Is a second round of content review effective?

[yjkimnada]

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My exam is at the end of January and I started studying mid-May. I finished a month of content review by taking typed notes and reading through 3 Kaplan chapters per day. After finishing all the books, I started the UWorld problem bank.

Now that I'm finishing up the problem bank, I can gauge where I am weak. On average, I score between 80 and 90% on all the sections cumulative. And most of the problems I get wrong are either careless mistakes or lack of content mastery. Rarely being unable to analyze the passage or given problem.

So now I want to address my content mastery problem. My weakest areas include physiology (body systems), metabolic pathways, and psychology (my psychology course at school doesn't have much overlap). Do you guys recommend I do a second round of content review for 2-4 weeks only on these areas? If so, do I reread Kaplan? I've tried some TBR chapters but they don't seem to be the most detailed content-wise although there are a lot of problems for practice.

Or should I keep just grinding problems? Does that mean I only write down what I got wrong and how (which I've been doing) and just hope that reading the explanations for UWorld are enough?

Thanks.

 

[Zenabi90]

Absolutely. Tackle the content that is your weak point. That is to say, don't go over every single concept again, but pay special attention to the ones that are most clearly weaknesses in your knowledge.

You also do need to find another source, if Kaplan didn't work for you in the first place. On the contrary, I found TBR incredibly detailed compared to TPR and EK, and the best bet next to using an actual textbook.

I would also remind you that you need to do the QBank timed. No more than a minute per question, so as to best simulate timing and conditions from the actual MCAT.

 

[TheRealCookieMonster]

No. Do practice questions in the content area you have trouble in. Content review is far inferior to practice. Doing questions and reviewing the reason you got them wrong is the gold standard imo.

 

[PlsLetMeIn21]

You need to do passages more than content review, especially for the B/B section. I agree with Zendabi that TBR is plenty detailed. What I noticed in their B/B books is that they don't cover everything in the chapter that you'll encounter in the passages associated with that chapter. I get the feeling they want you to learn more by doing 105 questions than by reading twenty pages.

And like cookiemonster says, learning by going over questions is the best way. I skim most of my TBR chapters and do the questions embedded in the reading, but make sure to do all three phases of the homework. It's been super helpful so far and I'm just about done with the books.