SOS!! mcat advice

[kenzmed]

Hi friends, I'm in desperate need of advice. I am currently a senior applying to the 2022 cycle and my MCAT is scheduled for April 9th. I started going through my princeton review books everyday but im moving painfully slow. One chapter takes me foreverrrrrrrrr and I just don't see myself finishing content review before the test date. I'm reading and also taking notes on important things but there's just so much information I end up writing pages and pages of notes. I'm a full time student and im studying about 3 hours everyday so I really need to figure out how to efficiently get through all these books. I know practice is really important so I want to at least get 1 full month of practice questions. Any advice is appreciated!

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[Damson]

2-3 days for 1 chapter, pump through AAMC prep hub questions and Altius practice exams

content is only 30% of the work, doing the questions is 70% of the work. focus on doing questions

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Have you asked in the MCAT forum?

 

[Goro]

Hi friends, I'm in desperate need of advice. I am currently a senior applying to the 2022 cycle and my MCAT is scheduled for April 9th. I started going through my princeton review books everyday but im moving painfully slow. One chapter takes me foreverrrrrrrrr and I just don't see myself finishing content review before the test date. I'm reading and also taking notes on important things but there's just so much information I end up writing pages and pages of notes. I'm a full time student and im studying about 3 hours everyday so I really need to figure out how to efficiently get through all these books. I know practice is really important so I want to at least get 1 full month of practice questions. Any advice is appreciated!

Do NOT take the MCAT until you are 100% ready for it.

 

[Dr Meow]

It's hard to be a full time student and be prepared for the mcat.
Lots of student takes a gap year to study. You need a few months of dedicated study

edit: It took me 6 years to do well on the mcat. But you need to treat mcat studying like it's MORE than a full time job.
For me, what changed everything was Anki. Because you need to be fluid with thinking, knowledge needs to be broken into little pieces and rearranged as necessary to answer an exam question. This was what I didn't do well before anki because I used to study linearly. I only knew how to use knowledge the exact sequence I learned it (before anki)

 

[SunMouse]

I agree with what was said above, re: practice questions being much more useful than review (taking notes is usually fairly passive learning and you want active), and I would not wait to finish content review before starting them. Khan Academy has some nice free ones.

It’s going to be tough to stick to that timeline if you’re only studying three hours a day though. It’s definitely possible to be a full time student and study for the MCAT (as someone who did it while a part time student with a full time job), but it usually takes a lot longer. Don’t take it until you’re ready, ie scoring where you want to on the AAMC practice exams!

 

[Damson]

Do NOT take the MCAT until you are 100% ready for it.

it can be hard to grasp what 100% ready means

the student over in this thread Reapply MD or accept DO probably thought they weren't "100%" ready, and so they kept delaying...when instead the best course of action was to do an intensive few months of study and take a crack at the exam

 

[Dr Meow]

Depends on OP's goals. DO or MD? Top tier or low tier?

For any MD,
Don't take mcat unless your practice exam scores are all >510.
7 years ago, a 505-508 was ok for MD. Not anymore.

For DO,
500 -508 is fine.
500 is cutting it close. DO scores go up every year. Aim for 505+

 

[kenzmed]

Have you asked tin he MCAT forum?

Haven't yet, probably should've done that!

 

[kenzmed]

It's hard to be a full time student and be prepared for the mcat.
Lots of student takes a gap year to study. You need a few months of dedicated study

edit: It took me 6 years to do well on the mcat. But you need to treat mcat studying like it's MORE than a full time job.
For me, what changed everything was Anki. Because you need to be fluid with thinking, knowledge needs to be broken into little pieces and rearranged as necessary to answer an exam question. This was what I didn't do well before anki because I used to study linearly. I only knew how to use knowledge the exact sequence I learned it (before anki)

I downloaded the Milesdown anki decks but I feel like that isn't enough to supplement my studying. I wish I had more time to study during the day but I also work a part time job. I think I will consider taking another gap year if I feel that I'm not prepared enough.

 

[kenzmed]

I agree with what was said above, re: practice questions being much more useful than review (taking notes is usually fairly passive learning and you want active), and I would not wait to finish content review before starting them. Khan Academy has some nice free ones.

It’s going to be tough to stick to that timeline if you’re only studying three hours a day though. It’s definitely possible to be a full time student and study for the MCAT (as someone who did it while a part time student with a full time job), but it usually takes a lot longer. Don’t take it until you’re ready, ie scoring where you want to on the AAMC practice exams!

I've tried doing only practice problems but I find myself getting frustrated because I haven't reviewed the content and end up getting quite a bit of problems wrong. I've stopped taking notes and started reading and doing practice problems after so I'm hoping to get through the content review portion a lot faster. Thanks for the advice!

 

[kenzmed]

Depends on OP's goals. DO or MD? Top tier or low tier?

For any MD,
Don't take mcat unless your practice exam scores are all >510.
7 years ago, a 505-508 was ok for MD. Not anymore.

For DO,
500 -508 is fine.
500 is cutting it close. DO scores go up every year. Aim for 505+

The goal is DO, tier doesn't matter to me and I'm aiming as high as I can!

 

[MDMechEngr]

Depends on OP's goals. DO or MD? Top tier or low tier?

For any MD,
Don't take mcat unless your practice exam scores are all >510.
7 years ago, a 505-508 was ok for MD. Not anymore.

For DO,
500 -508 is fine.
500 is cutting it close. DO scores go up every year. Aim for 505+

MD matriculant in 2014 had an average MCAT of 31.4 ( converts to 511) and an average gpa of 3.69.
MD matriculant in 2021 have an average MCAT of 511.7 and an average gpa of 3.76.

505-508 on average in 2014 was not Okay for MD.

 

[TragicalDrFaust]

Can't take notes, especially if they're on paper. In my observation the #1 thing that caused students to crash and burn first year of medical school was study strategies that worked in high school and undergrad, where elite students can easily outpace the material. Note taking is one of those study strategies, unfortunately. I say this out of kindness as I used to be a notes person. Even had a side hustle selling copies of them in UG. Had to scrap it all for medical school.

Take as many practice questions as possible and only do content review for what you need. Avoid taking more than a couple notes per page, if you insist and taking any at all. You want your brain to become the notebook. I've found the paper notebook is a time consuming middle man.

 

[Dr Meow]

Yup I've noticed that too for myself. But I know some classmates where that worked for. To me, there's not enough time in the day to be taking notes aside from typing/transcribing what the teacher says during class.

 

[LivertheGiver]

Hi friends, I'm in desperate need of advice. I am currently a senior applying to the 2022 cycle and my MCAT is scheduled for April 9th. I started going through my princeton review books everyday but im moving painfully slow. One chapter takes me foreverrrrrrrrr and I just don't see myself finishing content review before the test date. I'm reading and also taking notes on important things but there's just so much information I end up writing pages and pages of notes. I'm a full time student and im studying about 3 hours everyday so I really need to figure out how to efficiently get through all these books. I know practice is really important so I want to at least get 1 full month of practice questions. Any advice is appreciated!

Everyone learns in a different way. What worked best for me was dropping content review and using extensive qbanks and then studying the concepts I struggled with on the qbanks.

 

[deleted1100659]

OP in my day, (im an attending physician now) i was in your shoes and needed to do well on the MCAT. I did Princeton, kaplan, exam crackers, etc. I ended up switching to the berkley review and that was amazingly helpful.