Is this a good study plan?

[slarveson]

I bought all the EK stuff a few months ago and have been studying it everyday for the last two weeks. Basically, I'll read a lecture section (usually 3 sections per lecture and 7 or so lectures per book) and do the quiz for that section and also do the 1001 questions for that section as well (usually about 50+ questions) every day. Also, i will add to that and do a verbal test 1 day, study the questions and answers the next day, and then re-read the passages and practice finding the main idea and authors viewpoint the day after that. If i do this everyday, then I will be done with all the EK stuff towards the end of summer (EK lecture books, all 1001 questions books for all subjects, and the 101 verbal passages). Anyone have any suggestions? I volunteer (8-10 hrs/week), work sometimes (6ish hrs/week), and shadow (5 ish hours/week) so don't have much more time per day to devote to MCAT other than what i've already mentioned although i could squeeze in a little more here and there. Any suggestions or pointers would be appreciated. Mainly want to know what most people think of this study schedule and what you would add to it if necessary? Thanks in advance!

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[NickNaylor]

I used EK solely to self-study and felt pretty confident on test day. I'll try and describe my schedule.

I would spend two days on each lecture and go through it twice. On the first day, I would simply read through the material, highlight/annotate, and answer the quiz questions. I would also do the exam at the end of the manual. On the second day, I would review the material and do about 20-30 problems from the 1001 books. I would then move on to the next lecture.

Once I finished a manual, I would go through 2-3 lecture per day strictly as review (following the same strategy as above, with two days per group of lectures). The number of lectures per day depends on the manual and time; for ochem, for example, I would simply do one lecture per day since each lecture is pretty beastly. I would schedule it out so that I went through the entire manual in about a week.

Repeat for each manual. Once I went through all the manuals, I would review all of the lectures in groups as described above (this took about three weeks). The net result of this was going through all of the material four times, which I thought was plenty. I didn't remember every little detail, but I had the general concepts down pretty well. This plan was for 4-5 months of study time, so you would want to alter it to fit your time frame.

Every other weekend (every weekend as the test date got closer) I would take a FL. I felt this plan was a good combination of reviewing the material and applying it.

I found that on a normal study day, it would take me about an hour and a half to get through a lecture, which I found to be manageable. The days spent reviewing multiple lectures were much longer, and I would often get behind/skip those.

 

[slarveson]

Thanks Cole, what was your MCAT score (in sections) and how often and for how long did you study verbal?

 

[NickNaylor]

Haven't gotten my test score yet (took it May 1), but I was averaging 37-38 on the last few AAMCs. My best test was a 14PS/11VR/13BS. Most of my scores were more balanced than that (i.e., 13/13/12 or 13/12/12).

I more or less left verbal to die on the side of the road. When I analyzed why I missed verbal questions, it was usually because of an error in reasoning, which isn't really correctable. I can't change how I think. Most times I narrowed the choice down to two and simply picked the wrong one. It wasn't worth it to me to spend time on something I didn't think I could realistically improve on. I did use the basic EK verbal strategy, though, and I thought the 101 Passages book accurately reproduced real MCAT passages.

 

[slarveson]

dang those are some good practice test scores so hopefully you do as good on the real thing...let me know how you end up doing.