Need help prioritizing study material

[ThatAggieGuy]

Howdy everyone!

I'm a junior getting ready to take the Mcat late January, and I was wondering if any experienced individuals could help me prioritize my study material. Ideally, I would LOVE to use it all and I am fully capable of putting my mind to it and getting it done. Before I list what I have available to use, I think it's important I mention I'm currently taking 19 hours (seems like a lot on paper but its actually not) Biochem and English are my only time-consuming courses. Also, I plan to study while I'm in school and go nuts studying from my only final - Biochem Dec 10th until late January test date.
Heres what I have:
- Princeton Ultimate Online Course begins Sept 17th
- Cars Accelator course Princeton begins December 11th
-TPR books
-The Berkley Review Books
- Full Kaplan Set of Books
- Exam Krackers books 7th edition
- Access to all 1001 EK questions
- Exams that come with each mentioned above (should be more than 13?)

Are some of these better than others? Where should I prioritize my time other than my TPR course. I feel like i'd benefit learning from different sources, but I dont know. Which is why im here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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[ThatAggieGuy]

bump since I posted late at night

 

[eljefemdfuturo]

I think all of those books might be overkill. Once the material is somewhat in your head, practice is going to be your best friend. Follow along with the Princeton course, and get as much practice in as you can.

 

[Zenabi90]

With two months of study time, and assuming you are fresh off your prereqs with a strong mastery, you shouldn't need to do a deep review, and you don't have time for it anyway. Its all overkill. You have paid for an online course, might as well use it to its maximum, don't need to go farther than that.

Don't fall into the trap that thinking more materials is better. Sometimes less is more. TPR and Kaplan are basically equal, you can mix and match but never overlap. TBR may be too in-depth for the time you have, especially since you have the TPR course.

Absolute need to know:
-Amino acids: including structure, all pKas, special properties (glycine has no chiral, proline is ring, cysteine has disulfide in EC space, etc), charge at physiologic pH
-Codons: Start codon, end codons, central dogma, how to diff reading from template
-Psych/Soc terms
-visible light spectra (very easy to memorize)
-common H1 NMR numbers, as well as how to decode the H1NMR
-common IR spectro numbers
-know the basics of UV spectro, no numbers needed
-biochem pathways: glycolysis, krebs, PPP, urea minimum
-physics equations and units: do you know what Coulombs is in kg/m/s? unit analysis will help you with most of the physics Qs

how I would prep in two months:
-sell TPR online course
-daily CARS/Verbal books, Hat Trick
-utilize EK1001 and passages to review your prereqs, using TBR/Kaplan/TPR to refresh the concepts as needed
-last 4 weeks, add in Altius/NextStep/AAMC FLs to build up stamina for the 7 hour test.

 

[ThatAggieGuy]

With two months of study time, and assuming you are fresh off your prereqs with a strong mastery, you shouldn't need to do a deep review, and you don't have time for it anyway. Its all overkill. You have paid for an online course, might as well use it to its maximum, don't need to go farther than that.

Don't fall into the trap that thinking more materials is better. Sometimes less is more. TPR and Kaplan are basically equal, you can mix and match but never overlap. TBR may be too in-depth for the time you have, especially since you have the TPR course.

Absolute need to know:
-Amino acids: including structure, all pKas, special properties (glycine has no chiral, proline is ring, cysteine has disulfide in EC space, etc), charge at physiologic pH
-Codons: Start codon, end codons, central dogma, how to diff reading from template
-Psych/Soc terms
-visible light spectra (very easy to memorize)
-common H1 NMR numbers, as well as how to decode the H1NMR
-common IR spectro numbers
-know the basics of UV spectro, no numbers needed
-biochem pathways: glycolysis, krebs, PPP, urea minimum
-physics equations and units: do you know what Coulombs is in kg/m/s? unit analysis will help you with most of the physics Qs

how I would prep in two months:
-sell TPR online course
-daily CARS/Verbal books, Hat Trick
-utilize EK1001 and passages to review your prereqs, using TBR/Kaplan/TPR to refresh the concepts as needed
-last 4 weeks, add in Altius/NextStep/AAMC FLs to build up stamina for the 7 hour test.

I take it you're not a TPR online course fan? It's paid and I figured It would keep me in line throughout my busy semester. Also, thanks for all the other tips.

 

[Zenabi90]

I take it you're not a TPR online course fan? It's paid and I figured It would keep me in line throughout my busy semester. Also, thanks for all the other tips.

I have nothing against it at all. I'm sure it's a good course, and I'm sure many people have used it successfully.

I just read the timeline as part-time for 3 months, full time for 2 months. With prereqs very fresh, you just need to brush up, sharpen whatever areas went dull, and practice practice practice. And I can do that with EK1001 and passages without paying for the online course.

But hey, if it's paid for, absolutely use it! As long as you actually use it properly and efficiently.

 

[Ad2b]

I would not pay for any online course. I loved my MCAT channel classes from Kaplan and if they offered those alone, I would pay; but you have to get a course as well (yuck) and that's not worth the $$. I have 3 sets for 2015 Kaplan books (got multiple sets because of a production line issue within Kaplan) collecting dust on a bookshelf and have been since about 1 week after I got them. Any questions/problems I don't understand?

AKlectures.com or Khan or text books.

 

[ThatAggieGuy]

thanks for the input guys!

 

[Zenabi90]

Test em all out, but don't overlap.

Just a note: personally a lot of Khan Academy videos just don't vibe with me. P/S is great but the org chem just drove me nuts. I can understand why people love em, but personally it just made me more confused than before.

 

[Ad2b]

Just a note: personally a lot of Khan Academy videos just don't vibe with me.

Agree here. I used KA for the passages in CARS and 100 page doc for psych/soc.

For ALL science related support, I used AKlectures.com or Coursera (enrolled in the free physiology class taught by Duke professors and frankly, Dr. Jakoi could make hexamethylene diisocyanate phase changes interesting).