a supplement to Berkeley Review.

I was about 65% through the Bio books (4 sections left) when a few days ago I decided to take another AAMC bio section. This was AAMC #5. I finished it 10 minutes early and got a 12 (1 question away from a 13!).

Lesson: You CAN do well on Bio even if it is new to you. But you HAVE to put in the time. I've spent tremendous amounts of time on Biology. I never move on past a question until I completely understand it. This is why it takes me 9 hours to do 100 bio questions in Berkeley Review.

As a mechanical engineer turned post-bac student, who sat in the first class of Genetics 8 months ago not knowing what a chromosome was, i can tell you i know exactly what it feels like to feel completely overwhelmed by Bio.

Berkeley Review for Bio is WAY harder than the real AAMC. I usually get 9s on BR bio sets of passages, but i think it's terrific practice. I highly recommend them, even if at times you feel like you'd have to be a 4th year Bio major to know some of the background material required to answer their questions.

 

[nicolesmine4sur]

I dont think you need extra classes to do well on the Bio section. I started my bio (after intro bio) getting 8's. Then after reading the commercial MCAT review books, my BIO scores jumped to 12's and occasionally 13's. The only other bio classes I took was molecular bio which is NO help at all. I mean, who needs to know the holliday model for recombination or memorize all those transcription/translation factos hahaha

Physiology- never took it, just learned it from the MCAT prep books...you just need the basics, which were taught in my introductory bio courses
Microbiology- never took it, you just need to know the basic prokaryotic properties, which were also taught in my introductory bio courses
Biochemistry- took this, but didn't think it helped at all, cuz don't need to know useless info like the names and structures of glycolysis and krebs cycle intermediates, or the 20 essential amino acids for the MCAT

the stuff i didn't know i learned from the MCAT prep books and i thought that it worked for me...but taking more bio courses wouldn't hurt, but i'd say take easy classes whie studying for the MCAT. For example, don't take biochemistry while studying for the MCAT, rather take an easier class like microbio...you don't wanna sacrifice your GPA while studying for the MCAT unless you know you can own it.

 

[DrDre2001]

I dont think you need extra classes to do well on the Bio section. I started my bio (after intro bio) getting 8's. Then after reading the commercial MCAT review books, my BIO scores jumped to 12's and occasionally 13's. The only other bio classes I took was molecular bio which is NO help at all. I mean, who needs to know the holliday model for recombination or memorize all those transcription/translation factos hahaha

Physiology- never took it, just learned it from the MCAT prep books...you just need the basics, which were taught in my introductory bio courses
Microbiology- never took it, you just need to know the basic prokaryotic properties, which were also taught in my introductory bio courses
Biochemistry- took this, but didn't think it helped at all, cuz don't need to know useless info like the names and structures of glycolysis and krebs cycle intermediates, or the 20 essential amino acids for the MCAT

the stuff i didn't know i learned from the MCAT prep books and i thought that it worked for me...but taking more bio courses wouldn't hurt, but i'd say take easy classes whie studying for the MCAT. For example, don't take biochemistry while studying for the MCAT, rather take an easier class like microbio...you don't wanna sacrifice your GPA while studying for the MCAT unless you know you can own it.

I agree with a lot of this post.

I took Genetics and Cell Bio before taking the MCAT. On my diagnostic MCAT i scored an 18. After reviewing Kaplans review books, my practice scores went up a few points every few weeks/chapters in the kaplan books. As i finished my kaplan course my scores were 30+. The main point here is that my scores went up by 15 points due solely to me reviewing the review books.

Genetics and Cell Bio are just way too complicated for any of that to be useful for the MCAT. Maybe those classes gave me skills in reading difficult science passages, but the actual content of those classes were not on my mcat and probably won't be on yours.

If i would do it over again, i would have taken the MCAT right after i took all my pre-req courses sophomore year. Instead, i waited until after i took Genetics, Cell Bio, P-chem, and A-chem. And those classes, as i said above, don't help much for the mcat.

 

[Bernoull]

I agree with a lot of this post.

I took Genetics and Cell Bio before taking the MCAT. On my diagnostic MCAT i scored an 18. After reviewing Kaplans review books, my practice scores went up a few points every few weeks/chapters in the kaplan books. As i finished my kaplan course my scores were 30+. The main point here is that my scores went up by 15 points due solely to me reviewing the review books.

Genetics and Cell Bio are just way too complicated for any of that to be useful for the MCAT. Maybe those classes gave me skills in reading difficult science passages, but the actual content of those classes were not on my mcat and probably won't be on yours.

If i would do it over again, i would have taken the MCAT right after i took all my pre-req courses sophomore year. Instead, i waited until after i took Genetics, Cell Bio, P-chem, and A-chem. And those classes, as i said above, don't help much for the mcat.

Cool avatar name, dat album is an immortal classic, when detox dropping any idea...

 

[sv3]

if Em's album is any indication i hope never