MCAT studying

[sixersfan]

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So I've gotten advice from everyone that practice exams are the key to studying but there obviously has to be content review before taking practice exams. I have the kaplan books and I'm curious of how i should be studying the content. Should i just be reading the reviews at the end of the chapters and study those or should i diligently read every chapter and study them (i feel like this will take way too long). I also have Exam Krackers that a friend gave me from when they studied. Which should i use? Advice please... Thank you.

 

[theonlytycrane]

Do practice passages and review content from the questions that you missed by going back to the content books (or using any other source) and looking it up. Repeat this over and over and over.

Since you have the Kaplan books just start with one of their practice exams. Split it up and do the passages in each section one by one and look up stuff and learn as needed.

Studying for this test is not like a typical college test where you study content -> take practice tests -> take exam in a linear order. This is because the MCAT is mainly about reasoning so you'll be able to answer 1/2 the questions by using only information in the passage. The other 1/2 of questions you'll answer from basic content knowledge that you'll pick up as you do practice passages / exams / review.

Also, do CARS everyday (timed) and review immediately afterwards. This should take ~ 1 hour.

 

[curvesetter]

Do practice passages and review content from the questions that you missed by going back to the content books (or using any other source) and looking it up. Repeat this over and over and over.

Since you have the Kaplan books just start with one of their practice exams. Split it up and do the passages in each section one by one and look up stuff and learn as needed.

Studying for this test is not like a typical college test where you study content -> take practice tests -> take exam in a linear order. This is because the MCAT is mainly about reasoning so you'll be able to answer 1/2 the questions by using only information in the passage. The other 1/2 of questions you'll answer from basic content knowledge that you'll pick up as you do practice passages / exams / review.

Also, do CARS everyday (timed) and review immediately afterwards. This should take ~ 1 hour.

I'm going to disagree. Unless you have a very strong foundation in the content already, learning content + strategy from practice tests is very difficult, especially given the dearth of high quality practice resources. For my exam, I read through both EK and Kaplan simultaneously for 5 weeks (no off days). I made flashcards for any concepts/equations I knew I would forget and would continuously go through past sections to re-inforce my knowledge. Once I established a good foundation, I moved on to practice tests which allowed me to target areas of weakness in both content and strategy without feeling overwhelmed by the flood of new information.

 

[NextStepTutor_1]

Hi @sixersfan -

In my experience, the vast majority of students do benefit from systematic content review, but I also recommend doing some realistic practice materials early on while studying. I often use the AAMC Official Guide questions for this purpose, but that's not set in stone. The goal of this process is to get a sense of how the MCAT asks questions. It can seem frustrating to miss questions because you haven't studied the material yet, but the idea is to try to see what you would have needed to know and how you need to apply that knowledge. A useful question can be "what is the least I needed to know in order to answer this question correctly, given careful reasoning and process of elimination?"

This is useful both because it's generally a good idea to familiarize yourself with the test ahead of time, and more specifically b/c if you get a sense of how the MCAT tests content (which tends to have a distinctly different flavor than how content is tested in science classes, even if the material itself is shared), you will be able to study more effectively because you will have a better sense of the task you're ultimately working towards.

Hope this is helpful as you're getting started!

 

[sixersfan]

Thank you everyone for the feedback, this has been very helpful.