PCAT study tips from "the 99%ile club"

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wmw

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sorry about the lame title..
anyway I scored well on the PCAT, and I want to pass on my advice to as many as possible :)

verbal 437/92%
bio 430/88%
reading 435/90%
quant 455/97%
chem 505/99%

comp 451/99%


Sure, it helps for me to know if you are a first time taker, what your goal score range is give or take, and what areas you are struggling with, but here is what i generally did:

Dr. Collin's with Kaplan exclusively (self-studying, no class) + the 3 pearson practice tests

I began about ~30 days out and spent roughly an hour of medium-intense prep per day every day, taking one timed section (bio, chem etc..) per study session, so one timed section per day, which I scored and reviewed also. This is HUGE, I attribute my score to finishing EVERY section with over 10 minutes to spare everytime. all the time. this gives you time ro review marked questions what were more difficult. and the speed comes with practice taking timed sections, one at a time, dont worry about full length tests untill about 15 days out.
I also studied one section of material each day from either Dr. Collins/Kaplan big book. Def purchase the Dr. Collins materials now now now! if you havent already and go to barnes&noble and pick up a kaplan book

Verbal - studied collins word lists/some of kaplans - this is section that is hard to 'improve on' persay unless it is your priority, simply bc most of our vocabularies are 'set' at least 90% by now. The chance of finding and remembering one little word from studies on the real PCAT are low, and for this reason I probably spent the least time preparing for this section, however! do prepare for this section, as it can be finished very quickly with practice and provide you much time to review your verbal answers. so i high score is likely for the reason of it not taking as long. the sentence completion aspects were more challenging than the analogies for me, but with practice working many problems, they become easier.

bio-the big kaplan book has an unbelievable amount of bio info, if you knew all of it, you would get 99% on bio everytime, and probably get an honorary bio Ph.D. from a prestigious university haha... point is, there is wayy more info that is necessary to study i.e. intense details on plant vasculature.... so dont get sucked in to this massive tome of information/intimidated by it either. Dr. collins does have all the necessary information but in slightly different presentation. *important* spend time with both collins and kaplan bio info and see what presentation suits you the best. I examined one section of the kaplan bio big book every day in addition to me daily timed section, this allowed me to at least be exposed to all of the material in the kaplan big book, also it helps to review the post section quizzes in the kaplan big book. for collins bio, aim for one section every few days, bc the sections are far more dense and long.

reading comp - this is another one of those where practice taking times sections will get you the farthest. i improved alot after my first 3 or so timed sections. dr collins rc questions are too easy compared to the real PCAT by FAR. but they are good to begin studying with. Kaplans are slightly more realistic, the best are the ones in the three pearson practice tests. on the real PCAT i was blown away by the difficulty of the rc passages/questions compared to collins, which i had spent most of my time prepping with. dont do that, rely more on the kaplan rc passages and pearons practice exams

quant- collins collins collins, wouldnt mess with kaplan here, their calc prep was insufficient. i realllllly needed calc help coming in and with the collins calc, although pretty intense to get a grip on, i became a calc legend haha... maybe.. point is if you can perform well on the collins calc, then you are in good shape, id check out kaplan to but dont rely on it or feel as safe if you are scoring well on it but not collins quant sections. every once and a while there will be a integrative calc/trig word problem that would just blow my face off, but other than that this prep method helped me (97%)

chem- alot to say here. this is prob the most importnt section on the exam. based on my statistical analysis of 21 full scores ive analyzed, this is the section with the most scaled score points per percentile rank (SS/PR) what does this mean? it means there is the biggest spread in the distribution here, meaning it makes/breaks alot of ppl bc the scaled score from here typically affects the comp % a little more bc of the higher range (ppl making sub 400s to above 500). so focus on thie section, also bc it is maybe the most important for consideration by schools. its huge, and its hard. Gen chem is tested about 75% to ochem at about 25%, so first off know gen chem. collins is the best in my opinion for chem, their practice sections were excellent prep, the best prep of kaplan/collins for any discipline on the PCAT in my opinion, if anything get collins just for chem (and kaplan for bio)
i was scoring in the high 90s consistently (this is raw percentile as in 46/48 q's correct) on the collins practice tests and i beat the cutoff for the 99%ile on real PCAT chem by more than 50 points (highest scaled score ive ever seen :)) so it def works and can get you there. also as an aside, beating a 99%ile cutoff for a section helps out your composite score with those extra points i.e. i had an 88%ile in bio but my comp was still 99%.... back to chem, most important gen chem concepts: thermochemistry, periodic table trends, orbital shapes/configurations, GAS LAWS!! mult. questions always!, and nuclear isotopes. these are the topics i would stress. use collins, go over a new section of material in it each day so you cover it a few times total in its entirety, take all the practice timed sections and you will be at your max im confident. for organic chemistry, you will have to know reactions, and this scares the **** out of ppl i know. but you need to. every practice section/exam ive ever seen had at least one organic reaction. know naming as well, as well as functional groups. collins does a great job with this, kaplans organic chem is insufficient when it comes to reactions, and collins is a little bit also, ive yet to come across a great PCAT organic chem reactions prep system. I was helped by the fact that ive been an ochem tutor for 2 years now, so i honestly probably cannot accurately judge how well collins/kaplan prepare one for organic chem. but the collins naming stuff looked the easiest to grasp as far as presentation style.

essay: zero prep. but collins has awesome prompts that seemed right in line with what i saw on the real PCAT.

overall: dont kill yourself, i was studying for max 1.5 hours a day, sometimes less, usually less but did so consistantly, HARD, every single day for about ~30 days.

everyday:
- ~30 pages in kaplan bio big book ~15 minutes
- 1 collins timed practice section, scored, reviewed, alternated topics each day to stay fresh ~45minutes
- ~2-3 various sections in the collins packets as review ~20minutes

last ~15 days or so:
-I took a pearson practice PCAT every 5 days
-stressed lingering doubts i had on specific subjects (calc for me)
-finished off all the collins timed sections until I had done all of them
-finished the kaplan big bio book
-finished all collins materials

after the real PCAT: i thought id severely bungled rc, and verbal, done not great on bio, decent on quant and ok on chem. dont be discouraged if you thought the test was savage. i did and came out fine.

please post any other questions, I will try my best to reply as soon as possible

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I just had a quick question, and I was wondering if anyone could help me out. On the day of the actual test, will I need any login details in order to start writing my test? The Pearson website mentions bringing ID and everything, but will I need to have my VUE login to access my test, or there will already be a computer assigned to me on the day I register? Thanks for your help.

A computer will be assigned to you. Just bring 2 forms of ID.
 
Thanks :D. By the way, when you finish a section of the test (or when the timer runs out), does the next section begin immediately? I was hoping there would be time to fit in a quick bathroom break between sections, if need be.
 
Thanks :D. By the way, when you finish a section of the test (or when the timer runs out), does the next section begin immediately? I was hoping there would be time to fit in a quick bathroom break between sections, if need be.

I think there were two breaks... It's been a while since I took the test
 
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Thanks :D. By the way, when you finish a section of the test (or when the timer runs out), does the next section begin immediately? I was hoping there would be time to fit in a quick bathroom break between sections, if need be.

There is one break.

A screen comes up and says you are about to start the next section.
 
I just want to thank everyone in this thread for their useful advice. Had I not stumbled upon this thread while looking for study guide information a couple months ago, I probably would have only studied the Kaplan book. Thanks to you guys, I found out about Dr. Collins and the three online Pearson practice tests. I just finished my test this afternoon and this is my preliminary score report:

Verbal: 437 / 94%
Biology: 466 / 99%
Reading: 426 / 91%
Quantitative: 442 / 96%
Chemistry: 472 / 99%
Composite 449 / 99%

Does anyone know if these scores can change significantly? Or are they pretty much official unless Pearson made a mistake with the grading?
 
I just want to thank everyone in this thread for their useful advice. Had I not stumbled upon this thread while looking for study guide information a couple months ago, I probably would have only studied the Kaplan book. Thanks to you guys, I found out about Dr. Collins and the three online Pearson practice tests. I just finished my test this afternoon and this is my preliminary score report:

Verbal: 437 / 94%
Biology: 466 / 99%
Reading: 426 / 91%
Quantitative: 442 / 96%
Chemistry: 472 / 99%
Composite 449 / 99%

Does anyone know if these scores can change significantly? Or are they pretty much official unless Pearson made a mistake with the grading?

You did amazing! You will get into every single school that you apply to! I hope that I am lucky enough to get even somewhat close to your composite score. Good Job. Congratulations! :) :)
I don't think your scores will change or if all any at all.
 
You did amazing! You will get into every single school that you apply to! I hope that I am lucky enough to get even somewhat close to your composite score. Good Job. Congratulations! :) :)
I don't think your scores will change or if all any at all.

Thanks, haha. Unfortunately, most Canadian schools don't really care that much about the PCAT. They make sure you get over a certain percentile, then your PCAT score doesn't matter a single bit. If the cut off is 70, a 71 and 99 would be no different.

Good luck on your PCAT!
 
Thanks, haha. Unfortunately, most Canadian schools don't really care that much about the PCAT. They make sure you get over a certain percentile, then your PCAT score doesn't matter a single bit. If the cut off is 70, a 71 and 99 would be no different.

Good luck on your PCAT!

You are welcome! Thanks! :) :)
 
I found this website that has free courses on most of the topics covered in the PCAT! It has video lectures, written lectures, and quizzes after the end of each lecture. It is very easy to understand and has helped me review for the PCAT, which I will be taking in Sept, 2013.
I thought it might help many of you. The website is called Education Portal and the link is going to take you to the Chemistry course on ideal gas laws but if you search around the webpage you will find courses on A&P, Chem, Bio, Micro, Algebra, Precalc, Calc .... and many more!:thumbup:

https://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/the-ideal-gas-law-and-the-gas-constant.html
 
Thank you very much for this post.:)

Could you please elaborate on the amount of calculation-based questions for the chemistry section? Like, will we need to set up ICE tables? And how about buffers? What kind of equations should we have memorized?



I took mine also in july using only Dr collins and had 96 percentile. i have my 2013 guide and want to sell it.. I am super excited scoring a higer composite on my PCAT (Chemistry was super easy for me because of Dr collins. Bio and Quantative wasnt an issue. my verbal was very good, reading was good too, had a perfect score.. Dr collins 2013 guide is perfect for official exams. you will never regret. inbox me if u re interesed in getting mine, [email protected]
 
sorry about the lame title..
anyway I scored well on the PCAT, and I want to pass on my advice to as many as possible :)

after the real PCAT: i thought id severely bungled rc, and verbal, done not great on bio, decent on quant and ok on chem. dont be discouraged if you thought the test was savage. i did and came out fine.

please post any other questions, I will try my best to reply as soon as possible

I just wanted to thank wmw for making this thread a couple of years ago. I literally printed it out and used it as a bible, highlighting different areas. I would re-read it and analyze it like a puzzle to make sure I understood everything correctly.

The only thing I really had to change was the daily time to study. I know I'm not that bright so I had to put in a good 4-5 hours a night after work for about 2 months to prepare. Other than that I used the same format of doing a section everyday (or at least tried to) and taking the PPT's towards the end.

This thread was spot on with so many things its not even funny. Especially his last paragraph which I quoted here about doing badly. I walked out of there and grabbed my prelim score thinking that I had BOMBED it. I didn't even look at it. I just said thank you to the lady, got my stuff and got the hell out of there. In the elevator I decided to treat it as a bandaid that you rip off quick to get the pain out of the way so I took a peak. 84 composite. Not exactly 99% but for me, who was expecting a 50 something score, it is!! LOL!!

So thanks once again because this thread, this forum really helped me get through this. Without this resource there is no way I would've gotten through it. So thanks again wmw and thanks SDN! I feel like I just climbed a mountain. :banana:
 
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I just wanted to thank wmw for making this thread a couple of years ago. I literally printed it out and used it as a bible, highlighting different areas. I would re-read it and analyze it like a puzzle to make sure I understood everything correctly.

The only thing I really had to change was the daily time to study. I know I'm not that bright so I had to put in a good 4-5 hours a night after work for about 2 months to prepare. Other than that I used the same format of doing a section everyday (or at least tried to) and taking the PPT's towards the end.

This thread was spot on with so many things its not even funny. Especially his last paragraph which I quoted here about doing badly. I walked out of there and grabbed my prelim score thinking that I had BOMBED it. I didn't even look at it. I just said thank you to the lady, got my stuff and got the hell out of there. In the elevator I decided to treat it as a bandaid that you rip off quick to get the pain out of the way so I took a peak. 84 composite. Not exactly 99% but for me, who was expecting a 50 something score, it is!! LOL!!

So thanks once again because this thread, this forum really helped me get through this. Without this resource there is no way I would've gotten through it. So thanks again wmw and thanks SDN! I feel like I just climbed a mountain. :banana:

When you say a section a day, do you mean like one night you'll do chem and study one unit from Collins? I have to put 4-5 hrs a night after work too. Can you break down your daily schedule as to how you used dr Collins? Thanks!!! Hope to study differently and do better in oct/nov!
 
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When you say a section a day, do you mean like one night you'll do chem and study one unit from Collins? I have to put 4-5 hrs a night after work too. Can you break down your daily schedule as to how you used dr Collins? Thanks!!! Hope to study differently and do better in oct/nov!

Yeah basically I tried following the schedule listed in the first post of this thread. I'm a little older so I couldn't just study an hour a day I had to go from the time I left work and ate till I starting dozing off which worked out to about 4-5 hours a night.

I had been studying since June but a month out my schedule was for example Monday I'd do Chem, Tuesday Bio, Wednesday QA, Thursday I'd double up on one of the subjects that I felt worse about, then on Friday I'd review all of them, Saturday I'd do a Pearson Practice Test, Then Sunday I would review a little bit of everything that I was having problems in from all subjects. If I were in the mood I might do a Reading practice session and/or Vocab. Then start back again on Monday.

So on any given night I would first review all the collins notes and other notes I had for that subject and then with about an hour left I would take a collins practice test timed for that section. After the practice test I would then grade it and just quickly review the answers for the ones I got wrong or wasn't sure about and see what explanation collins gave. Then I called it a night. I would also keep track as to how much time it took me and of course how many I got wrong.

The closer I got to the exam, like the last two weeks, the more I would review just the areas I felt weaker in but I'd still go over everything to make sure I didn't forget. Then I'd review the practice tests I had already done for that subject and go over the questions and the ones I got wrong again. If there was a particular topic I saw that I kept getting wrong I'd review that. So for example if I was missing questions about hormones I'd review all of those.

In general though I'd do a subject a day where I reviewed the collins notes for that subject then take a collins practice test, grade it, and review the ones I got wrong to see why I got it wrong. Now dont beat yourself up if you have some days where you don't feel productive. I had days where I couldn't focus for whatever reason and couldn't take a practice test so I'd just move everything back a day. Its grueling so that can happen. Just keep going forward.

The last week before the exam I only did 1 timed section and instead spent most of my time just reviewing all the other practice tests I had done. I would review all the questions and especially the ones I had gotten wrong or had flagged as unsure. I would also review the collins notes and the updates. I also went over the questions I had done on the PPT's.

I primarily used Collins. For Bio Kaplan is good but so is Princeton's PCAT Cracker. Their Bio is a little easier to read and understand than Kaplans is. You can probably find the PCAT Cracker in the library which is what I did. For Chem I relied on Collins as well as QA. I also focused on the PPT questions for QA although I didn't do well. For QA make sure you know how to find max and min of a function, find the tangent of a line and know how to find the velocity and acceleration of an equation. I think velocity was the first derivative and acceleration is the 2nd derivative.

For Vocab I used Collins and the PPT's. What I would do is the ones I got wrong cuz I would get the definition for the word that I didn't know and add it to the collins list of words to know. I also did that with the vocab section of the PPT's. On the PCAT I found the analogies were a little harder than Collins but the fill in the blanks were easier. Still though the last week I didn't review much Vocab...I focused more on Bio and Chem.

For reading I was doing Collins and did great with Collins on the practice tests but got just a 68 on the actual PCAT. So I severely underperformed. I think Collins might be a bit easy and I didn't do much practicing for that. I think I only did 3 practice tests for that mainly cuz it takes an hour to do. Also cuz the reading on the PPT's reflected what the actual PCAT reading is. So I didn't bother anymore with reading cuz Collins I don't think were realistic but they are good to practice strategy on. Such as reading the passage first or questions first etc.

Anyway hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions....you can reply here or pm me if you need to. Good luck!
 
sorry about the lame title..
anyway I scored well on the PCAT, and I want to pass on my advice to as many as possible :)

verbal 437/92%
bio 430/88%
reading 435/90%
quant 455/97%
chem 505/99%

comp 451/99%


Sure, it helps for me to know if you are a first time taker, what your goal score range is give or take, and what areas you are struggling with, but here is what i generally did:

Dr. Collin's with Kaplan exclusively (self-studying, no class) + the 3 pearson practice tests

I began about ~30 days out and spent roughly an hour of medium-intense prep per day every day, taking one timed section (bio, chem etc..) per study session, so one timed section per day, which I scored and reviewed also. This is HUGE, I attribute my score to finishing EVERY section with over 10 minutes to spare everytime. all the time. this gives you time ro review marked questions what were more difficult. and the speed comes with practice taking timed sections, one at a time, dont worry about full length tests untill about 15 days out.
I also studied one section of material each day from either Dr. Collins/Kaplan big book. Def purchase the Dr. Collins materials now now now! if you havent already and go to barnes&noble and pick up a kaplan book

Verbal - studied collins word lists/some of kaplans - this is section that is hard to 'improve on' persay unless it is your priority, simply bc most of our vocabularies are 'set' at least 90% by now. The chance of finding and remembering one little word from studies on the real PCAT are low, and for this reason I probably spent the least time preparing for this section, however! do prepare for this section, as it can be finished very quickly with practice and provide you much time to review your verbal answers. so i high score is likely for the reason of it not taking as long. the sentence completion aspects were more challenging than the analogies for me, but with practice working many problems, they become easier.

bio-the big kaplan book has an unbelievable amount of bio info, if you knew all of it, you would get 99% on bio everytime, and probably get an honorary bio Ph.D. from a prestigious university haha... point is, there is wayy more info that is necessary to study i.e. intense details on plant vasculature.... so dont get sucked in to this massive tome of information/intimidated by it either. Dr. collins does have all the necessary information but in slightly different presentation. *important* spend time with both collins and kaplan bio info and see what presentation suits you the best. I examined one section of the kaplan bio big book every day in addition to me daily timed section, this allowed me to at least be exposed to all of the material in the kaplan big book, also it helps to review the post section quizzes in the kaplan big book. for collins bio, aim for one section every few days, bc the sections are far more dense and long.

reading comp - this is another one of those where practice taking times sections will get you the farthest. i improved alot after my first 3 or so timed sections. dr collins rc questions are too easy compared to the real PCAT by FAR. but they are good to begin studying with. Kaplans are slightly more realistic, the best are the ones in the three pearson practice tests. on the real PCAT i was blown away by the difficulty of the rc passages/questions compared to collins, which i had spent most of my time prepping with. dont do that, rely more on the kaplan rc passages and pearons practice exams

quant- collins collins collins, wouldnt mess with kaplan here, their calc prep was insufficient. i realllllly needed calc help coming in and with the collins calc, although pretty intense to get a grip on, i became a calc legend haha... maybe.. point is if you can perform well on the collins calc, then you are in good shape, id check out kaplan to but dont rely on it or feel as safe if you are scoring well on it but not collins quant sections. every once and a while there will be a integrative calc/trig word problem that would just blow my face off, but other than that this prep method helped me (97%)

chem- alot to say here. this is prob the most importnt section on the exam. based on my statistical analysis of 21 full scores ive analyzed, this is the section with the most scaled score points per percentile rank (SS/PR) what does this mean? it means there is the biggest spread in the distribution here, meaning it makes/breaks alot of ppl bc the scaled score from here typically affects the comp % a little more bc of the higher range (ppl making sub 400s to above 500). so focus on thie section, also bc it is maybe the most important for consideration by schools. its huge, and its hard. Gen chem is tested about 75% to ochem at about 25%, so first off know gen chem. collins is the best in my opinion for chem, their practice sections were excellent prep, the best prep of kaplan/collins for any discipline on the PCAT in my opinion, if anything get collins just for chem (and kaplan for bio)
i was scoring in the high 90s consistently (this is raw percentile as in 46/48 q's correct) on the collins practice tests and i beat the cutoff for the 99%ile on real PCAT chem by more than 50 points (highest scaled score ive ever seen :)) so it def works and can get you there. also as an aside, beating a 99%ile cutoff for a section helps out your composite score with those extra points i.e. i had an 88%ile in bio but my comp was still 99%.... back to chem, most important gen chem concepts: thermochemistry, periodic table trends, orbital shapes/configurations, GAS LAWS!! mult. questions always!, and nuclear isotopes. these are the topics i would stress. use collins, go over a new section of material in it each day so you cover it a few times total in its entirety, take all the practice timed sections and you will be at your max im confident. for organic chemistry, you will have to know reactions, and this scares the **** out of ppl i know. but you need to. every practice section/exam ive ever seen had at least one organic reaction. know naming as well, as well as functional groups. collins does a great job with this, kaplans organic chem is insufficient when it comes to reactions, and collins is a little bit also, ive yet to come across a great PCAT organic chem reactions prep system. I was helped by the fact that ive been an ochem tutor for 2 years now, so i honestly probably cannot accurately judge how well collins/kaplan prepare one for organic chem. but the collins naming stuff looked the easiest to grasp as far as presentation style.

essay: zero prep. but collins has awesome prompts that seemed right in line with what i saw on the real PCAT.

overall: dont kill yourself, i was studying for max 1.5 hours a day, sometimes less, usually less but did so consistantly, HARD, every single day for about ~30 days.

everyday:
- ~30 pages in kaplan bio big book ~15 minutes
- 1 collins timed practice section, scored, reviewed, alternated topics each day to stay fresh ~45minutes
- ~2-3 various sections in the collins packets as review ~20minutes

last ~15 days or so:
-I took a pearson practice PCAT every 5 days
-stressed lingering doubts i had on specific subjects (calc for me)
-finished off all the collins timed sections until I had done all of them
-finished the kaplan big bio book
-finished all collins materials

after the real PCAT: i thought id severely bungled rc, and verbal, done not great on bio, decent on quant and ok on chem. dont be discouraged if you thought the test was savage. i did and came out fine.

please post any other questions, I will try my best to reply as soon as possible
do you know how we can get the dr.collins pact book?
 
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Sorry if this is the wrong place to post but I don't think it should be made a new topic. I am interested in buying a used Dr.Collin's 2013-2014 study guide, but how do I know if its real? Like roughly how many pages should I be expecting, etc.
 
sorry about the lame title..
anyway I scored well on the PCAT, and I want to pass on my advice to as many as possible :)

verbal 437/92%
bio 430/88%
reading 435/90%
quant 455/97%
chem 505/99%

comp 451/99%


Sure, it helps for me to know if you are a first time taker, what your goal score range is give or take, and what areas you are struggling with, but here is what i generally did:

Dr. Collin's with Kaplan exclusively (self-studying, no class) + the 3 pearson practice tests

I began about ~30 days out and spent roughly an hour of medium-intense prep per day every day, taking one timed section (bio, chem etc..) per study session, so one timed section per day, which I scored and reviewed also. This is HUGE, I attribute my score to finishing EVERY section with over 10 minutes to spare everytime. all the time. this gives you time ro review marked questions what were more difficult. and the speed comes with practice taking timed sections, one at a time, dont worry about full length tests untill about 15 days out.
I also studied one section of material each day from either Dr. Collins/Kaplan big book. Def purchase the Dr. Collins materials now now now! if you havent already and go to barnes&noble and pick up a kaplan book

Verbal - studied collins word lists/some of kaplans - this is section that is hard to 'improve on' persay unless it is your priority, simply bc most of our vocabularies are 'set' at least 90% by now. The chance of finding and remembering one little word from studies on the real PCAT are low, and for this reason I probably spent the least time preparing for this section, however! do prepare for this section, as it can be finished very quickly with practice and provide you much time to review your verbal answers. so i high score is likely for the reason of it not taking as long. the sentence completion aspects were more challenging than the analogies for me, but with practice working many problems, they become easier.

bio-the big kaplan book has an unbelievable amount of bio info, if you knew all of it, you would get 99% on bio everytime, and probably get an honorary bio Ph.D. from a prestigious university haha... point is, there is wayy more info that is necessary to study i.e. intense details on plant vasculature.... so dont get sucked in to this massive tome of information/intimidated by it either. Dr. collins does have all the necessary information but in slightly different presentation. *important* spend time with both collins and kaplan bio info and see what presentation suits you the best. I examined one section of the kaplan bio big book every day in addition to me daily timed section, this allowed me to at least be exposed to all of the material in the kaplan big book, also it helps to review the post section quizzes in the kaplan big book. for collins bio, aim for one section every few days, bc the sections are far more dense and long.

reading comp - this is another one of those where practice taking times sections will get you the farthest. i improved alot after my first 3 or so timed sections. dr collins rc questions are too easy compared to the real PCAT by FAR. but they are good to begin studying with. Kaplans are slightly more realistic, the best are the ones in the three pearson practice tests. on the real PCAT i was blown away by the difficulty of the rc passages/questions compared to collins, which i had spent most of my time prepping with. dont do that, rely more on the kaplan rc passages and pearons practice exams

quant- collins collins collins, wouldnt mess with kaplan here, their calc prep was insufficient. i realllllly needed calc help coming in and with the collins calc, although pretty intense to get a grip on, i became a calc legend haha... maybe.. point is if you can perform well on the collins calc, then you are in good shape, id check out kaplan to but dont rely on it or feel as safe if you are scoring well on it but not collins quant sections. every once and a while there will be a integrative calc/trig word problem that would just blow my face off, but other than that this prep method helped me (97%)

chem- alot to say here. this is prob the most importnt section on the exam. based on my statistical analysis of 21 full scores ive analyzed, this is the section with the most scaled score points per percentile rank (SS/PR) what does this mean? it means there is the biggest spread in the distribution here, meaning it makes/breaks alot of ppl bc the scaled score from here typically affects the comp % a little more bc of the higher range (ppl making sub 400s to above 500). so focus on thie section, also bc it is maybe the most important for consideration by schools. its huge, and its hard. Gen chem is tested about 75% to ochem at about 25%, so first off know gen chem. collins is the best in my opinion for chem, their practice sections were excellent prep, the best prep of kaplan/collins for any discipline on the PCAT in my opinion, if anything get collins just for chem (and kaplan for bio)
i was scoring in the high 90s consistently (this is raw percentile as in 46/48 q's correct) on the collins practice tests and i beat the cutoff for the 99%ile on real PCAT chem by more than 50 points (highest scaled score ive ever seen :)) so it def works and can get you there. also as an aside, beating a 99%ile cutoff for a section helps out your composite score with those extra points i.e. i had an 88%ile in bio but my comp was still 99%.... back to chem, most important gen chem concepts: thermochemistry, periodic table trends, orbital shapes/configurations, GAS LAWS!! mult. questions always!, and nuclear isotopes. these are the topics i would stress. use collins, go over a new section of material in it each day so you cover it a few times total in its entirety, take all the practice timed sections and you will be at your max im confident. for organic chemistry, you will have to know reactions, and this scares the **** out of ppl i know. but you need to. every practice section/exam ive ever seen had at least one organic reaction. know naming as well, as well as functional groups. collins does a great job with this, kaplans organic chem is insufficient when it comes to reactions, and collins is a little bit also, ive yet to come across a great PCAT organic chem reactions prep system. I was helped by the fact that ive been an ochem tutor for 2 years now, so i honestly probably cannot accurately judge how well collins/kaplan prepare one for organic chem. but the collins naming stuff looked the easiest to grasp as far as presentation style.

essay: zero prep. but collins has awesome prompts that seemed right in line with what i saw on the real PCAT.

overall: dont kill yourself, i was studying for max 1.5 hours a day, sometimes less, usually less but did so consistantly, HARD, every single day for about ~30 days.

everyday:
- ~30 pages in kaplan bio big book ~15 minutes
- 1 collins timed practice section, scored, reviewed, alternated topics each day to stay fresh ~45minutes
- ~2-3 various sections in the collins packets as review ~20minutes

last ~15 days or so:
-I took a pearson practice PCAT every 5 days
-stressed lingering doubts i had on specific subjects (calc for me)
-finished off all the collins timed sections until I had done all of them
-finished the kaplan big bio book
-finished all collins materials

after the real PCAT: i thought id severely bungled rc, and verbal, done not great on bio, decent on quant and ok on chem. dont be discouraged if you thought the test was savage. i did and came out fine.

please post any other questions, I will try my best to reply as soon as possible

Hey,
I am a first time test taker and my PCAT is on July 17. I have just begun studying. I have the Kaplan Book and Dr. Collins practice tests besides the Verbal. My goal is to reach scores similar to yours however when I took a diagnostic PCAT my scores were not good at all. I had a composite score of 390 and a score of 350 on verbal, 363 on Biology and 371 on reading comprehension being my worst 3 scores. This made me freak out and now I'm really stressed. Is it possible to get to scores like yours in a period of two months? I'm not good at verbal because I don't know what most of the words mean and now that you said that this is the section that is most hard to improve, that makes me even more scared. So that being said, how did you study the material? How often did you take a Dr. Collins timed practice test?
 
Just wondering, has anybody used Chad's videos for PCAT? (especially for Gchem and Ochem)
Is it helpful?
 
I am actually gonna take the Dr. Collins Pcat prep course in fort lauderdale. I will try to remember to let u know how it compares to just the self study guide
 
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post but I don't think it should be made a new topic. I am interested in buying a used Dr.Collin's 2013-2014 study guide, but how do I know if its real? Like roughly how many pages should I be expecting, etc.
hey i have the doctor collins study guide. please email me with any questions.. [email protected]
 
Hey guys I'm taking my PCAT on September 5th - I struggle with chemistry and I'm looking for some studying advice from you 99%'ers.
Should Dr. Collins' study guide suffice or is there a better method?
What are some specific areas within chemistry that are emphasized more than others?
And finally, if one knew the Dr. Collins chemistry study guide packet in and out, would one receive a 90+% on the chemistry portion of the PCAT? It seems as though Dr. Collins assumes prior knowledge on some topics.
Any help is appreciated!
 
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Dr collins chem section is its best part imho. I used it alone and scored in the 90's. Warning though, it is very lenghty for inorganic and organic chem with a lot of practice exams u need to know how to do all types of problems so it would take a while
 
I am curious over what you would personally recommend a pre pharm student that is going to take the PCAT, for the first time in about 9 months, and needs at least a 75 composite, and above 50 percent in each sub category. I know there are a lot of other factors that take into place when applying into pharmacy school, but the idea of the PCAT tends to overpower all of them. I need advice on what to do, since my goal is to get a good score on the first time and be able to get accepted.
 
I am curious over what you would personally recommend a pre pharm student that is going to take the PCAT, for the first time in about 9 months, and needs at least a 75 composite, and above 50 percent in each sub category. I know there are a lot of other factors that take into place when applying into pharmacy school, but the idea of the PCAT tends to overpower all of them. I need advice on what to do, since my goal is to get a good score on the first time and be able to get accepted.


I can only tell you what worked for me

I had some financial difficulties and couldn't afford to pay for this semester so I decided, instead of letting a semester go to waste I would study for the PCAT. I studied for 4 months, basically from the end of the summer semester to the end of the fall semester. Naturally, I am very talented with Chemistry & Biology already and math was by far my weakest link. I just took the PCAT on jan 6 and I got a 98%, according to the preliminary score sheet.

VA - 52%
Bio - 92%
Chem - 99%
RC - 89%
QA - 72%
Comp - 98%

I scored over 520 in chemistry section and shot way over the 99% mark and I'm sure that helped to pull my overall composite by a lot. To my knowledge, the chemistry section is weighed more than ALL of the other subjects.

I would also like to add that, while taking my prereq's, I studied very hard and did my best to really "learn" the material because I always knew I would need it again for the PCAT. While other students were taking the easy way out in my Community College, I actually read all of my Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy books and I really "learned". I believe this helped me a lot because while studying for the PCAT, 90% of chemistry, and biology, and math were just a review.

Buy Dr. Collins. Study your ass off.

Master the Chem and Bio questions and definitely buy something to supplement the bio (.ie kaplan). If you truly master Dr. Collins you can get atleast 85% in bio and 90% in chem. For me, my chemistry test was 90% Dr. Collins. I want to say out of my 40 questions, 20 of them were repeat word-for-word Dr. Collins questions but I mastered the chemistry section like the back of my hand. Dr Collins Bio is lacking in some departments but remember, most of the PCAT are general types of questions. BTW, I studied his 2014 updates right before test, several questions from Chem and Bio section updates were on my test. DO NOT memorize material without understanding, if you study Dr. Collins by just trying to memorize, you are taking a big gamble. You NEED to understand. The fact that I took General Chem I & II, Anatomy I & II, Microbiology, Organic Chem 1, General Bio I & II helped me a lot because all of the material was basically review. Although people do it, I can't imagine have taken the pcat without having already taken those classes.

RC & VA

For me, I was just very unlucky with VA and to be honest, unless you already have an extensive vocabulary; this section does require some luck. Unfortunately for me, VA was my lowest score, I only saw about 6-7 Dr Collins repeats, the rest of the test I was on my own & as you can see that didn't turn out so well lol. However, Dr. Collins was still very helpful and I know my score would have been lower without it. Some people say study GRE words, or kaplan words and maybe this helps, I can't tell you. VA boils down to, how comfortable with the questions that you get asked that day. My first pearson practice test with VA was 80-99% then my second Pearson test was 30-50%... obviously I was just more comfortable with the words used in the first test. RC -- This section to me was probably the hardest section in the test. I am a pretty avid reader but the passages were longer than the ones in the pearson test and I barely finished on time. This section is very difficult to study for and if you want to improve you should probably start doing GRE, MCAT, RC problems so you can gain some skill. Since you have 8 months, perhaps its possible for you to improve this section but don't spend too much time. Chem, Bio, Math take precedence over those score.

Essay -- I didn't do a single day of prep for this... don't even know if I got a 3, I was pretty rushed and the keyboard I was typing on was making so much noise it was disturbing other people but I had to type fast or I wouldn't have finished it. One girl was loudly sighing during the test while I was typing lol. Poor girl.... I wish they had given me a softer keyboard haha.

QA - Let me be frank. Math is my worst subject. Don't get me wrong I have all A's and B's in my math classes, math is just not my thing. Never cared for it. For me, there were just certain math concepts that I knew I wouldn't master in 4 months on top of everything else. The math section requires strategy! Even someone like me who is mediocre at math can manage to score 72% just by proper strategy and perhaps a bit of luck. Dr Collins was very helpful and without it, I am almost sure I would have completely failed this section. I focused on the things I was good at, and not so much the things I wasn't good at. Remember, there are a lot of simple algebra, simple derivative problems, integration, simple stats questions, simple pre-cal questions. I skipped through the test and did the easier questions first, and for all the questions I was clueless on I selected B. Make sure you pick 1 letter for all your uncertain questions, that way if you guess on 12 questions, theres a good chance 3,4 or maybe even 5 of them may be answer B. I skipped a lot of questions and didn't even waste my time with stuff that looked like it I couldn't instantly do it. I notice, a lot of HARD questions were in beginning of test and a lot of easier questions were at the end. If you spend time on hard, possibly experimental problems and get a bunch of easy problems at the end wrong, thats a recipe for disaster. For me, questions 41-48 were the easiest questions but if I didn't get to the 41st question with atleast 7 minutes, I would lose out on 7 easy problems! I hate math and I got a 72%, so its totally possible bro!

I bought two pearson test and they were definitely helpful for everything but in my opinion QA and RC on actual PCAT was just harder. In RC passages were just longer which wasted more of your time, which is crucial. QA questions were similar to Dr. Collins and Pearson but they made the questions slightly harder by adding more variables or just throwing little wrenches into otherwise easy Dr. Collins questions.

In the end remember, I don't know your GPA and your stats (ie.. experience) but you don't need to get 99s in everything. Out of Math, Chem, and Bio, atleast KNOCK two of these out of the park & do decent on other one. Manage yourself in VA & RC and you can atleast come out with a 75-85 which is competitive for most schools.

If you have any questions, feel free to message me; I'd be glad to answer any of your questions.
 
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Just got mine yesterday:

Verbal 416 (74%)
Biology 425 (84%)
RC 415 (78%)
QA 453 (98%)
Chemistry 526 (99%)
Composite 447 (99%)

Yay, I am now in the 99% club.

Here's the gist:

#1) Don't assume anything. I came in thinking I'll get LOWER than an 80% like I did my first time (it changed to 90% on my official score... I think they change the way they do scores at the time I took it) , but actually came out higher.

Why did I think I'll get lower? Because I was working 12 hour shifts, full-time, writing 6 pharmacy applications and only studied a total of 15 hours.

Okay, my background: Master's in Chemistry, high school/college private math tutor. Took the PCAT once already, only study two weeks the first time I took it, and this time, only 15 hours in a span of one week.

I will not advise on Verbal and RC because I did not study/practice for it. My first time taking, I got 58% on verbal... so I knew I wasn't going to improve my verbal in less than a week.

HOWEVER, math and chemistry you can improve in less than a day in my honest opinion. Biology, maybe in half a month, but I didn't have that time either.

Math - Do a lot of problems and do them mentally. Why mentally? If your mind is not thinking/proofreading while you are jotting things down on the real test, then you do not have an extra layer of validation that your answer is correct. Because I can do mental math, I was able to see the answer to the problems before I look at the multiple choice (this refers to the simple one step problems). Also, once your brain becomes efficient at working problems out without writing, it actually saves you time on the QA section and time STUDYING so you can do MORE problems and be MORE prepare.

Chemistry - Same concept. This requires more visual mental ability. If you can see organic molecules in your brain, you are good. If you can see mechanisms, you are great. The more you do it mentally, the faster you get, the more you can process while studying and while you are taking the test.

Biology - I took some classes two to three years ago, so half of it is still fresh in my head. Problems grinding is not as effective for biology, because it is so detailed, one concept cannot solve another. For example, knowing how thyroid stimulating hormone stimulates thyroid cannot be used to solve a problem on how the blood is pumped from arteries to aterioles (or whatever, see, I'm still rusty). Biology should take at least half a month. I did better on Biology my first time taking the PCAT (89%), now I got a 84%. You can see how time can affect your memory when it comes to biology.

O, and for the Math section, don't assume you have a lot of time. The questions are random. Some took me 2 seconds to answer, others took a full 3-5 minutes. I found myself answering the last 15 questions in 5 minutes because I was too lax on the first half. You must pump pump pump.

Best wishes!
 
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I can only tell you what worked for me

I had some financial difficulties and couldn't afford to pay for this semester so I decided, instead of letting a semester go to waste I would study for the PCAT. I studied for 4 months, basically from the end of the summer semester to the end of the fall semester. Naturally, I am very talented with Chemistry & Biology already and math was by far my weakest link. I just took the PCAT on jan 6 and I got a 98%, according to the preliminary score sheet.

VA - 52%
Bio - 92%
Chem - 99%
RC - 89%
QA - 72%
Comp - 98%

I scored over 520 in chemistry section and shot way over the 99% mark and I'm sure that helped to pull my overall composite by a lot. To my knowledge, the chemistry section is weighed more than ALL of the other subjects.

I would also like to add that, while taking my prereq's, I studied very hard and did my best to really "learn" the material because I always knew I would need it again for the PCAT. While other students were taking the easy way out in my Community College, I actually read all of my Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy books and I really "learned". I believe this helped me a lot because while studying for the PCAT, 90% of chemistry, and biology, and math were just a review.

Buy Dr. Collins. Study your ass off.

Master the Chem and Bio questions and definitely buy something to supplement the bio (.ie kaplan). If you truly master Dr. Collins you can get atleast 85% in bio and 90% in chem. For me, my chemistry test was 90% Dr. Collins. I want to say out of my 40 questions, 20 of them were repeat word-for-word Dr. Collins questions but I mastered the chemistry section like the back of my hand. Dr Collins Bio is lacking in some departments but remember, most of the PCAT are general types of questions. BTW, I studied his 2014 updates right before test, several questions from Chem and Bio section updates were on my test. DO NOT memorize material without understanding, if you study Dr. Collins by just trying to memorize, you are taking a big gamble. You NEED to understand. The fact that I took General Chem I & II, Anatomy I & II, Microbiology, Organic Chem 1, General Bio I & II helped me a lot because all of the material was basically review. Although people do it, I can't imagine have taken the pcat without having already taken those classes.

RC & VA

For me, I was just very unlucky with VA and to be honest, unless you already have an extensive vocabulary; this section does require some luck. Unfortunately for me, VA was my lowest score, I only saw about 6-7 Dr Collins repeats, the rest of the test I was on my own & as you can see that didn't turn out so well lol. However, Dr. Collins was still very helpful and I know my score would have been lower without it. Some people say study GRE words, or kaplan words and maybe this helps, I can't tell you. VA boils down to, how comfortable with the questions that you get asked that day. My first pearson practice test with VA was 80-99% then my second Pearson test was 30-50%... obviously I was just more comfortable with the words used in the first test. RC -- This section to me was probably the hardest section in the test. I am a pretty avid reader but the passages were longer than the ones in the pearson test and I barely finished on time. This section is very difficult to study for and if you want to improve you should probably start doing GRE, MCAT, RC problems so you can gain some skill. Since you have 8 months, perhaps its possible for you to improve this section but don't spend too much time. Chem, Bio, Math take precedence over those score.

Essay -- I didn't do a single day of prep for this... don't even know if I got a 3, I was pretty rushed and the keyboard I was typing on was making so much noise it was disturbing other people but I had to type fast or I wouldn't have finished it. One girl was loudly sighing during the test while I was typing lol. Poor girl.... I wish they had given me a softer keyboard haha.

QA - Let me be frank. Math is my worst subject. Don't get me wrong I have all A's and B's in my math classes, math is just not my thing. Never cared for it. For me, there were just certain math concepts that I knew I wouldn't master in 4 months on top of everything else. The math section requires strategy! Even someone like me who is mediocre at math can manage to score 72% just by proper strategy and perhaps a bit of luck. Dr Collins was very helpful and without it, I am almost sure I would have completely failed this section. I focused on the things I was good at, and not so much the things I wasn't good at. Remember, there are a lot of simple algebra, simple derivative problems, integration, simple stats questions, simple pre-cal questions. I skipped through the test and did the easier questions first, and for all the questions I was clueless on I selected B. Make sure you pick 1 letter for all your uncertain questions, that way if you guess on 12 questions, theres a good chance 3,4 or maybe even 5 of them may be answer B. I skipped a lot of questions and didn't even waste my time with stuff that looked like it I couldn't instantly do it. I notice, a lot of HARD questions were in beginning of test and a lot of easier questions were at the end. If you spend time on hard, possibly experimental problems and get a bunch of easy problems at the end wrong, thats a recipe for disaster. For me, questions 41-48 were the easiest questions but if I didn't get to the 41st question with atleast 7 minutes, I would lose out on 7 easy problems! I hate math and I got a 72%, so its totally possible bro!

I bought two pearson test and they were definitely helpful for everything but in my opinion QA and RC on actual PCAT was just harder. In RC passages were just longer which wasted more of your time, which is crucial. QA questions were similar to Dr. Collins and Pearson but they made the questions slightly harder by adding more variables or just throwing little wrenches into otherwise easy Dr. Collins questions.

In the end remember, I don't know your GPA and your stats (ie.. experience) but you don't need to get 99s in everything. Out of Math, Chem, and Bio, atleast KNOCK two of these out of the park & do decent on other one. Manage yourself in VA & RC and you can atleast come out with a 75-85 which is competitive for most schools.

If you have any questions, feel free to message me; I'd be glad to answer any of your questions.
The Composite Score is the average of all the subtest. Chemistry holds no more weight then any other section.
It doesn't matter where you scored the points.
 
The Composite Score is the average of all the subtest. Chemistry holds no more weight then any other section.
It doesn't matter where you scored the points.

Really? Because I read from a 99% club thread that the Chemistry held a little bit more weight than other sections..... is there a way to confirm this? Does PCAT website say anything about this?
 
I was really surprised by my results today:

Verbal: 99
Reading: 99
Chem: 97
Bio: 95
Quant: 82
Composite: 99

Background:

I have a BA/MA in English Lit. I've taught at the college level for seven years. I started knocking out the hard science prereqs in January '14 while going down to teaching six hours a semester.

GPA: 3.92 Cumulative (about 200 hours at this point, egads), 4.0 in pharm prereqs

I haven't taken calculus since the Clinton administration, and found Kaplan and McGraw Hill books to be largely ineffective for math . I was under the assumption that there would be almost no integrals or derivative functions of trigonometric functions. I was mistaken. The McGraw-Hill math pre--test was far too easy.

I believe I only did as well as I did because I abandoned the ones I had no hope on and made sure I went through the first pass quick enough to get all of the low hanging fruit.

The Verbal section was relatively straightforward, although some of the analogies were clumsy at best. Sentence completion was easy (but this is my forte).

Reading comprehension was tough in a few spots, but manageable.

My recommendation for the Verbal, Reading Comprehension, and Writing sections is not all that revolutionary. You need to have a clear understanding of academic writing, supporting evidence, and counterarguments for the latter two. Reading literature and news will be more helpful than consuming mass market fiction for the Verbal Section.

There was more Organic Chem than I expected. I've only taken OChem I to this point. We didn't get to some of the functional group chemistry covered (imines confounded me).

There was very little math on the Chem section, I saw no questions about ICE tables. There were a few ideal gas equations, but several questions on nuclear chemistry, which surprised me given how little time my review texts spent on it.

Plant biology was almost totally absent, and there were very few questions about cellular organelle functions and none on transcription or translation.

I know it's not terribly helpful, but taking the classes is the best preparation. I spent probably five hours studying for it, largely because I didn't have a ton of time to study and the amount of information was far too daunting.

For the writing section, make sure that you clearly state your thesis, support your work with relevant examples, be cognizant and aware of alternative solutions, and provide a rebuttal to those solutions when possible. The use of transitional language between and within paragraphs also adds unity and focus to the paper. You should have these abilities by the end of your second college Comp class.
 
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I recommend going through the general PCAT Kaplan book over 2 months (2-5 hours per day depending on your schedule outside of PCAT) if you have the time. It is really in detail and once you finish you'll have no problem grasping the concepts that will be tested. I used ONLY the Kaplan book which a friend lent me and some high-school calculus textbook to supplement for calculus since I found that the QA section in Kaplan was weak.

For RC, which is possibly the most difficult section for many people, just practice reading passages and time yourself on the sample. I didn't do that and I ended up with a 78 percentile on that section (my weakest one).

Once you are in the test, chem and bio should be a breeze based on your studying, RC should be based on practice, and for QA I recommend if you are short on time guess the answers to the questions that require you to actually calculate stuff in detail and go for the ones that are simple and easy. The time you spend working an equation out could be spent answer 5 easier and less time-consuming questions down the road.
 
Really? Because I read from a 99% club thread that the Chemistry held a little bit more weight than other sections..... is there a way to confirm this? Does PCAT website say anything about this?
Add up the scores for the subtest and divide by 5 and it gives you your composite score. If you look at the other postings anyone who made 440 and up got a 98% no matter where they scored the points. Your chemistry scored did help you because your score was so high. If I were an admissions counselor I would certainly take notice of your chemistry score
 
I'm just curious if it is possible to get 100 percentile on the PCAT?
NO. You could get straight 600s and you would still be in the 99th percentile. Standardized test scores never go above the 99th percentile.
 
Add up the scores for the subtest and divide by 5 and it gives you your composite score. If you look at the other postings anyone who made 440 and up got a 98% no matter where they scored the points. Your chemistry scored did help you because your score was so high. If I were an admissions counselor I would certainly take notice of your chemistry score

:) I appreciate the confidence booster.
 
Personally, I didn't study much for the PCAT. Many of the problems are fairly easy using logical deductions. I watched the Mometrix Biology and Chemistry reviews on Youtube and used an old McGraw-Hill review book from 2008. It's currently under $6 on Amazon. My PRs for biology, chemistry, quantitative reasoning, critical reading were 90, 98, 99, and 99, respectively. My overall PR was 99. Other than those things, I didn't do anything else except listen well in class. Considering that I got a 98 in chem after two weeks in Orgo and physiology classes and no biochemistry or microbiology classes, I don't think I did too badly. The exam I took was the September 2017 one. Personally, I don't think that the Dr. Collins or Kaplan material is necessary because I got a 99 without them. I actually got the $6 review book from a friend, so the only money I spent towards getting a good PCAT score was the PCAT registration fee.
 
Personally, I didn't study much for the PCAT. Many of the problems are fairly easy using logical deductions. I watched the Mometrix Biology and Chemistry reviews on Youtube and used an old McGraw-Hill review book from 2008. It's currently under $6 on Amazon. My PRs for biology, chemistry, quantitative reasoning, critical reading were 90, 98, 99, and 99, respectively. My overall PR was 99. Other than those things, I didn't do anything else except listen well in class. Considering that I got a 98 in chem after two weeks in Orgo and physiology classes and no biochemistry or microbiology classes, I don't think I did too badly. The exam I took was the September 2017 one. Personally, I don't think that the Dr. Collins or Kaplan material is necessary because I got a 99 without them. I actually got the $6 review book from a friend, so the only money I spent towards getting a good PCAT score was the PCAT registration fee.

Can you please let me know how you studied for the chemistry and also what to focus on. I'm freaking out about my exams in October !!!!! I've been studying 24/7 nonstop! Everyday from morning to evening . I feel like I don't know anything. He chemistry part is like I don't know. I know it's basic stuff and so on... everyone is different and I don't get or understand things easily. It actually takes me a long time so knowing this, I know I have to put in extra efforts in everything that I attempt !!!
 
Can you please let me know how you studied for the chemistry and also what to focus on. I'm freaking out about my exams in October !!!!! I've been studying 24/7 nonstop! Everyday from morning to evening . I feel like I don't know anything. He chemistry part is like I don't know. I know it's basic stuff and so on... everyone is different and I don't get or understand things easily. It actually takes me a long time so knowing this, I know I have to put in extra efforts in everything that I attempt !!!

Generally, for me, I did most of my studying in classes. I just paid attention to what my professors talk about. Even off-hand remarks by professors can be very helpful. In fact, a joke by one of my biology professors actually helped me get answer a microbiology problem that I would have otherwise have had great difficulty answering.
I have heard from others regarding how helpful the Dr. Collins material is, but I have personally never used them. I believe knowing the lower-level material very well is more advantageous than knowing a bit about all the higher-level material. I have friends who knew much more of the higher-level material, but they still ended up getting scores in the high 50s and low 60s while I got a 99. Just relax. DON'T CRAM material. Your brain needs time to absorb the material. Being too stressed out will just make you forget things. Also, some of the YouTube review material can be very helpful. I watched the Mometrix material on YouTube for my last two days of reviewing. Also, some of the online problems are quite helpful, but I found that many of them were overly simplified, so they were sort of dependable. I hope this helps. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, and I will try my best to help.
 
Generally, for me, I did most of my studying in classes. I just paid attention to what my professors talk about. Even off-hand remarks by professors can be very helpful. In fact, a joke by one of my biology professors actually helped me get answer a microbiology problem that I would have otherwise have had great difficulty answering.
I have heard from others regarding how helpful the Dr. Collins material is, but I have personally never used them. I believe knowing the lower-level material very well is more advantageous than knowing a bit about all the higher-level material. I have friends who knew much more of the higher-level material, but they still ended up getting scores in the high 50s and low 60s while I got a 99. Just relax. DON'T CRAM material. Your brain needs time to absorb the material. Being too stressed out will just make you forget things. Also, some of the YouTube review material can be very helpful. I watched the Mometrix material on YouTube for my last two days of reviewing. Also, some of the online problems are quite helpful, but I found that many of them were overly simplified, so they were sort of dependable. I hope this helps. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, and I will try my best to help.
Thanks for responding
 
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