MCAT Study Plan Non trad

[mtl287]

I feel like every MCAT study plan I read is for someone who evidently is lucky enough they can have absolutely no income coming in for 3+ months to study for the MCAT. How are people balancing their study plans when they work a full time job. Quitting my job is not an option for me since I have bills to pay but that does not mean I am not commited to doing well on the MCAT to get into school. Sorry to rant but I am trying to put together my schedule and I am using the forum for a reference and I wanted to see what other non-trads are doing to get the material down.

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[New_Slang]

I won't be much help. My husband financially supported the whole thing. But I was taking 2 classes and working ~10 hrs/week when I studied. I studied from 4am-7:30am every day, at any lengthy break I could, and I'm the evenings from 7-10ish when I wasn't working. I stopped working the month leading up to the test. I began studying in January 2015 and took exam April 2015 (the new MCAT).

 

[MD89]

I studied and took the old MCAT in January so my advice not be as relevant as someone who has taken the new one. However, I too was working full-time and couldn't follow the schedules listed here. I ended up scoring very high so it's definitely possible. My advice in coming up with a reasonable schedule:

1. Decide on a date. Don't start studying without knowing when you are actually going to take it. Sign up for an actual date- if you end up having to change it, it's not that much money and it is worth it. I suggest on giving yourself about 3-4 months of studying time (unless you're learning some of the stuff for the first time). I took about 3 months and it ended up working out well but right before my exam, I did wish I had some more time.

2. Schedule some vacation time for about 2 weeks off right before your test. If you can only swing 1 week, that's still good but obviously more is better.


3. Once you have your date and time off scheduled, figure out when you want to take the practice exams. I don't know how many full length exams there are for the new test but I imagine there are plenty by now. You will want pretty much your last month or 6 weeks so to be taking practice exams, reviewing them, and brushing up on content areas you see you're weak in. The way I scheduled my practice exams was I counted back from when my actual exam was scheduled for. I knew I would have two weeks off before so I took that into account. I believe my schedule was such that I started taking one practice exam a week starting 6 weeks before and then once I got to those 2 weeks where I was off of work, I took one every few days. ****it is KEY to also schedule the time to fully review every single question (even the ones you get right!) I liked to do this immediately after each exam as it allowed me to recall my exact reasoning when I had initially chosen each question.

4. Once you've figured out a tentative practice test schedule, you can schedule your content review. For me personally, I liked doing one full subject at a time but I know other people like to do it as a mix throughout. In either case, what I suggest doing is looking at how many chapters in each subject (other than verbal) and then calculating how much you need to do each week to stay on track. Schedule more time where you know you are weak nSo for example, I knew I wanted to spend more time on physics than chemistry because I find physics harder. So I think I scheduled 3 weeks for physics and 1 week for chemistry. I looked at how many chapters were in my book for physics and figured out how much I'd have to cover each weeknight. I think it ended up being half a chapter which was totally manageable.
**also, when you are doing what I call "content" review, I suggest doing all the in-chapter problems, don't just do the reading

I literally had my schedule on the notes app on my phone - I would highly recommends writing it out. This makes it easier to see if you are keeping on track or not.

5. If you start getting off schedule, don't worry! Just readjust accordingly. As long as you are keeping track closely, it will be difficult to get derailed significantly if you correct your derailing early. For example, my job is very stressful and tiring and sometimes I would fall asleep while studying and not finish what I had scheduled myself to do. Instead of panicking, it just meant that another night I had to study more than I had initially scheduled.

As a side note, don't expect to have much of a social life and don't allow people to make you feel guilty about it. My life for those 3 months was pretty much going to work, relaxing a bit when I came home and had dinner, studying and sleeping. Saturdays were my "off " day but I still did some studying Saturday nights. Sunday's were full mcat days.

6. My job is not one that allows for downtime so I couldn't exactly study there. However, I took pictures of things on my phone and whenever I had some downtime (waiting for a meeting to start, waiting for the elevator, etc), I would pull out my phone and study the pictures. (This is literally how I memorized the hormones!) I would highly suggest doing something similar. It also had the nice effect of calming me down when I felt like I needed to be studying more.

That's all I can think of for now. Hope it's helpful!

 

[MD89]

Haha, of course I remember a really important thing after I hit submit.

The reason I said not to schedule content time for verbal is because for verbal, it is my opinion that you should be doing it all along. What I did was made it part of my bedtime routine(dorky I know). When I was ready to go to bed, after I brushed my teeth and all that, I did about 2 verbal passages a night from the Princeton review hyper learning workbook.

As I got closer to the exam, I also started adding it about 2 passages of science stuff too.

I feel like this was one of the key things I did that allowed me to score what I scored. So, I highly recommend!

 

[mtl287]

I studied and took the old MCAT in January so my advice not be as relevant as someone who has taken the new one. However, I too was working full-time and couldn't follow the schedules listed here. I ended up scoring very high so it's definitely possible. My advice in coming up with a reasonable schedule:

1. Decide on a date. Don't start studying without knowing when you are actually going to take it. Sign up for an actual date- if you end up having to change it, it's not that much money and it is worth it. I suggest on giving yourself about 3-4 months of studying time (unless you're learning some of the stuff for the first time). I took about 3 months and it ended up working out well but right before my exam, I did wish I had some more time.

2. Schedule some vacation time for about 2 weeks off right before your test. If you can only swing 1 week, that's still good but obviously more is better.


3. Once you have your date and time off scheduled, figure out when you want to take the practice exams. I don't know how many full length exams there are for the new test but I imagine there are plenty by now. You will want pretty much your last month or 6 weeks so to be taking practice exams, reviewing them, and brushing up on content areas you see you're weak in. The way I scheduled my practice exams was I counted back from when my actual exam was scheduled for. I knew I would have two weeks off before so I took that into account. I believe my schedule was such that I started taking one practice exam a week starting 6 weeks before and then once I got to those 2 weeks where I was off of work, I took one every few days. ****it is KEY to also schedule the time to fully review every single question (even the ones you get right!) I liked to do this immediately after each exam as it allowed me to recall my exact reasoning when I had initially chosen each question.

4. Once you've figured out a tentative practice test schedule, you can schedule your content review. For me personally, I liked doing one full subject at a time but I know other people like to do it as a mix throughout. In either case, what I suggest doing is looking at how many chapters in each subject (other than verbal) and then calculating how much you need to do each week to stay on track. Schedule more time where you know you are weak nSo for example, I knew I wanted to spend more time on physics than chemistry because I find physics harder. So I think I scheduled 3 weeks for physics and 1 week for chemistry. I looked at how many chapters were in my book for physics and figured out how much I'd have to cover each weeknight. I think it ended up being half a chapter which was totally manageable.
**also, when you are doing what I call "content" review, I suggest doing all the in-chapter problems, don't just do the reading

I literally had my schedule on the notes app on my phone - I would highly recommends writing it out. This makes it easier to see if you are keeping on track or not.

5. If you start getting off schedule, don't worry! Just readjust accordingly. As long as you are keeping track closely, it will be difficult to get derailed significantly if you correct your derailing early. For example, my job is very stressful and tiring and sometimes I would fall asleep while studying and not finish what I had scheduled myself to do. Instead of panicking, it just meant that another night I had to study more than I had initially scheduled.

As a side note, don't expect to have much of a social life and don't allow people to make you feel guilty about it. My life for those 3 months was pretty much going to work, relaxing a bit when I came home and had dinner, studying and sleeping. Saturdays were my "off " day but I still did some studying Saturday nights. Sunday's were full mcat days.

6. My job is not one that allows for downtime so I couldn't exactly study there. However, I took pictures of things on my phone and whenever I had some downtime (waiting for a meeting to start, waiting for the elevator, etc), I would pull out my phone and study the pictures. (This is literally how I memorized the hormones!) I would highly suggest doing something similar. It also had the nice effect of calming me down when I felt like I needed to be studying more.

That's all I can think of for now. Hope it's helpful!

Thank you. I was thinking about writing out a schedule tonight so that I had something to follow. My wife is very supportive and knows I will not have a social life for 3 months. I appreciate the tips, I think I will use the time off before the exam idea. Thank you.

 

[mtl287]

MD89 is spot on. Especially about scheduling a couple weeks off at the end.

Sounds good. It is refreshing to see a plan that does not involve studying full time for 6 months with no work commitments. Not looking for an easy way out I just wanted to see that others had done it on here and see how they scheduled.

 

[MD89]

Even if I had had the time, I don't think I would have wanted to study for the test for 6 months - it would just be too boring, plus I probably would have forgotten things I studied in month 1 by the time month6 would have rolled around.

Three months was fine - esp because knowing that I would have those last 2 weeks completely to myself helped me when I got too stressed out.

It is my opinion that half of studying for the mcat is learning the actual test - how the test writers expect you to think, pacing/timing yourself, etc. You generally don't need 6 months for that (barring any learning disabilities). Will you have to make some sacrifices? Sure. But I think it's worth it! Or at least it should be once I apply and hopefully get accepted!

 

[kamakazi5]

I'm planning on taking the MCAT in May and just started studying a couple of weeks ago. I do work full time but it's at a hospital so I'm working 3-4 shifts per week versus 5 days but I also take classes on the days I'm off. I don't currently have a schedule set but I'm trying to do 1-2 sections per week so I have a good solid month to focus on extra questions and practice tests at the end. My wife is understanding, most of the time at least.

 

[Ad2b]

This is what I used for the anticipated Jan 2015 test (did not take it but was really underprepared for physics).

I used something similar for Sept 2015 test (did not take that one either; dad heart attack - survived, other death in family, blahblahblah)

Will use this again for what I do take the MCAT. I balance FT job with school with MCAT.