SN2'd first day

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TexasSurgeon

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EDIT: This was supposed to be a thread about the first day of SN2. However as with all intelligent life, things evolve. This thread has now become a support page for people following the SN2 plan. You can think of it as Alcoholics Anonymous for people studying to take the MCAT using the SN2 plan.

EDIT July 1, 2014:
If you are interested in @mehc012's Anki Deck, DO NOT SEND A PM. Here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7if6wgaif98rkoa/mehc012 SN2edCh4s.apkg
**A NOTE: @mehc012 and several others (myself included) want to tell you guys that studying from another person's deck will probably not be as beneficial to you as creating your own cards. Yes you can take advantage of @mehc012's generosity, but you won't get the same advantage. Study the material. Create cards as you go along. You will find it more helpful to your studying. **

EDIT July 22, 2014:
The following is @TBRBiosadist's official MCAT Verbal Reasoning Strategy:
@TBRBiosadist's strategy that got [him] from a 7 average to scoring 13-15 average..

Spend the bulk of your time reading. Up to 3 minutes per passage.
  • Read the first and last paragraph thoroughly to begin with. Understand what the authors main point will be because 90% of questions require nothing more than a general idea.
  • After this, read the entire passage slowly enough where you dont feel like you need to reread sentences for understanding.
Next is just answer questions, there is a few tricks here that work about 90% of the time
  • Unless the passage is asking you about a specific detail, dont look back. READ EVERY ANSWER THOROUGLY AND THEN Answer what makes sense from the general point of the passage. Its very easy to prove a wrong answer to be somewhat correct if you dig hard enough, dont. Answer what your gut says and move onto the next question, dont contemplate to much. With that being said...
  • Answer like you were dropped on the head as a child. Alot of times if Im arguing between two answers, there is the answer that is 100% correct, and one that is 90% correct. Be an idoit and choose the one that seems like it is correct. However.....
  • "Always" is a word to avoid. If an answer uses this word, or definites like it, it is something to avoid. I would say 80% of the time the wishy washy answer is more correct then the highly affirmative one. This leads to my final point....
  • 100% of the time you are not actually looking for the "right" answer in verbal, this isnt PS or BS where 1+1 almost always equals 2 (unless we are talking about the different sedimentation values for Ribosomes). In verbal you are looking for the answer that isnt wrong. Often times an answer will seem very "right" but one aspect of it is clearly wrong, as compared to an answer that isnt wrong, but doesnt seem as right as that answer, these are meant to fool you. Choose the answer that isnt wrong.
I understand that I few of these tips may be at odds with each other. Ultimately you must adjust slightly for each passage, but it comes down to one thing. Read thoroughly. Read every sentence in the passage. Read every question. Read every answer. Then the correct answer will be fairly obvious. This may seem like it takes longer, but it takes much less time than skimming, and then trying to find the correct information later.

Or to summarize in one sentence

Understand what the hell the author is arguing

EDIT July 26, 2014:

@DoctorInASaree uploaded a guide to Verbal Reasoning. If you're interested, it's worth a look. Here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2byivymmqwlvjms/MCAT VR Primer DRSAREE.pdf

EDIT 2, July 26, 2014: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/sn2d-first-day.1074344/page-52#post-15510851
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Just finished the first day of SN2...man is it long and exhausting.

The first day is BR physics chapter (translational motion) + 1/3 of the passages. I felt like I wasn't able to apply the stuff I read into the stuff I was tested on.

Has anyone felt this way when following the schedule? It just seems like the contents of the chapter didn't really stick in my head when I took the practice passages. Will this improve over time?

EDIT 3, March 4, 2015:

For verbal, if you are feeling lost and confused, I highly highly recommend you to look into the MCAT Strategy Course by @Jack Westin. I've been working with him, and nothing comes close to his course and teaching. It's a strategy course, so it will cover everything, not just the VR/CARS section.
 
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currently working on my 2* chapter for the day...
just finished ch 5 periodic waves and now working on ch 4 momentum
hopefully i can do 3 chapters today!
WOw good job.. But be careful of trying to blast through passages .. Make sure you understand everything fully and can recall the important bits of information within each passage
 
Im Oct. 25th 🙂. I just got PM'd by another 35+ scorer who said they were very helpful, so based on feedback and a little more research I decided to put in an order in for the TBR tests.

BUT THIS: "At the present time the AAMC does not offer testing dates for the MCAT during the autumn months of October, November, or December. During this period our online CBTs will be down and not available untilDecember 15th, when they open up again for the January testing dates. Exams purchased for the year 2014 must be completed by the last exam date given in September of 2014. They cannot be extended into a new year." 🙁(((((

I have emailed them but in the past had no luck with responses. This is worrying me. :wtf:

Thanks Saree 😍, I'll admit I was a big potter-head back in the day. We had a huge feud with the Twi-terds at my school lol
There's no way this can't be an error! I mean, we've already signed up for our seats and everything, so I guess someone just forgot to edit this blurp. This is the first year they're having tests during October, November, and December, right?

Also, this 'do all 2/3's' day is killing me. I'm supposed to review this all tomorrow and still get a long chapter of Gen-Chem in + 1/3? Huh...


Wait wait wait....They're taking the October exams away!??!?! Tell me this is a joke.
 

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I did exactly that - I took a TPR classroom course (finishing this week) while also doing SN2's schedule. It's definitely viable. What I did is that I followed primarily SN2's schedule and then I would supplement with passages from TPR science workbook for all 4 subjects. TPR gives you a full, entire schedule but I didn't really follow that. It would have been too much to do both.

Trying to do both on the TPR schedule is REALLY tough, at least it was for me, and I can usually do double ups in SN2ed. So the way you did it seems manageable. I started following the class, though I felt it wasn't so effective, then finally dropped 2/3 way through it to focus on this schedule. For the record I took the live-online version. Their customer support was horrible. Their classroom may be better.
 
Wait wait wait....They're taking the October exams away!??!?! Tell me this is a joke.

Seriously, I don't know what to do and they never answer their phone or emails 🙁

Anyone know anything about this? I got this info right off their website as I was about to print out the order form.
 
Just worried about placing an order for $200, and not knowing whats going to happen because BR doesn't answer their emails....Were you just going to order them?

I called them a few weeks ago (~2-3 weeks ago), and they told me that they haven't published the new calculated dates on the website yet, since for this year, AAMC is adding more exams in the months of Oct/Nov/Jan. But they are NOT closing down the exams since there are administered MCAT tests going on.

She said that they open up the CBTs in batches 45 days prior to the respective MCAT dates, according to what you specify on the order form of when your MCAT exam is.

So I would either write down your true MCAT exam date on the order form, and calculate 45 days before to the MCAT exam date to know when they have released the TBR CBTs....or you can pick another earlier MCAT exam date, if you wish to start the CBTs earlier.

Once you mail in the order form, I would call them a few days later to make sure they have received your order. Apparently, they will send an email out with the access code the 1st of the 45-day countdown (or a few days before the 1st day).

I hope this makes sense.
 
I called them a few weeks ago (~2-3 weeks ago), and they told me that they haven't published the new calculated dates on the website yet, since for this year, AAMC is adding more exams in the months of Oct/Nov/Jan. But they are NOT closing down the exams since there are administered MCAT tests going on.

She said that they open up the CBTs in batches 45 days prior to the respective MCAT dates, according to what you specify on the order form of when your MCAT exam is.

So I would either write down your true MCAT exam date on the order form, and calculate 45 days before to the MCAT exam date to know when they have released the TBR CBTs....or you can pick another earlier MCAT exam date, if you wish to start the CBTs earlier.

Once you mail in the order form, I would call them a few days later to make sure they have received your order. Apparently, they will send an email out with the access code the 1st of the 45-day countdown (or a few days before the 1st day).

I hope this makes sense.


Ok makes sense, thanks so much @wuhsabee !!
 
So I finally break the the shackles of MCAT scare and turned this studying in my journey to master the 4 elements (subjects).. Putting the hunger for learning over the scare of the MCAT is keeping me sane now..
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Just worried about placing an order for $200, and not knowing whats going to happen because BR doesn't answer their emails....Were you just going to order them?

I was planning to buy them but I just moved my exam date to October so I'm pushing off for buying them.

That 45 day rule is so dumb.
 
So a while back, I was interested in finding out what types of nonfiction books were good to read in preparation for the MCAT/other exams. One person, who might have been recommending for the sake of improving LSAT scores, idk, recommended to get the Norton anthology of literary theory and criticism. Well, I got it, and recently started actually flicking through the tome. I think the excerpts on hermeneutics are surprisingly relevant. It's all about interpretation of literature, and the excerpts are among the most famous contributions. They talk about things that are stressed in a lot of guides here on SDN, including the relative importance of psychological interpretation (understanding the intentions of the author) compared to grammatical interpretation (the logical interpretation of the content put forth by the author). Pretty interesting.
 
So after 3 days of taking a break I just finished writing the AAMC 8 Today; (9PS/11VR/11BS): 31

My AAMC5 was a 30 - considering I haven't done a single PS question in two and a half weeks and it stayed at a 9 I'm happy. The BS and VR were both on the ceilings of the raw score range conversions so I was pretty darn close to a 33 which is my goal.

Anyone have trouble with their VR scores getting hit by just ONE passage? The same thing happened today as it did the last one, almost all of my errors in VR were on just a single passage - has anyone experienced and fixed this?
 
Exam tip for all of you guys: Never do what I just did on AAMC 9 and get cocky and think that you don't need to consult the periodic table because you think you know it. Not taking out an extra 5 seconds to confirm the answer dropped me an entire point for PS. I actually think that might have been the easiest question on the entire PS.





:boom:+pissed+😡😡😡😡😡
 
Exam tip for all of you guys: Never do what I just did on AAMC 9 and get cocky and think that you don't need to consult the periodic table because you think you know it. Not taking out an extra 5 seconds to confirm the answer dropped me an entire point for PS. I actually think that might have been the easiest question on the entire PS.





:boom:+pissed+😡😡😡😡😡
 
So a while back, I was interested in finding out what types of nonfiction books were good to read in preparation for the MCAT/other exams. One person, who might have been recommending for the sake of improving LSAT scores, idk, recommended to get the Norton anthology of literary theory and criticism. Well, I got it, and recently started actually flicking through the tome. I think the excerpts on hermeneutics are surprisingly relevant. It's all about interpretation of literature, and the excerpts are among the most famous contributions. They talk about things that are stressed in a lot of guides here on SDN, including the relative importance of psychological interpretation (understanding the intentions of the author) compared to grammatical interpretation (the logical interpretation of the content put forth by the author). Pretty interesting.

It's HUGE and so expensive!
 
Exam tip for all of you guys: Never do what I just did on AAMC 9 and get cocky and think that you don't need to consult the periodic table because you think you know it. Not taking out an extra 5 seconds to confirm the answer dropped me an entire point for PS. I actually think that might have been the easiest question on the entire PS.





:boom:+pissed+😡😡😡😡😡
getting cocky is my worst fear omg
i still remember the one question i missed on my genetics final bc i didnt read all the answer choices ToT
 
How would you rate the exams in relation to the AAMCs?

I will be able to comment with more confidence as of Thursday (my next TPR FL), but I scored a 41 on the one I have taken thus far. So, I'd say it was a little bit more difficult that AAMC 3. I'll see...it's tough with a sample size of 1 (n = 1).

yay! i finished chapter 4, defo taking a break though
i'm sleepy

Good job! Keep it up and you'll be back on schedule 😀 Sleep well...you've deserved it 🙂

I called them a few weeks ago (~2-3 weeks ago), and they told me that they haven't published the new calculated dates on the website yet, since for this year, AAMC is adding more exams in the months of Oct/Nov/Jan. But they are NOT closing down the exams since there are administered MCAT tests going on.

She said that they open up the CBTs in batches 45 days prior to the respective MCAT dates, according to what you specify on the order form of when your MCAT exam is.

So I would either write down your true MCAT exam date on the order form, and calculate 45 days before to the MCAT exam date to know when they have released the TBR CBTs....or you can pick another earlier MCAT exam date, if you wish to start the CBTs earlier.

Once you mail in the order form, I would call them a few days later to make sure they have received your order. Apparently, they will send an email out with the access code the 1st of the 45-day countdown (or a few days before the 1st day).

I hope this makes sense.
Ok makes sense, thanks so much @wuhsabee !!

Thank you, both of you! I overlooked TBR, and I am going to purchase their FLs tomorrow.

Survey:

What is the best song to listen to before the MCAT?

What is your pre-MCAT ritual going to be?

1) A special song from my desi mix
2) Lucky outfit + lucky shoes + lucky purple pen. Pray as I wait for the go-ahead to begin the exam.

@TBRBiosadist @Dreamstoo - I have not drunk a sip of coffee in my life. Did I just end the Universe with this shocking revelation? 😀
 
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I will be able to comment with more confidence as of Thursday (my next TPR FL), but I scored a 41 on the one I have taken thus far. So, I'd say it was a little bit more difficult that AAMC 3. I'll see...it's tough with a sample size of 1 (n = 1).



Good job! Keep it up and you'll be back on schedule 😀 Sleep well...you've deserved it 🙂




Thank you, both of you! I overlooked TBR, and I am going to purchase their FLs tomorrow.



1) A special song from my desi mix
2) Lucky outfit + lucky shoes + lucky purple pen. Pray as I wait for the go-ahead to begin the exam.

@TBRBiosadist @Dreamstoo - I have not drunk a sip of coffee in my life. Did I just end the Universe with this shocking revelation? 😀

@DoctorInASaree Her special desi mix songs are all by Lata Mangeshkar
 
We all know you are actually an auntie
Nb9Cyi7.gif

You do know that aunties are like a billion years old right? I'll be in my crying corner if anyone needs me. 🙁

I'm still wondering how @orangetea has amassed such a diverse collection of gifs. The gif above is literally the only Indian gif I have! 😕

17 hours 17 minutes and 5 seconds left

I'm losing it.

We're here with you 🙂 You'll do well!:highfive:
 
Nb9Cyi7.gif

You do know that aunties are like a billion years old right? I'll be in my crying corner if anyone needs me. 🙁

I'm still wondering how @orangetea has amassed such a diverse collection of gifs. The gif above is literally the only Indian gif I have! 😕



We're here with you 🙂 You'll do well!:highfive:

Omg, don't cry in the corner! I'm pretty much an auntie too! I'll sit there in your corner and eat my paans all day with you. No worries!
 
Nb9Cyi7.gif

You do know that aunties are like a billion years old right? I'll be in my crying corner if anyone needs me. 🙁

I'm still wondering how @orangetea has amassed such a diverse collection of gifs. The gif above is literally the only Indian gif I have! 😕



We're here with you 🙂 You'll do well!:highfive:

That girl in the gif is so prettttyyy.

And I'll be waiting to hear you do on the next TPR! I'm just trying to make an exam schedule for the next few months and I want to do it in order of similarity to the AAMCs.
 
That girl in the gif is so prettttyyy.

And I'll be waiting to hear you do on the next TPR! I'm just trying to make an exam schedule for the next few months and I want to do it in order of similarity to the AAMCs.

x9000
 
That girl in the gif is so prettttyyy.

And I'll be waiting to hear you do on the next TPR! I'm just trying to make an exam schedule for the next few months and I want to do it in order of similarity to the AAMCs.


You guys like older women it seems. She is in her 40's!
 
I was just kidding. Ms. Rai is quite pretty. I still like Ms. Jolie better though.

No I know! I'm messing around too, but not about the fact that I'd like to know her. I didn't know she was married but then again it's tough being that pretty and not be married by the age of 40. Who's the lucky man?
 
No I know! I'm messing around too, but not about the fact that I'd like to know her. I didn't know she was married but then again it's tough being that pretty and not be married by the age of 40. Who's the lucky man?

Obviously the son of the greatest bollywood actor. Mr. Bachchan
 
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