Hey-- Congratulations on the new family member!
I started down the MCAT road about a year ago, and I was 10-11 years out from having taken the pre-reqs, so I definitely know how daunting it can be. The exam is huge in scope, but it doesn't cover anything in much depth, so the areas you'll want to spend the most time are the ones where you have the biggest gaps. Patching up areas where you struggle to answer the basic, high-yield topics will go a lot farther than the more tempting (and satisfying) route of sticking to building mastery in areas of comfort. The biggest thing is going to be structuring your approach into a schedule and forcing yourself to adhere to it. I can think of a couple of options for going about this.
One is to take a diagnostic exam and to build an initial study plan off the results. Many of the test prep companies offer these for free-- the one put out by NextStep is pretty good. This will paint the area of the exam in broad strokes and give you an idea of what sections merit the most work. If you're feeling comfortable enough that you're scoring in the mid 120s or above on each section, this might not be a bad way to structure all of your practice (i.e. take an exam every 1-2 weeks, carefully review both the problems you got right and wrong, and study accordingly in the interstices). This way, you're only focusing on things that are costing you points rather than patching up insecurities about how comfortable you actually are with an individual subject.
I was too far out of school and practice to do this, so I took a slightly more systematic and time-consuming route. I plotted it out ahead of time and forced myself to keep schedule, regardless of comfort or hesitation. I made three whole passes through the Kaplan books (except CARS) at spaced intervals, each with a different objective and tasks to go with it:
- The first pass was simply to acquaint myself with the scope of the test. I read through at probably 2-3 chapters per day, focusing on making sure I understood the concepts as presented. I didn't take notes or do any practice problems during this time, but if I didn't understand a concept, I'd head to Wikipedia, AK lectures, or Khan Academy to clear it up to the point where it meshed with my intuition and memory.
- The second pass was focused on active learning. I did 2 Kaplan chapters per day, taking detailed notes of everything I found important. After this, I would use the notes from the previous day to make flash cards and would then do the book problems from the chapters two days earlier. I went through this one subject at a time and found it really helped to cement concepts. I'd put the flashcards into Anki and then did my best to keep on top of reviewing those decks.
- I made the third pass several months after the first two. The break that I took was unintentional, due to family issues, but I think it ended up being helpful. I went back through the books at a clip of about 6 chapters a day, just to refresh. I found that after all the previous prep work, this went really quickly and helped to cement and integrate the concepts.
After these passes, I started taking practice full length exams to identify weak points and to build endurance. I paid attention to topics I missed questions in and checked multiple sources for practice problems and different explanations. The last 4-6 weeks before the exam should be focused entirely on the AAMC materials and scheduled accordingly. Having ample time to review each question is key here. You should be thoroughly familiar with all of the concepts presented in the Qpacks, section bank, flash cards, and sample exams before walking into the testing center.
A few random tips from my experience:
- Khan Academy and the 100 page KA notes doc from Reddit are the absolute best materials I've found for P/S. I could have skipped Kaplan for this, honestly, and I'd have saved a ton of time doing so. I spent three days watching all of these videos on 2x speed, then made a full pass through the notes each week after, and I feel like it covered me entirely, despite my lack of background in the subjects.
- AK lectures is phenomenal for biochem and really helps to cement difficult concepts.
- 3rd party CARS is totally unrepresentative of AAMC CARS. Before you spend time practicing and preparing using outside materials, crack open and complete some of the AAMC practice resources. I was concerned for a while because my NextStep CARS scores were consistently below my goals, only to find that I was scoring 3-4 points higher on the AAMC problems and didn't need to focus my study there.
Good luck! I probably put around 700 hours into my prep, so happy to answer any questions you might have to help save you some time.
