MCAT advice

[zebras&finches]

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Hello!
My name is Liza, and I'm in a bit of an unexpected situation and would like to get advice from those who have taken the MCAT/applied to med school. I attend McGill in Montreal, and my plan for the summer was to work at a lab on campus - part time while taking organic chem (the course ends in a week) and full time afterward. Unfortunately, I lost the job a week ago and am now freaking out about what to do with my time. I hadn't considered taking the MCAT anytime earlier than 2nd semester of the upcoming year, but now I have a whole ton of spare time if I don't find a new job. I found a volunteering position at a different lab, but that's only 8-10 hours a week. I'm entering my 3rd year of undergrad, so I am done with all the pre-requisite courses aside from Organic Chem II. Would anyone advise me to just take the remainder of the summer (2 months) to study for the MCAT and take it at the end of the summer/fall? I figure that since I just took orgo, I can spend less time studying that section. I appreciate any input!

 

[umgoblue2008]

Have you taken biochemistry/psychology/sociology? Those are the new content fields on MCAT 2015. If you've not taken those classes i'm not sure 2 months will do it. You want to be 100% ready and only take the test once if possible.

 

[zebras&finches]

I'm a cognitive science major, so I've taken several psychology classes - an intro course to behavioral neuroscience, systems neuroscience (lots of overlap with psychology), and a hormones & behavior class (neuro-endocrinology). I've also taken a cell biology course that is considered equivalent with the intro biochemistry course offered at McGill, and I haven't taken any sociology classes yet. Thank you for the feedback!

 

[Alkaidius]

Hi Liza, sorry about you losing your job D:
Personally, I can't in good conscience recommend taking this beast halfheartedly. Primarily because I would highly recommend taking a good deal of time to research the test and the prep companies. I wound up having to take the MCAT twice because the first time around I thought I understood what to expect. I thought just putting in a lot of hours of study would get me an acceptable score. I let a very limited amount of information decide how I should study. I got the 34th percentile. YIKES!

Second time around, after taking the real deal and doing extensive research into the different study plans of the different companies, I understood that all my expectations surrounding the test had been entirely wrong and I flipped my study plan around by 180 degrees and tailored it more to me. Just got my preliminaries back and am over the moon right now.

From what I understand, taking it twice isn't at all a deal breaker. But I cannot over-emphasize how disheartening it would be for you to do poorly and then blame yourself for not taking that extra month. A first attempt has more leeway. From the second, the pressure is ON!