please advise me on my study plan

[tennisfan]

Hi all,

I recently posted in the non-trad forum but didn't receive much feed back, I was hoping to get some more feedback here.

I just wanted to get a consensus for a study plan I'm trying to develop for the MCAT.
I'm a non-trad student, working 2 jobs, interning, and have other personal and family responsibilities. I recently completed the pre-reqs and I am hoping to take the MCAT in January. What I'm thinking is: Study 2-3 hours per day 5 days a week, alternatiing between the 5 MCAT subjects (study one subject per day). As of now I'm not enrolled in any MCAT prep course (I do have a princeton hyperlearning set from 2008 as well as the examkracker set and audio osmosis)and I am unsure how much time is needed to perform well. Obviously, it depends on the individual but I'm asking for a general opinion for the average student.
Does this plan seem feasible and realistic? More importantly, in your opinion does this plan give me ample time to perform well?

I appreciate any feedback, Thanks in advance!

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[Aromatic Amine]

Hi all,

I recently posted in the non-trad forum but didn't receive much feed back, I was hoping to get some more feedback here.

I just wanted to get a consensus for a study plan I'm trying to develop for the MCAT.
I'm a non-trad student, working 2 jobs, interning, and have other personal and family responsibilities. I recently completed the pre-reqs and I am hoping to take the MCAT in January. What I'm thinking is: Study 2-3 hours per day 5 days a week, alternatiing between the 5 MCAT subjects (study one subject per day). As of now I'm not enrolled in any MCAT prep course (I do have a princeton hyperlearning set from 2008 as well as the examkracker set and audio osmosis)and I am unsure how much time is needed to perform well. Obviously, it depends on the individual but I'm asking for a general opinion for the average student.
Does this plan seem feasible and realistic? More importantly, in your opinion does this plan give me ample time to perform well?

I appreciate any feedback, Thanks in advance!

you should check out the study schedule proposed by "SN2ed" if you do a quick search you'll see it.

however, i think you should get TBR books for Physics, Chemistry, and Bio. followed by EK 101 verbal book for the VR section. Honestly, any prep book in organic chem will do, although i found Kaplan to be sufficient enough for me (i am pretty good w/ o-chem).

If you believe you can seriously get those 2-3 hours of studying done with full intent after working and have a long day, then by all means go for it. I don't advise however to study on a tired mind, so if you can wake up earlier and get a few hours of reading then definitely do that.

if your personal schedule doesn't work out, then maybe you should look into a prep course, they will keep you focused on the task at hand, and since you are paying like 2K for the course, you will WANT to go to it and make sure you put in the extra time and effort. I personally studied for 2 months for about 8 hours a day of serious concentrated studying. Its not impossible to get things done for 2-3 hours, but for the average student i don't think this is advisable. study for a longer period of time, and get that score!

 

[tennisfan]

you should check out the study schedule proposed by "SN2ed" if you do a quick search you'll see it.

however, i think you should get TBR books for Physics, Chemistry, and Bio. followed by EK 101 verbal book for the VR section. Honestly, any prep book in organic chem will do, although i found Kaplan to be sufficient enough for me (i am pretty good w/ o-chem).

If you believe you can seriously get those 2-3 hours of studying done with full intent after working and have a long day, then by all means go for it. I don't advise however to study on a tired mind, so if you can wake up earlier and get a few hours of reading then definitely do that.

if your personal schedule doesn't work out, then maybe you should look into a prep course, they will keep you focused on the task at hand, and since you are paying like 2K for the course, you will WANT to go to it and make sure you put in the extra time and effort. I personally studied for 2 months for about 8 hours a day of serious concentrated studying. Its not impossible to get things done for 2-3 hours, but for the average student i don't think this is advisable. study for a longer period of time, and get that score!

Thanks for the reply Aromatic Amine,
I did look at Sn2ed's plan but I think that is too intense for my personal schedule. I am working full time and have many responsibilities ( I don't have the 8 hours a day to devote to studying). So, I was just wondering if studying 2-3 hours a day until the Jan. test date would suffice.

 

[shushumiga]

hey tennisfan, I am also taking it January but I am working part time so I can devote time to the MCAT review content +practice. I have been studying for the past 2 months for like 2-3 hours a day using TBR books and Cracking the MCAT by TPR. I also have EK series but I don't like how vague they present the material. I love the TBR books even tho they are in very in depth. If you are good with the material then you won't need much time to prepare. Me, I kinda slept through my pre-reqs and don't remember imporatnt concepts so I have to reteach myself. uhhhh

 

[NinjaMed]

You may need 2-3 hours now, but what about closer to the test date? You will likely need more hours studying from an emotional standpoint. Are you able to commit more hours in the weeks leading up to test day?

For the final weeks leading up until test day, you may need to ramp up the hours to 8-10h/day with breaks in between, and a day off a week. Will your employers allow this time off?

 

[tennisfan]

You may need 2-3 hours now, but what about closer to the test date? You will likely need more hours studying from an emotional standpoint. Are you able to commit more hours in the weeks leading up to test day?

For the final weeks leading up until test day, you may need to ramp up the hours to 8-10h/day with breaks in between, and a day off a week. Will your employers allow this time off?

Hi NinjaMed,
Good point, I think (and hope) my employers will be understanding and accommodating. Would anyone else care to chime in?

Thanks

 

[KindofBlue]

I think Ninja's point is that you should be aware that jobs/classes and MCAT prep aren't so compatible, at least for the majority of people out there.
I'm using SN2ed's schedule, and based on that (assuming you want a thorough review), I think you could spend about 1 hr reviewing content, 30 minutes on verbal (about 4 passages), 30 minutes doing science passages (about 3-4 passages), and 1 hr reviewing the passages you've finished. Optimally you should spend about twice the time it took for you to solve the problem on reviewing, but you'll probably get efficient as time goes on and take about 1.5 times as much.
So that will be about 3~4 hrs a day I guess.
Some chapters are really long and it may take a whole day without doing any science passages sometimes (so 1.5 hr review on those days). at that pace, I would say it would take you about 3 days in average to finish one chapter of science (also consider burn out). There are 38 chapters total (with Berkeley Review, but TPRH should be about the same), and 38 x 3 = 114 days. If you can study about 4 days a week, that'd be about 30 weeks, or 7 months. 6 days a week will be 19 weeks, or about 5 months.
Also, you'll need about 1 month for overall final content review, and practice FLs. So there you go, it will be about 6 months, if you can study about 3~4 hours a day, non stop 6 days a week.
Of course reviewing pace is different for everyone and different for other material.
If you use EK, which has significantly fewer practice passages and content review, it should take about a day to finish a chapter, so it would be about 40 days total, but I haven't used EK except for Bio so can't say for sure.

 

[FightinUruKai]

Hey, I'm in a similar situation to you. I work 40 hours a week (50 for a couple months earlier in the summer), and have been studying since April for my September MCAT (although I did lose a bit of time due to my appendix deciding it didn't like me)

I got by by spacing out my time a bit. I would say I have studied for about 3-5 hours a night, with a solid 6+ hours on weekends. I needed reminding of most of the sciences though, so that was a lot of the time. In the past week or two, I've bumped it up to 5+ hours every night, and about 7+ on weekends, taking one day off each week. My practice scores have been ranging from 29-32 so far, so I think this has been an okay study schedule.

I would say plan on doing 4-5 hours a day, with a set schedule of what you want to get done. That way if you finish up quicker than you thought (and you probably will), you get glorious freeeeeeeee time to use as you want, but you also have the time you need if you need it. And make sure you schedule breaks so you don't go absolutely insane.

But yeah, studying while working is possible, it just takes a commitment. Whenever you want to do something else, just ask yourself "Is this more important to me than getting into medical school?"

It helps put things in perspective.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

You may need 2-3 hours now, but what about closer to the test date? You will likely need more hours studying from an emotional standpoint. Are you able to commit more hours in the weeks leading up to test day?

For the final weeks leading up until test day, you may need to ramp up the hours to 8-10h/day with breaks in between, and a day off a week. Will your employers allow this time off?

This is such great advice. Early review is more about exposure and rganizing information than anything else, and it can be done in small spurts here and there. It's possible to study a few hours a day for the first couple of months. But the final push (last month and a half) requires blocks of time to take FLs and even more importantly blocks of times to go over each and every question to decide if you used your test taking skills to their fullest and how well you knew the concepts and content. It requires more time than a few hours per day, although not every day in the week is like that.

 

[BBB PhD]

do as i do...............pray.....................