pcat prep

[sodie29]

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I will be starting prepharm in the fall & it's been over 15yrs since I was in college & was wondering if I should buy a few books this summer to brush up on everything. I won't need to take gen chem, gen bio, english, precalc or algebra since my credits transferred but unfortunately, I cannot remember any of it lol. I was wondering if I should just buy a life science & gen chem text, schaums outline for algebra & precalc, & exam krackers 101 in mcat verbal reasoning to read this summer to help me brush up & prepare for the pcat? I just had knee & shoulder surgery so will be out of work for pretty much the whole summer so I will definitely have the time to review everything this summer. I will be taking a&p as well as o chem this fall so I know that I will be prepared in those areas. Thanks in advance to anyone that can offer some advice.

 

[charfdorn]

I will be starting prepharm in the fall & it's been over 15yrs since I was in college & was wondering if I should buy a few books this summer to brush up on everything. I won't need to take gen chem, gen bio, english, precalc or algebra since my credits transferred but unfortunately, I cannot remember any of it lol. I was wondering if I should just buy a life science & gen chem text, schaums outline for algebra & precalc, & exam krackers 101 in mcat verbal reasoning to read this summer to help me brush up & prepare for the pcat? I just had knee & shoulder surgery so will be out of work for pretty much the whole summer so I will definitely have the time to review everything this summer. I will be taking a&p as well as o chem this fall so I know that I will be prepared in those areas. Thanks in advance to anyone that can offer some advice.

Are you sure you don't need to retake those courses? Many schools have a prerequisites moratorium (ie, they want you to take them in the past X years - often 5 or 7), so just because your stuff transferred doesn't mean you won't need it.

Anyway, I would get a PCAT prep book (Kaplan is good) and read the sections in question. When something comes up that you don't understand, refer to a textbook in the relevant subject. But you might be just as well (or better) served by retaking those courses, if you don't remember them. I mean, you need to know that stuff both for the PCAT and for school.

 

[diastole]

I was in the same boat. I started taking courses that I didn't take the first time around like microbiology, A&P, etc., and did fine in those classes. Later I decided to retake the original courses so I would have more schools to apply to, do better on the PCAT and get a rock solid foundation to prepare me for pharmacy school. It was worth it to me to do it that way because I really learned the material well and hopefully that will pay dividends in pharmacy school.

Make sure that the schools you are interested in will accept your old classes if you don't want to retake them. You probably can relearn some of this material on your own but it might be harder without the benefit of being able to make mistakes on homework and tests and having someone to give you feedback. It is going to take a lot of work on your part if you don't remember these things at all.

 

[charfdorn]

If you've been out of school for 15 years, the course material may have changed so much that you not only need to re-learn but to actually learn it for the first time. That'll be tough out of a textbook. Maybe a practice PCAT is the right place to start, so you have an idea of where you need to start.

 

[sodie29]

Are you sure you don't need to retake those courses? Many schools have a prerequisites moratorium (ie, they want you to take them in the past X years - often 5 or 7), so just because your stuff transferred doesn't mean you won't need it.

Anyway, I would get a PCAT prep book (Kaplan is good) and read the sections in question. When something comes up that you don't understand, refer to a textbook in the relevant subject. But you might be just as well (or better) served by retaking those courses, if you don't remember them. I mean, you need to know that stuff both for the PCAT and for school.

I definitely hear you on that but for some reason, my academic advisor told me that if I re-took any of the courses in which they accepted the transfer credit, that it wouldn't count towards my full time status so I would have to take them during the summer before I started in the fall. I have never heard of this but he was insistent upon it so that is why I figured that I would get the textbooks this summer & basically study 2-3hrs per day. I did a practice pcat test & did very well on the chemistry but not as well on the biology nor math because I have forgotten so much. I also did well on the verbal portion of it.