MCAT Final 6 Weeks HELP!!!

[DrDeejay]

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First of all, I'd like to thank all the wonderful folks here on SDN for your priceless, immeasurable contributions that have helped all of us do better, stay motivated, and achieve our dreams. THANK YOU ALL!

Background:
- Non-Trad
- 2003 B.S. in Clinical Lab Science
- Studied for 5-10hrs per week, mostly content for a few months, then 20+hrs/week over last 6 weeks

Now, I'm trying to navigate through a mine field. My practice test scores are dog poop. I mean not even mid 20's. Good news is that they are not going down, just a little better or worse between sections (I may make 8,6,7 or 7,7,6 or 6,8,7 etc.). I'm confident, and have hope and ambition, but I want to complement this with an effective plan and efficient study. I've got about 6 weeks left, and I've also got Kaplan Q bank and online practice on my side. Should I:

a) Continue the content review, take the subject tests, topical test, section tests and full lengths weekly
b) Give up the full lengths til the final 3 weeks and just do content/concept based questions w minimal book review
c) Scrap the questions and hit the books up again for a few weeks, then return to the full lengths and practice questions
d) Get psycho and attempt to complete (and review) every single question Kaplan has to offer, and screw the books all together.
e) Scrap all of these ideas and get my half refund, use it for next year?😱

I'm actually leaning towards (d) out of desperate frustration, or maybe frustrating desperation... but I wanted some sincere SDN advice first.

I feel like my main problem is timing because after I review a test, it seems like I understand 98% of the reasoning behind the answer choices, wrong and right. I admit that I fall into these crazy traps because I feel like I can reason the problems to a solution (PS and BS), but I'll look up and have <15 min left in a section, and 25 problems to go.

With verbal, I just don't get it. Some seem hard, some easy. I'll get all but one VR questions right for one passage, then only 1 or 2 for the next. I usually get to within 1 passage of finishing though.

I already made the mistake of wasting 3 AAMC Full lengths, I'm taking Kaplan FL from now till the final 3 weeks regardless of my plan.

Any guidance or suggestions?

 

[kwarrior]

In my opinion, if you're not hitting in the thirties you need to do content review in depth. The Kaplan topical tests are a great way to do this. Study like hell in a topic, take the topical test. If you get above a 70%, you're in good shape for that topic. If you do this for every topic you can, you should definitely see improvement. Good luck!

 

[pandoraaj009]

First: kaplan VR was, imho, off base. Too hard, totally unrepresentative. Ek 1001 and tpr are better for vr practice.

W/ six weeks, you've still got plenty of time if you keep up w/ it all. Do some content review so you're not lost lol. If you review 2-3 subjects a day, you're solid. After you read/take notes, do a topical test so you're practicing the questions. Do that til you're done w/ the material. Also, if you review,say, biology one day, make sure to look over your notes for phy,chem, etc for like 10-20 min so it's sticks w/ you.

After you're done w/ that, take a bunch of Full Lengths. On the days in between tests, review your answers, note mistakes, etc.

 

[DrDeejay]

Thanks guys, keep the suggestions coming!

 

[DrDeejay]

Any more advice guys? Thanks

 

[Longshanks]

First: kaplan VR was, imho, off base. Too hard, totally unrepresentative. Ek 1001 and tpr are better for vr practice.

W/ six weeks, you've still got plenty of time if you keep up w/ it all. Do some content review so you're not lost lol. If you review 2-3 subjects a day, you're solid. After you read/take notes, do a topical test so you're practicing the questions. Do that til you're done w/ the material. Also, if you review,say, biology one day, make sure to look over your notes for phy,chem, etc for like 10-20 min so it's sticks w/ you.

After you're done w/ that, take a bunch of Full Lengths. On the days in between tests, review your answers, note mistakes, etc.

I think the problem with Kaplan VR is it being too easy. Its all detail questions with no ambiguity in answer choices or testing deduction/inference like the MCAT or EK/TPR.

OP, be sure that you go over everything after a practice test, both the right and wrong answers and your thought process to getting that answer. Were you just lucky at picking a random answer? Did you use an effective shortcut or waste too much time going through a drawn out process? Did you understand the passage concepts and able to implement them when dealing with the questions, or was the question solvable without the passage?

 

[DrDeejay]

Thanks, I took off from work so I could have dedicated "all day sessions." I now review every single question I see (content or practice) and the explanations, even if I know why I got it right. I'm going to try a few strategies I found to address timing issues, and totally repeat each Kaplan module and do as many content/concept based questions as possible over the next 3 weeks, then go all out with Q bank practice questions and full lengths. I'm also doing a FL verbal test daily to try and get more reading practice in. Any more suggestions, I'm all ears! Feedback is much appreciated.