(Reposting here) Help with MCAT study plan

[thatoneguy3]

Hey everyone!

I was wondering if anyone would be able to give me advice on how to change up my study habits for MCAT studying. So far I have taken the MCAT twice (497 in both April and May) but even though I do well with all of my study material I do not do well on the actual exam. I have all of the kaplan books, aamc materials, and bought the 6 bundle next step practice test. I plan on taking the MCAT again around January, but have been trying to study little by little each day just to help prepare myself. Now I am kind of at the point where I feel like I could be doing more. I feel like my biggest problem with the test was lack of foundation, so I haven't re-looked at the next step or aamc material because I don't want to look at a question and know it just of memorization (looked in some of the kaplan books for clarification if something came to mind) but have actually resorted to retaking notes from my college text books. This has helped me so far (especially biochem) but my only concern is just trying to learn to much from them. Do you think it is a good idea for me to keep going through my text books? right now I only work part time (graduated this past spring) so I have time to study, its just making the best use of time.

Thanks in advance!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[LoveBeingHuman:)]

If you think content is what's making you do poorly, here's what you can do.

Print out the content lists from AAMC's MCAT website for each of the three science based sections. Go line by line and study all of it from various sources.

 

[STcmOCSD]

Hey everyone!

I was wondering if anyone would be able to give me advice on how to change up my study habits for MCAT studying. So far I have taken the MCAT twice (497 in both April and May) but even though I do well with all of my study material I do not do well on the actual exam. I have all of the kaplan books, aamc materials, and bought the 6 bundle next step practice test. I plan on taking the MCAT again around January, but have been trying to study little by little each day just to help prepare myself. Now I am kind of at the point where I feel like I could be doing more. I feel like my biggest problem with the test was lack of foundation, so I haven't re-looked at the next step or aamc material because I don't want to look at a question and know it just of memorization (looked in some of the kaplan books for clarification if something came to mind) but have actually resorted to retaking notes from my college text books. This has helped me so far (especially biochem) but my only concern is just trying to learn to much from them. Do you think it is a good idea for me to keep going through my text books? right now I only work part time (graduated this past spring) so I have time to study, its just making the best use of time.

Thanks in advance!

Kaplan does a great job of showing what the high yield information will be. If you want to continue learning from your textbooks, try focusing hard on high yield information.

 

[BachDoc]

I took the Altius program and it was one of the best decisions I made. I'm a tutor for Altius now so if you have any questions about either Altius or the MCAT in general feel free to PM me!

 

[thatoneguy3]

Thank you all so much! I've seen the Altius topic list and I think it does a good job identifying topics you should at least have some familiarity with (again on test day they can always throw a curve ball in like psych). I can't post a link yet (forum rules I guess) but if you google aamc topic list for mcat and the top result was "AAMC MCAT CONTENT OUTLINE" does that look like a good list (the first part of the web address is aamc-orange if that helps)? As far as the text books go I agree with just going through chapters that focus on the high yield information (I'm not gonna focus on studying plants), and so far I feel a little better with everything (even for some of those moments where its either a "aha it clicks now" or a "ok now I remember this"

Thanks everyone!