Some advice for August test takers

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cyanutopia

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I took the April MCAT and recently received this question via e-mail. I wrote a reply to this e-mail to the person, but realized the advice I gave would probably be useful for a lot of August MCAT takers too. So here you go.

The question:

Yo sup dude..,.

i read ur post at studentdoc.com...man, U r utterly insane n just hardcore smart!!! a 40??? R U KIDDIN ME...if i just break a 32, i will party till i drop !!!

Man how did u get a ****in 40 haha...Im takin the Kaplan course too and a friend of mine told me to follow your strategy too(make notes of no more than one page and go over them everyday...anything more and you are trying to memorize too much..) its been workin a little bit so far..but today we took a Full length sample MCAT exam from kaplan, and not all the material that i have studying and memorizing over the past month, following ur strategy, was tested in a huge amountT...i dont really know if Kaplan just picks a real Mcat from the prevcious years and administers it during these full lenght exams OR they make up the questions themselves...But, there were some passages that related to what i studied, but a lot of them were still 'zoomed right over my head' type...i dont know if this happend to you or not, but even though when I memorize and study all the material, I really get scared what if they dont ask any of that...they mite ask something thats totally new and I have no idea how to tackle that problem.(especiaally organic and biology)...Nonetheless, i have seen some of the problems that pretty much appear on every MCAT 99.9% of the time...There wil be one passage about the NMR spectrocopy and u have to find the stcture and formula of the compound and other stuff from the graph...There will be one of those heredity problems(gene linkage chart) which show normal or diseased male or female and u have to find out stuff about future generations whethery they will have the disease too or not...Almost guarantted, there will be a passage about Blood antigens and diff types...s ince U really raped the Mcat, can u tell me any other broad categories of passages that might appear on the Mcat physical and biological sciences section...

O yea, Im takin it in august but dont really know if i wil be able to do good..Is it true that one should not take the MCAT more than once OR twice at max...anything more than 2 might count against u and cast a negative impression in l admission committes' minds?

But the section thats probably throwing me off most is Organic Chemistry section and General bIOLOGY...If u took the Kaplan course, can u just tell me what chapters are most important or what topics are most important and I will promptly focus on those particular topics...i find it almost impossible and utterly insane to memorize every singel cahpter of all the books...my friends tell me that i dont have enuff time to memorize all the details of all the topics in SCience since im taking the Mcat in august...So, whats ur take on that?

Yo dude help me out

Peace


The Answer:
Hey NK, nice to hear from you.

Yup, I got a 40 and it's because of the way I prepared. I'm glad you're following the strategy that I posted up, but keep in mind that memorizing everything in the Kaplan book doesn't guarantee that you'll know every question on the test. About 50% of the questions in the science sections don't ask anything that you will specifically remember from your note sheets---remember that the test is a reasoning test and that for these 50% of questions, the answer is right in the passage. Easy points if you follow Kaplan's method of making a little table of contents for yourself while reading and reading carefully the first time. The MCAT will always throw stuff at you that zooms over yours (and everyone's) head, but when you get proficient enough at the basic material (the stuff on your notesheets from your Kaplan books), you can always relate what you don't know to something that you do. The test writers want to see how well you know what you're supposed to know.

Don't get discouraged if something comes up on the test that you have never seen---it's either that you haven't gotten to the chapter in the book or that it's meant to be something that no one knows about. To tackle problems that you've never seen before, read the passage carefully first, making quick notes after each paragraph (max 7 words), just so you have something to reference later on. Don't get bogged down on understanding a diagram too much or understanding everything that the passage says---you can always look back. If you have done the proper preparations (looked over your notesheets everyday and know the material front to back), and you encounter a problem you can't solve immediately, relax and go back to the passage. The answer is always there.

As far as I know, Kaplan tests were pretty close in topics to the AAMC tests, although I only took one AAMC practice test. Topics that are tested a lot include:

embryology
endocrinology/hormones
electrochemical cells (KNOW THIS, remember the mnemonics)
pedigrees
lots of carbonyl organic chemistry (understand nucleophilic acyl substitution and addition)
SN1, SN2 reactions
E=hf, hc/lambda, kinetics equations
Normal forces in physics

For organ systems, just know the basic concepts and relationships, such as what happens to blood pressure/heart rate when CO2 increases, what happens to urine output when salt intake increases, etc.

That's all I can think of right now, but if I think of more, I'll post it up on the forum.

For organic chemistry, you need to study a little differently---take out a bunch of scratch paper and work out the mechanism for the main classes of reactions (SN1, 2, nucleophilic acyl stuff, additions)---they don't ask for mechanisms on the MCAT, but it will help you understand what's happening much better. Learn to write out the mechanism fast and accurately---this is accomplished by practice.

It's true that if you take the MCAT more than twice it looks sorta weird. But going into this MCAT thinking that you're going to take it again later on is the wrong attitude---instead, go into the test knowing you're going to make it your bitch.

Lastly, don't memorize, learn the material.

Good luck to you, let me know if I can help you out with anything.

Tim


SDN-ers, please let me know if I can help you with your test preparation---I'll do what I can. Best of luck, you guys will do great.

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But going into this MCAT thinking that you're going to take it again later on is the wrong attitude---instead, go into the test knowing you're going to make it your bitch.

Great advice.
 
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