My "best classes to take for the MCAT"

[SweetBottomAnn]

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So here goes my first post. My name is Ann and I am a senior at the University of Washington. I am finishing my degree in biochemistry this summer and will be starting at UW Med School in the fall.

I am not exactly the most self-motivated person in the world so I made sure I took all the right classes at the right time before the MCAT. In addition to the prereques I want to discuss the most important additional classes to take to prepare for the MCAT:

Biochemistry; I cant imagine taking the MCAT without biochemistry. I think it was the most important class for the biology section.

Analytical Chemistry; Our A-Chem class focused on Acid/Base, Complexation and Solubility to such a level I never need to prep for those topics again before taking.

Physical Chemistry for Life Scinces ( Essentially this class was P-Chem for Biochem Majors ) We used the following text:

"Physical Chemistry - Principles and Applications in Biological Sciences by
Tinoco, Sauer, Wang and Puglisi, 4th edition."

This text covered almost all the important ideas from Gen Chem to much greater detail and with a great prof teaching the class.

I cant imagine having taken the MCAT without Biochem, Analytical Chem or P-Chem for Biochemists. These classes helped me avoid taking Kaplan or any other review course. I took these three classes and Advaced Organic right before the MCAT and kicked ass !

 

[afterthought]

Just so folks don't freak out, here's another perspective:

I took only the basic prereqs (gen chem, orgo, bio, physics) before the MCAT and did quite well (11P, 13V, 11B). The only class I regretted not taking was physio, which would have saved me alot of time studying for the biological sciences section (but it's nothing you can't teach yourself), and possibly--just maybe--could have helped bump me from an 11 to a 12 on the section.

I'm not saying additional courses wouldn't help, but I think you could accurately invoke the the law of diminishing returns in this case. I personally wouldn't recommend taking any other classes for the purpose of test prep. If you want to take them, go for it, but don't torture yourself in class you won't like, especially because the diversity of classes available to you now will disappear as soon as you enter med school.

 

[Med_Leviathan]

So here goes my first post. My name is Ann and I am a senior at the University of Washington. I am finishing my degree in biochemistry this summer and will be starting at UW Med School in the fall.

I am not exactly the most self-motivated person in the world so I made sure I took all the right classes at the right time before the MCAT. In addition to the prereques I want to discuss the most important additional classes to take to prepare for the MCAT:

Biochemistry; I cant imagine taking the MCAT without biochemistry. I think it was the most important class for the biology section.

Analytical Chemistry; Our A-Chem class focused on Acid/Base, Complexation and Solubility to such a level I never need to prep for those topics again before taking.

Physical Chemistry for Life Scinces ( Essentially this class was P-Chem for Biochem Majors ) We used the following text:

"Physical Chemistry - Principles and Applications in Biological Sciences by
Tinoco, Sauer, Wang and Puglisi, 4th edition."

This text covered almost all the important ideas from Gen Chem to much greater detail and with a great prof teaching the class.

I cant imagine having taken the MCAT without Biochem, Analytical Chem or P-Chem for Biochemists. These classes helped me avoid taking Kaplan or any other review course. I took these three classes and Advaced Organic right before the MCAT and kicked ass !

Like everyone else, I have PR and ExamKrackers review books and therefore have no use for such primitive study methods.

 

[WayChanger]

I just took general chemistry and physics, and scored a 15 on the PS section. I don't think it's particularly necessary to take more courses in these areas to perform well on the MCAT. On the other hand, I would absolutely recommend Biochemistry (as you said), as well as Physiology for the BS section; both of these are indeed invaluable.

 

[kevster2001]

I'd rather take a prep course than wade through P-chem and A-chem considering most of that is stuff you'll never seen on the MCAT. Biochem is only marginally helpful, anything after the 1st quarter is really useless. No one will make you write out the PDH cycle on the MCAT. Physiology would have been the one class I really would have liked to take since theres a crap load of that on the McAT. Whatever I only took:

Physics
gen Chem
Gen bio
Genetics

and I made out ok. hooray TPR

 

[MollyMalone]

I'm going to move this to the MCAT forum.

 

[cdoc]

Hey --

Anyone out there from UMich that took the Sunday exam?

We had a similar horrible experience (to the DC Columbia thing) -- also an electrical fire, evacuation, 3 hour wait at lunch, relocation, blah blah. Didn't finish writing the last section until about 7.

Reason I'm writing -- I got a letter from MCAT yesterday that my mom is forwarding to me. It is now in the mail and I don't know what it says. Are they cancelling scores from the DC testing center or just offering the option of retaking on their bill?

I wonder how they're handling our situation. We actually had an MCAT personnel lady come out there to supervise, so I hope it works out ok. Don't want to take it again in August -- will throw off my app cycle.

Thanks

 

[JRJ26]

from what I've heard and seen from practice exams, physiology is the only extra course that might help. Again, you can teach this to yourself from a review guide. no need to add on extra credits if you don't want to/don't have space/time. Physio's cool though(had a lot in my human bio classes).

 

[tc13]

The physiology class comes up a lot in terms of mcat usefulness. My school has cell phys, human phys, and human anat and phys. Which physiology class are most of you writing about?

Genetics anyone?

 

[shantster]

The physiology class comes up a lot in terms of mcat usefulness. My school has cell phys, human phys, and human anat and phys. Which physiology class are most of you writing about?

Genetics anyone?

Human physiology. I'd take that over anat. and phys. since you want to spend more time on the physiology than going over any of the minute structure details.

Genetics is very debateable. I actually found that Molecular Bio was better for the "genetics" portion of the test since it's focusing more on the molecular basis of genetics. It also depends on how good your school covers basic genetics in general biology.

 

[jackieMD2007]

Even if the way the OP decided to prep isn't the way YOU decided to go for it, it doesn't mean that her way of doing so is "primitive" or a waste of her time.

In fact, I think it brings up the important point that there is no "right" way or "right" book or "right" thing to do for the MCAT...different things work for different people. 👍