sooo anyone goin' nuts yet?

[MedChic]

You know when you have a fever and you feel delirious but you can't sleep and your thoughts are all jumbled and convoluted? I feel like that, except I don't have a fever. Every time I try to sleep I go over stuff in my head and then think to myself I'm wasting precious seconds so I get up to study some more or listen to audio osmosis.

Anyone else literally nauseous from studying? Hmm maybe it's all the pop-tarts.....i started living on solely processed foods lately. The worst part is I've improved only about 4 points from my diag

i went from a score in the low 20's to a 28, and the thing is i could've sworn i'd be hitting 30's by now....

for those PS geniuses out there:
what helped you most, going over concepts, formulas, relationships or doing countless problems?
haha, i bet you're gonna say both

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[odddodo]

I'm having the opposite problem as you; I'm having a hard time concentrating on studying. It's so boring and seems so pointless (aside from the fact that MCATs are necessary for med school) that I'd rather do anything but study.

Physics is all about understanding concepts. Doing problems over and over might help, but since I'm not the type to do that and yet still do pretty good on physics, I'd say the concepts are the most important.

I'm having a tough time in bio, on the other hand. How do you study for that? Memorize everything?

 

[quadmanturbo]

if you haven't taken upper micro and physiology then u'll have a hard time on the bio part...........if u haven't taken those...........take them now! lol

 

[Dr.D-man]

Yeah, my anxiety level is very high. I can't wait to get this thing out of the way, it will be such a relief. But then there is the waiting for scores. This sucks. At least school will be in session by then and I will be busy with other stuff. C'mon Aug 19th... but not too fast, I still have studying to do.

 

[MedChic]

I'm having the opposite problem as you; I'm having a hard time concentrating on studying. It's so boring and seems so pointless (aside from the fact that MCATs are necessary for med school) that I'd rather do anything but study.

Physics is all about understanding concepts. Doing problems over and over might help, but since I'm not the type to do that and yet still do pretty good on physics, I'd say the concepts are the most important.

I'm having a tough time in bio, on the other hand. How do you study for that? Memorize everything?

I went through the Kaplan Bio Review notes and made my own flashcards, then I went through the EK bio book and tweaked them so I'd have 2 sources to study from.
Now I just go through the flashcards to hammer everything in, like hormones, digestive enzymes etc. It def. helped with the discretes...I agree with quadmanturbo though; despite knowing all that **** I'm still having trouble with some of the passages based on molec bio, DNA b/c I have a superficial knowledge of the concepts...I only took bio 1 and 2.

 

[doc G]

You know when you have a fever and you feel delirious but you can't sleep and your thoughts are all jumbled and convoluted? I feel like that, except I don't have a fever. Every time I try to sleep I go over stuff in my head and then think to myself I'm wasting precious seconds so I get up to study some more or listen to audio osmosis.

Anyone else literally nauseous from studying? Hmm maybe it's all the pop-tarts.....i started living on solely processed foods lately. The worst part is I've improved only about 4 points from my diag

i went from a score in the low 20's to a 28, and the thing is i could've sworn i'd be hitting 30's by now....

for those PS geniuses out there:
what helped you most, going over concepts, formulas, relationships or doing countless problems?
haha, i bet you're gonna say both

I am sick of studying as well...I have taken the beast and scored an 11( not a genius by any measure) in physical...It seems that most of the questions (75%) are concept stuff..If we do this what will happen etc...10% is can you manipulate formulas...I.E. ( the S.G. of this substance is X what would the apparent weight be in a fluid of density X.) 20 % Pure knowledge..what is the spring constant of a spring that stretches this much with this much mg...

I am beating VR and BS into my head( 10 BS & 7VR )....Come on August

Good Luck

 

[MJB]

Honestly, if I could lose the job, and people would leave me alone about doing fun stuff, I'd be fine...need to go into isolation again...

I'm tired of getting the crap beat out of me by Kaplan Physics though.

 

[deleted106503]

Not really. So far I've completed the EK Bio, Physics, and Orgo. I'm going to start the Inorgo today and hopefully finish by tomorrow night. I feel like I still have way too much time left. I haven't taken any practice exams, but I will this weekend. Depending on how I do on that, my attitude will adjust. I'll probably do one MCAT practice exam every other or every 3 days with some review in between.

I'm not too sure if the EK Bio stuff is good for this August since everyone keeps talking about micro bio. How much stuff can they ask that we don't know in core bio? The MCAT topic reviews for Bio don't list too many different things imo. I think this is the only section that might make me a little nervous since there's 180+ pages I need to keep remembering vs. the rest of the books that are 100-150 pages of mostly equations (easy).

 

[superwillis]

I feel as though flashcards only work to an extent. Hormones and basic details are good to use flashcards with, but the subtleties about how things interconnect and stuff is hard to put on an index card. Those just come by reading and rereading from different sources until it is understood, not memorized.
Understanding instead of memorization helps alot more for passage-based questions, especially since they usually ask you to apply familiar concepts to unfamiliar situations.

 

[MedChic]

I feel as though flashcards only work to an extent. Hormones and basic details are good to use flashcards with, but the subtleties about how things interconnect and stuff is hard to put on an index card. Those just come by reading and rereading from different sources until it is understood, not memorized.
Understanding instead of memorization helps alot more for passage-based questions, especially since they usually ask you to apply familiar concepts to unfamiliar situations.

ahh but MY flashcards are special
i have those giant ones with diagrams, labels and pathways all nicely color coded

 

[da_donut]

Not really. So far I've completed the EK Bio, Physics, and Orgo. I'm going to start the Inorgo today and hopefully finish by tomorrow night. I feel like I still have way too much time left. I haven't taken any practice exams, but I will this weekend. Depending on how I do on that, my attitude will adjust. I'll probably do one MCAT practice exam every other or every 3 days with some review in between.

I'm not too sure if the EK Bio stuff is good for this August since everyone keeps talking about micro bio. How much stuff can they ask that we don't know in core bio? The MCAT topic reviews for Bio don't list too many different things imo. I think this is the only section that might make me a little nervous since there's 180+ pages I need to keep remembering vs. the rest of the books that are 100-150 pages of mostly equations (easy).

Question:
You go through a whole EK book in 2 days??? ("start inorgo today and finish by tomorrow night") Do you do the practice questions or the exams at the end? It takes me like a day to do one chapter because I do the corresponding questions from the 1001....its killing me lol. I'm starting to wonder if I should cut the 1001 out because I want to speed up the process. Is just reading the stuff good enough?

 

[deleted106503]

Question:
You go through a whole EK book in 2 days??? ("start inorgo today and finish by tomorrow night") Do you do the practice questions or the exams at the end? It takes me like a day to do one chapter because I do the corresponding questions from the 1001....its killing me lol. I'm starting to wonder if I should cut the 1001 out because I want to speed up the process. Is just reading the stuff good enough?

Everything except the 7 exams, which I will do tomorrow. It doesn't take that long to go over the book imo since I took the classes ~2.5 years ago. I only did chapter 1 lastnight, took about 1.5 hours because I have a serious learning problem with the basics, lol. I remember back in class, I would just memorize the basics for the first quiz we ever had. Once the stuff gets a little more complicated in later chapters, I should remember it fairly quickly since I actually had to learn it before and not memorize.

Edit: I don't have the EK 1001 questions. I figured that I would rather spend that time taking practice MCATs. As far as if the reading helps me alone, I would say not entirely. The EK books are made that the quizzes and lecture exams still teach you so you can't really expect a 100% even if you memorize just the chapters. I.e. For orgo, they never tell you that in a Fischer projection, absolute configuration is reversed for the order of substituents (if you have a clockwise circle, it's actually L, not D). So they just go on with the lecture exams expecting you to know.

 

[AWhitehair]

Yeah, my anxiety level is very high. I can't wait to get this thing out of the way, it will be such a relief. But then there is the waiting for scores. This sucks. At least school will be in session by then and I will be busy with other stuff. C'mon Aug 19th... but not too fast, I still have studying to do.

Me too!

 

[AWhitehair]

Not really. So far I've completed the EK Bio, Physics, and Orgo. I'm going to start the Inorgo today and hopefully finish by tomorrow night. I feel like I still have way too much time left. I haven't taken any practice exams, but I will this weekend. Depending on how I do on that, my attitude will adjust. I'll probably do one MCAT practice exam every other or every 3 days with some review in between.

I'm not too sure if the EK Bio stuff is good for this August since everyone keeps talking about micro bio. How much stuff can they ask that we don't know in core bio? The MCAT topic reviews for Bio don't list too many different things imo. I think this is the only section that might make me a little nervous since there's 180+ pages I need to keep remembering vs. the rest of the books that are 100-150 pages of mostly equations (easy).

I think this is like the week of practice tests for those who have not done any yet. I 've been hearing a lot of talk about this weekend, so the practice score thread should fill up pretty fast. heh, I hope I do well enough to post mine.

 

[RAD11]

I definitely am going nuts....I can't wait til this thing is over...but everytime I think that, I also think I wish I had more time. Go figure.

 

[RAD11]

Holy crap!!! Studying for the MCAT is just pure torture.

 

[deleted106503]

I've finished reading all the books for EK. I'm just going over the last 5 lecture exams for inorgo. I should be able to do my first practice exam Saturday or Sunday. Still a lot of time imo. I've been only doing maybe 3 hours a day for the last 3 days.

 

[RAD11]

Same here finished with the 10-week EK schedule. Took 4 practice tests so far and the improvements are ever so slow, but I keep on telling myself just to keep plugging away. Today is not really a good day since I haven't been getting any sleep the past few days so it's catching up. Believe it or not, though, replying on some SDN posts is starting to slowly revive my interest in studying ......OMG!!!!

 

[deleted106503]

^What is the 10 week schedule? I just read the books as I go. I have a total of 10 practice exams I think. EK 1g, 2 Kaplan exams, 7 AAMCs (3R-9R). Hopefully VR won't dominate me. That will probably be the hardest part for me by far.

 

[RAD11]

^What is the 10 week schedule? I just read the books as I go. I have a total of 10 practice exams I think. EK 1g, 2 Kaplan exams, 7 AAMCs (3R-9R). Hopefully VR won't dominate me. That will probably be the hardest part for me by far.

I attached a copy of the EK 10-week schedule...but don't worry about it now since you're already done reviewing your notes....just take the exams, go over them afterwards, then review your notes if needed....that's what I've been doing so far. Hopefully it keeps paying off