Nice!!! Study methods/materials and length? Haha
Good job on the cats, spanked it.
I studied for around 2 and 1/2 months, roughly 3 days a week (my days off work). When I'd study, I'd go about 7-8 hours or so each session. It's been a long time since I've initially learned this material, so honestly I spent a lot of time re-learning basics in bio, chem, and math. If you're fresh out of sophomore year of college, it probably won't take that much time.
The week before the exam, I took off work and studied 8 hours a day for 7 days straight.
Used Kaplan 2013/14 & 2011 Doctor Collins for Biology. Read through Kaplan multiple times because I'd forgotten most of the biology basics. Dr.Collins was better for microbiology and immunology, and for a few specific questions on the exam. I'd use both, but focus on Dr.Collins if you don't have time for Kaplan. I also found random bio notecards on the internet and used that, too.
For Verbal I used random GRE and SAT Vocab notecards I found on the internet (found on cram.com). Probably learned 750+ new words but only a few of those were on the test, so not sure how much that helped. Although maybe those few words shot me up in the percentile rankings. I'd focus my studying efforts on Bio, Quant, Chemistry, instead. Honestly I focused a lot of time on this section because I found learning new words to be somewhat fun. In retrospect, it was a bit of a waste of time.
I can't say I was well prepared for Chemistry and Quant. I used 2011 Dr.Collins but I hadn't worked through all the tests. That I scored above an 85 in both says a lot about how helpful Dr.Collins is. I'd honestly ignore all other study materials for these two sections. I haven't had a chemistry or math course in years so Dr.Collins was pretty much all the knowledge I was going in with.
For quant, the strategy is relatively straightforward with Dr.Collins. Work through all the problems on the tests and make yourself a cheat-cheat for the problems you couldn't solve. Make sure you can solve all the problems without referring to the cheat-cheat. Then, a few weeks later, do all the tests while timing yourself. If you can't solve a problem within a minute, just jump to the next one. You want to make sure you can attempt all the problems within the 50 minutes. The time crunch is the most important factor. This is what I'd do if I could do this "studying for the PCAT" thing over again. Honestly, you can probably score a 95+ just solving all the easier problems and guessing on the more time-consuming ones.
...Chemistry, go through the Dr.Collins lecture material. Then, work through all 10+ exams and make yourself a cheat-cheat for all the problems that you couldn't solve off the bat. The explanations are on the back of each exam. Then when you're cramming before the PCAT just go over the lecture Dr.Collins material again and the cheat-cheat you've made yourself. I'm guessing you can guarantee yourself a 95+ on the chemistry if you perfectly execute this strategy.
RC, I didn't prepare for at all. I think trying to "study" RC is a bit of a waste of time unless you're already golden in the other sections. It honestly feels like the answers are often down to opinion in this section. Focus on the sciences and math.
