MCAT without biochem or gap year (and a half)?

[bioboy23]

Hi everyone,

This is something I have been struggling with ever since I found out I wont be taking biochem until my last semester. Heres the thing: next summer I will have finished all bio/chem/physics/A&P EXCEPT for biochem (and calc), which I will be taking fall 2018. Since I would already have a semester off I would rather not take the gap year and a half, but I am prepared to if it really is imperative I take biochem before the exam.

Any advice?

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[Blanky]

If you decide it is important to you then self study and take AAMC 1 and see how you are doing. Sounds like you didn't plan ahead and now might burn yourself in a rush.

 

[bioboy23]

If you decide it is important to you then self study and take AAMC 1 and see how you are doing. Sounds like you didn't plan ahead and now might burn yourself in a rush.

Had nothing to do with planning. I had to withdrawal one entire semester due to health issues and it doesn't help that I go to a very small private university (many classes are only offered once a year or every other year-- VERY annoying.)

But right now I am leaning towards starting my studying next summer through the last semester, then taking it that spring. I've read a few posts here that support the idea of 7+ months of studying only 1-2 hours per day instead of cramming for 3 months.

 

[NextStepTutor_3]

Just wanted to say that it's very possible to excel on the MCAT without having taken biochem. College biochemistry classes are usually very different from the way biochem content is presented on the exam. College courses focus strongly on memorizing (for example, knowing every substrate and enzyme in the pentose phosphate pathway), while the MCAT rewards understanding of foundational principles (as in, if ___ is inhibited, ____ production will decrease). The key advantage to taking a college biochem class is really just that you won't be as intimidated by the massive amount of detail that could be on the test, as you'll have seen it before. But plenty of students take the college class and don't see much benefit in their MCAT performance, because again, larger principles and reasoning are more heavily tested than those tiny details.

If you decide to take the MCAT before taking biochem, I recommend being very disciplined in your self-study. Whenever you take a practice test, pay special attention to any biochem-related question you miss. Ask yourself if you missed the question due to a content deficiency or to passage interpretation/reasoning. If content was your issue, go back and review the topic carefully; if your problem was reasoning, that's something a biochemistry class likely wouldn't have helped much with anyway. Doing this over an extended interval can give you the same likelihood of MCAT success as any student who actually took a biochem course.

Good luck