MCAT in 30 days. Suggest plans please?

[zeroufies]

Of course, I am open to moving the date, but I would still like to do this feat if possible... I have a Princeton account for use and all of the EK books + EK 101 Verbal Passages. How should I go about this? Just take many passages as possible and pick up test-taking skills along with content? Or spend a whole week reviewing weak points and then doing all of the official AAMC tests 1.5 weeks prior to the date? My initial self-assessment scores from AAMC have been all around 80-85%. Thank you for your advices.

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[Served]

Move onto TBR

 

[hoihaie]

take those practice tests repeatedly

 

[Narmerguy]

Moving to MCAT forum

 

[DenTony11235]

Not gonna suggest much but gonna add 2 cents. There are like 8 or so practice tests. It usually takes me ~6 hours without breaks to do and review them. Include travel and lunch time that amounts to almost a full day of studying. So you'd pretty much spend most of your last 1.5 weeks on those.

I'm taking mine may 31, taking 1 aamc practice a weekend and only have 10, 11 left. I'm gonna spend my last few days solely on review and memorization.

 

[zeroufies]

Not gonna suggest much but gonna add 2 cents. There are like 8 or so practice tests. It usually takes me ~6 hours without breaks to do and review them. Include travel and lunch time that amounts to almost a full day of studying. So you'd pretty much spend most of your last 1.5 weeks on those.

I'm taking mine may 31, taking 1 aamc practice a weekend and only have 10, 11 left. I'm gonna spend my last few days solely on review and memorization.

Do you feel that the practice tests give you a good amount of content as well?

 

[m0biusace]

I did my MCAT studying in 28 days and got a 34Q. But I was able to skip verbal studying entirely, and had a strong background in general chemistry (albeit virtually none in physics).

I did 2-3 chapters in EK per day, taking notes onto paper. From those notes I created anki cards, reviewed the cards over the night, then took the end-of-chapter exams the next day in the morning. Ended up completing half the questions in each 1001Q EK books, did three AAMC practice exams (8, 10, 11) my last week to make sure I got the test format down and was able to sit down at the testing center with the mentality allowing me to treat the real exam as just another practice one. Practice tests should be used to cement the test format down, not for content review.

Ended up being a hellish 8-10 hours/day of legitimate studying (aka not facebooking in the background or what have you) without a break longer than two hours, but hey, it worked.

If you already have strong test taking skills it should be doable.

 

[zeroufies]

I did my MCAT studying in 28 days and got a 34Q. But I was able to skip verbal studying entirely, and had a strong background in general chemistry (albeit virtually none in physics).

I did 2-3 chapters in EK per day, taking notes onto paper. From those notes I created anki cards, reviewed the cards over the night, then took the end-of-chapter exams the next day in the morning. Ended up completing half the questions in each 1001Q EK books, did three AAMC practice exams (8, 10, 11) my last week to make sure I got the test format down and was able to sit down at the testing center with the mentality allowing me to treat the real exam as just another practice one. Practice tests should be used to cement the test format down, not for content review.

Ended up being a hellish 8-10 hours/day of legitimate studying (aka not facebooking in the background or what have you) without a break longer than two hours, but hey, it worked.

If you already have strong test taking skills it should be doable.

Thanks for your reply. I am willing to do the grind. I do have all of the Princeton practice tests and every single AAMC tests. Are you saying the content review is more important then doing the practice tests?

 

[m0biusace]

Unless you are a poor, nervous test taker, content review (and practice questions!) are absolutely more important than doing practice tests. This isn't undergrad -- the chances of you seeing a question repeated with slightly tweaked wording from a practice exam you took previously is nil.

You could either study the foundation of knowledge required for the exam, or the thousands of permutations of that foundation of knowledge.

 

[SOOyC52H1Sof]

I disagree with content review being the most important, although it certainly is very important. You can study content all you want, but you will never get the true taste of what they are looking for until you get your feet dirty. Take the practice tests, learn how they test, and what types of things they test. Get comfortable with the taking the test. Learn how to attack verbal, as these will be the most representative of the real deal. Then go back do a comprehensive review of content near the end.

After each practice test, write down the concepts you had trouble with or got incorrect. Review all the questions, and learn WHY the answers were what they were and why all the other answers were wrong. Make sure you review each question, b/c you may have guessed correctly, but didnt really know, and you may not guess correctly if it ever showed up on the real MCAT.

 

[zeroufies]

Unless you are a poor, nervous test taker, content review (and practice questions!) are absolutely more important than doing practice tests. This isn't undergrad -- the chances of you seeing a question repeated with slightly tweaked wording from a practice exam you took previously is nil.

You could either study the foundation of knowledge required for the exam, or the thousands of permutations of that foundation of knowledge.

I took AAMC Test 3 and scored a 29. I feel that it is somewhat ill-represented because I have never taken any Biology courses and it has been 2 years since I touched any physics.

 

[m0biusace]

I took AAMC Test 3 and scored a 29. I feel that it is somewhat ill-represented because I have never taken any Biology courses and it has been 2 years since I touched any physics.

I got a 38 after three weeks of study on AAMC 3 (I remember taking 3 instead of 8) -- it's definitely easy. But still, it bodes well that you got a 29 before any studying!

 

[Jepstein30]

Of course, I am open to moving the date, but I would still like to do this feat if possible... I have a Princeton account for use and all of the EK books + EK 101 Verbal Passages. How should I go about this? Just take many passages as possible and pick up test-taking skills along with content? Or spend a whole week reviewing weak points and then doing all of the official AAMC tests 1.5 weeks prior to the date? My initial self-assessment scores from AAMC have been all around 80-85%. Thank you for your advices.

I would postpone, just because its not worth the stress you'll have to put on yourself. A month is doable, but is it worth it? Not to mention, you may be settling for not your maximum score.

Anyways though, here's my advice:
1) Assuming you took the SAs under test-like conditions (i.e. not too much time and around 50 questions at a time), those are absolutely fantastic scores. From what I've seen, you should already be in the 11-12 range at worst. That bodes really well for not only the MCAT in general, but also for trying to cram it into a week.. especially if that was before any content review. Really great job there.
2) My first step would be to review the self-assessments THOROUGHLY. Except for Verbal, I would run through all the questions.. right or wrong. Your goal is to continue getting the feel for the test but more importantly, figure out where your weaknesses lie. The Self-Assessments are an awesome tool to diagnose weaknesses because it covers so much content. Use the data they give you and your own analysis and get a list of your weaker topics going. IMO, a successful study schedule is focused on weaknesses not strengths. Identify and eliminate weaknesses, working your way up to stronger and stronger topics as you go. Given the amount of material on the MCAT, you're more likely to get a test with more weaknesses than strengths if you just focus on your stronger topics.
3) Starting from the list (and your own experiences, i.e. if you know you are weak in Newtonian physics.. add it to the list), take a topic, do a quick (2-3 hours max) round of content review on it and then PRACTICE PASSAGES. Content review alone is absolutely useless. Practice passages give you a chance to prove you understood a topic, but they also develop the necessary critical thinking skills for success on the MCAT. Do as many practice passages as you can.. but given you are short on time, figure out how many glaring weaknesses you have and try and get through as many of them as you can in the next two weeks. You'll find more as you go, so you'll want to really chug through a good amount a day.
4) Resources. For content review, preferably not EK but it is probably the best resource for someone with limited time.. does Princeton Review give you online access to their content review books? they are good.. For practice passages, definitely utilize TPR's materials and not EKs. I would also try to do 3 or so verbal passage a day but EK101, frankly, is pretty poor. If you can do TPR verbal passages, go for it. If you haven't done the Verbal self-assessment, divvy that up and take a few passages a day. You don't want to focus on verbal (it's harder to improve in short-term than the sciences) but you can't entirely ignore it either.
5) Start taking practice tests ASAP. Even though you haven't reviewed much or anything, you don't want to cram them in at the end. Take one every few days. Scores are nice, but not the point. You need to get comfortable with the testing environment.. and the practice tests will also provide another good opportunity to catch some weaknesses. Add to your list.
6) We're kind of ignoring reviewing strengths here but that's fine. If in all your AAMC material, you never stumbled on a certain topic.. don't waste your valuable study time on it. Focus on weaknesses. Identify and eliminate.

Do you feel that the practice tests give you a good amount of content as well?

They don't. At all.

Practice passages hit only a very small subset of the possible topics that will show up on the test. The Self-Assessment does a much, much better job at giving you a wide view of the content.

Unless you are a poor, nervous test taker, content review (and practice questions!) are absolutely more important than doing practice tests. This isn't undergrad -- the chances of you seeing a question repeated with slightly tweaked wording from a practice exam you took previously is nil.

You could either study the foundation of knowledge required for the exam, or the thousands of permutations of that foundation of knowledge.

I agree here.. though I would point out again that content review is useless by itself.

To drive it in though, you aren't taking practice questions in hopes you'll get another one just like it. That's not the point at all. The MCAT is NOT a content-driven test. It's a critical thinking and analysis test. They very rarely ask questions that are pure content recall. You take practice passages to develop critical thinking skills.

A 29 on AAMC 3 is a little troubling to reconcile with your Self-Assessment scores.. what happened? How did you get such a good self-assessment score without ever taking biology/physics in awhile?

It's not necessarily easier though, don't believe the hype. It all depends on how comfortable you are with the topics that showed up. AAMC 3 was my lowest practice test score.. and 9 points lower than my real score. Part of that was I got better at taking the test (critical thinking skills) as I went on.. but alot of that was because there were weaknesses there that were exposed.

Overall, SDN does find AAMC 3 to be easier than the later ones. This could be because of the topics tested, that more people than not are strong in them. IMO, it also has to do alot with how the test has changed over the years. The early AAMCs are older MCATs, back from when the test was more content-driven than it is today. It's more reflective of undergraduate there.. you're just being asked a question about content and asked to recall a fact.. in some form. The later tests (and current MCATs) are more critical thinking than content-driven.. so they tend to be thought of as harder because you can't just read a page from your review book and know the right answer.

 

[amanda30]

Practice tests can greatly improve your grades you should keep trying them if you have trouble understanding a purticular topic you should take some expert's advice may be your friend or colleague.

 

[zeroufies]

I would postpone, just because its not worth the stress you'll have to put on yourself. A month is doable, but is it worth it? Not to mention, you may be settling for not your maximum score.

Anyways though, here's my advice:
1) Assuming you took the SAs under test-like conditions (i.e. not too much time and around 50 questions at a time), those are absolutely fantastic scores. From what I've seen, you should already be in the 11-12 range at worst. That bodes really well for not only the MCAT in general, but also for trying to cram it into a week.. especially if that was before any content review. Really great job there.
2) My first step would be to review the self-assessments THOROUGHLY. Except for Verbal, I would run through all the questions.. right or wrong. Your goal is to continue getting the feel for the test but more importantly, figure out where your weaknesses lie. The Self-Assessments are an awesome tool to diagnose weaknesses because it covers so much content. Use the data they give you and your own analysis and get a list of your weaker topics going. IMO, a successful study schedule is focused on weaknesses not strengths. Identify and eliminate weaknesses, working your way up to stronger and stronger topics as you go. Given the amount of material on the MCAT, you're more likely to get a test with more weaknesses than strengths if you just focus on your stronger topics.
3) Starting from the list (and your own experiences, i.e. if you know you are weak in Newtonian physics.. add it to the list), take a topic, do a quick (2-3 hours max) round of content review on it and then PRACTICE PASSAGES. Content review alone is absolutely useless. Practice passages give you a chance to prove you understood a topic, but they also develop the necessary critical thinking skills for success on the MCAT. Do as many practice passages as you can.. but given you are short on time, figure out how many glaring weaknesses you have and try and get through as many of them as you can in the next two weeks. You'll find more as you go, so you'll want to really chug through a good amount a day.
4) Resources. For content review, preferably not EK but it is probably the best resource for someone with limited time.. does Princeton Review give you online access to their content review books? they are good.. For practice passages, definitely utilize TPR's materials and not EKs. I would also try to do 3 or so verbal passage a day but EK101, frankly, is pretty poor. If you can do TPR verbal passages, go for it. If you haven't done the Verbal self-assessment, divvy that up and take a few passages a day. You don't want to focus on verbal (it's harder to improve in short-term than the sciences) but you can't entirely ignore it either.
5) Start taking practice tests ASAP. Even though you haven't reviewed much or anything, you don't want to cram them in at the end. Take one every few days. Scores are nice, but not the point. You need to get comfortable with the testing environment.. and the practice tests will also provide another good opportunity to catch some weaknesses. Add to your list.
6) We're kind of ignoring reviewing strengths here but that's fine. If in all your AAMC material, you never stumbled on a certain topic.. don't waste your valuable study time on it. Focus on weaknesses. Identify and eliminate.



They don't. At all.

Practice passages hit only a very small subset of the possible topics that will show up on the test. The Self-Assessment does a much, much better job at giving you a wide view of the content.



I agree here.. though I would point out again that content review is useless by itself.

To drive it in though, you aren't taking practice questions in hopes you'll get another one just like it. That's not the point at all. The MCAT is NOT a content-driven test. It's a critical thinking and analysis test. They very rarely ask questions that are pure content recall. You take practice passages to develop critical thinking skills.

A 29 on AAMC 3 is a little troubling to reconcile with your Self-Assessment scores.. what happened? How did you get such a good self-assessment score without ever taking biology/physics in awhile?

It's not necessarily easier though, don't believe the hype. It all depends on how comfortable you are with the topics that showed up. AAMC 3 was my lowest practice test score.. and 9 points lower than my real score. Part of that was I got better at taking the test (critical thinking skills) as I went on.. but alot of that was because there were weaknesses there that were exposed.

Overall, SDN does find AAMC 3 to be easier than the later ones. This could be because of the topics tested, that more people than not are strong in them. IMO, it also has to do alot with how the test has changed over the years. The early AAMCs are older MCATs, back from when the test was more content-driven than it is today. It's more reflective of undergraduate there.. you're just being asked a question about content and asked to recall a fact.. in some form. The later tests (and current MCATs) are more critical thinking than content-driven.. so they tend to be thought of as harder because you can't just read a page from your review book and know the right answer.

Some of those topics that appeared in Physics and Biology in AAMC 3 were things that I absolutely needed to remember the content for... As for the SA, I used test-taking skills and deriving answers from the passages to get them mostly right.

Also, I am only shooting for a 30 at the minimum. I don't really need to get into a top school, just one MD school.

 

[Jepstein30]

Some of those topics that appeared in Physics and Biology in AAMC 3 were things that I absolutely needed to remember the content for... As for the SA, I used test-taking skills and deriving answers from the passages to get them mostly right.

Also, I am only shooting for a 30 at the minimum. I don't really need to get into a top school, just one MD school. I have faith that my GPA and extracurriculars will make up for a 30 MCAT and show my drive for medicine (3 years EMT, 2.5 years trauma tech, 2 years scribe, working 3 jobs simultaneously for the past 2 years)

That bodes well. As again, the test is more critical thinking than content-driven nowadays. So your critical thinking skills will get you farther than having known the content (not to mention that its easier to learn content than develop those test taking skills).

I would keep pressing on. Throw those topics on your weakness list and follow a plan similar to what I posted above. A 30 is definitely attainable with your start and I'd wager you can go several points higher at least.

 

[DenTony11235]

Do you feel that the practice tests give you a good amount of content as well?

Not so much. But they do give me an idea of the depth to which I should know my stuff, and therefore help guide me in my studies.