Please critique my strategy...if you can.

[moca83]

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[Charles_Carmichael]

There's really no need to start studying more than 3 months before your MCAT date. Beyond that, you're not only risking forgetting information but, more importantly, your risk of burning out increases significantly. You do not want to burn out close to your MCAT date. Ideally, you want peak just in time for the real deal. There's absolutely no reason why you should be focusing only on the MCAT from 8am to 10pm. I can guarantee you that the schedule you have planned out will come with a significant risk of causing you to burn out.

Also, your old gen chem, bio, physics, and orgo exams are going to be practically useless for the MCAT. The style in which the MCAT asks questions is vastly different than the questions your professors wrote.

Seriously, take a look at SN2ed's thread. In my personal opinion, 3 months of studying/practice is just about perfect for the MCAT. And it definitely doesn't require you to study for 12+ hrs/day. Don't just work hard; work smart! Don't worry so much about "mastering" the content. Focus on efficiently tackling the way the MCAT asks questions. You'll realize, sooner or later, that content review, after a certain point, becomes incredibly low-yield compared to test-taking strategies.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

There's really no need to start studying more than 3 months before your MCAT date. Beyond that, you're not only risking forgetting information but, more importantly, your risk of burning out increases significantly. You do not want to burn out close to your MCAT date. Ideally, you want peak just in time for the real deal. There's absolutely no reason why you should be focusing only on the MCAT from 8am to 10pm. I can guarantee you that the schedule you have planned out will come with a significant risk of causing you to burn out.

Also, your old gen chem, bio, physics, and orgo exams are going to be practically useless for the MCAT. The style in which the MCAT asks questions is vastly different than the questions your professors wrote.

Seriously, take a look at SN2ed's thread. In my personal opinion, 3 months of studying/practice is just about perfect for the MCAT. And it definitely doesn't require you to study for 12+ hrs/day. Don't just work hard; work smart! Don't worry so much about "mastering" the content. Focus on efficiently tackling the way the MCAT asks questions. You'll realize, sooner or later, that content review, after a certain point, becomes incredibly low-yield compared to test-taking strategies.

This response is absolute brilliance. Well worded and several excellent points Kaushik.

I have to agree that after a while, text review is a waste of time that should be spent doing and reviewing passages.

Too much advanced study leads to burnout and the frustration of forgetting so much along the way that you keep having to go back.

Text books are good for learning the first time in a classroom setting. That's NOT what the MCAT is about. It's about logic and thinking clearly based on simple facts. Text books are not the ideal tool to facilitate this.

 

[coreankim]

I agree with the others above. OP, although you may think now that you can maintain that intense schedule, I can almost guarantee that you will burn out in the first few months, if not weeks. You really can't study for more than about 6~7 hours a day. Like everyone else has been saying, switch into intense study mode 3 months before the exam. Until then, focus and do well on your pre-reqs to build a solid conceptual background.

I disagree with others about textbook usage. Reviewing the concepts in the book is a useful tool to build up your intuition, which will be critical to "feeling what's right" on the MCAT.

 

[moca83]

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