strategies for april mcat? please.

[mizp78]

i just recently discovered this website and think it's great. everyone seems so helpful, so i hope you guys can give me some good tips! i'm planning on taking the april mcat but i lost momentum for studying early on and now i have 2 months left. is it possible to study everything and do well in two months? i'm kind of a worry wart and freak out about these things. background info: i took the mcat cold once before but was confused about the scoring and scored it--didn't do too well. i've taken the princeton review class last summer, read the big fat pr book, made notecards, but haven't done many practice passages. i don't feel like i know the material well enough so i'm stressing over going over the reading and making notecards, but some people have told me to just start doing practice passages and mock mcats and not worry so much about the material b/c no practice is no good. please help! thanks so much!

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[UCLA2000]

In my honest opinion you studied wrong. Reading the TPR book was one big waste of time. Your time would have been invested better by doing tons and tons of practice passages. The MCAT tests your ability to answer questions not your ability to read.

I'm sure someone out there will object by saying that the verbal section tests reading ability. I disagree. I knew how to read perfectly well when I bombed the first few verbal passages I ever tried!

For more mcat advice I would recommend doing a search for the keywords MCAT..you should find alot of useful info on there.

 

[cmz]

I agree 100% with the statement that you should do as many practice passages as possible. I took the Princeton Review... I didn't get much out of the classroom, but I did get A LOT out of their practice passages (there are a ton in the review books).

 

[RockOn]

Practice Tests! Practice Tests! Practice Tests!

You can know a little about every topic on the MCAT and still do poorly because it's not about what you know as much as how to take the test. That's what Kaplan and Princeton are all about, teaching you to eliminate the wrong answers then focusing on what you know to get the right one. When you do practice tests and honestly go over your results you see where you made your mistakes, if you're making the same mistakes over again and lets you know what you need to improve upon. You may never know what you're lacking unless you test yourself.

 

[mcwmark]

Practice tests!

And time yourself. Eventually all the questions will start looking similar to you--then you'll be able to "remember" (while you're reading the passages) what types of facts are "testable".

I did about 30 complete exams in the 6 months leading up to my MCAT. Only reviewed the stuff that I missed. Did great.

Good luck.