Hi
@SirZaitsev! You must understand that the MCAT, and later med school, will require you to become more efficient at studying. Plenty of my classmates during first year were used to reading their texts 3x or taking copious notes all throughout undergrad. You don't have that kind of time in med school and you typically don't want to waste that much time when prepping for the MCAT. Simply put, the methods you used in undergrad may not work for the MCAT or medical school. If it's taking you hours and hours to get through a single MCAT content chapter, something may need to be adjusted.
As for learning science, the more active you can be with the content, the better it will stick, regardless if you are a born memorizer or not. 99% of my classmates (me included) did not have any ridiculous eidetic memory yet we still did well in med school. This was due to active studying. This means doing Qs, not just seeing the material but having to think about it, work with it.
Writing down notes is not as passive as highlighting, but it's not that active. It may work for dry info like AA tables or psych theories, but it doesn't work as well for mastering relationships (e.g. physics, gen chem). If notes work for you fine, but after the notes are done, do something more active, like a content quiz, or making your own flashcard and then quizzing yourself. Vary what you study at least every 2 days or so. Develop exercises where you pick some topics out of a hat and quiz yourself on them so your brain gets used to bringing up info at a moment's notice.
You mention a content gap when you review your wrong answers, yet you claim you want more MCAT/passage based Qs. In my experience that doesn't seem right. If content is your problem, then you should seek out content reinforcing problems before you jump into another passage. The end of chapter Qs in the Kaplan books, NextStep books and others do this very well. Kaplan also has entire suites of Q banks devoted to content review but I don't know how much access to Kaplan material you have. The NextStep books have both content and MCAT passage Qs in their content books but I would say to hold off on buying any more content books for now as you already have too many. If content turns out to indeed be your issue, you can grab a hold of the old EK 1001 Q books. They are solid content reinforcing Qs with a minimal MCAT feel. You will need to be careful to avoid topics no longer on the MCAT, but you can find them pretty cheap online.
I would also recommend you review your recent practice Qs again. Ask yourself, are you truly missing the Qs due to content, or are you not recognizing the content when/how the MCAT presents it? These are 2 distinct issues with very different treatments. Many students confuse the two so that is why I ask you to look again, as your content issue doesn't quite jive with your want for more passage Qs.
If the issue is the former, do the above I mentioned regarding content Qs. If it's the latter, then you want to do topic focused MCAT style Qs, like the AAMC Q bank. and EK lecture quizzes.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
