Tackling the Beast

[once]

Hey all,

I am a rising sophomore and I just had a question about the MCAT.

I have been studying for the MCAT for about 2 months now just reviewing my gen chem text and physics text. I have been making notes and completely understanding all the derivations and everything about everything. I try as hard as I can to read often but much of this tends to be online (new york times).

Is this the right mindset to getting a 36+ MCAT score?

It should be noted that I am well aware of my burnout limits and I never overdo (maybe 3 hours a day/6 days a week). I am probably considered a below average test taker but have a well above average work ethic so I just would like all y'alls input on getting ahead. Thanks in advance.

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[Mbeas]

When do you plan on taking the MCAT?

Most people take it at the end of their Junior year. If that's when you plan on taking it......then stop studying, because there is no point in studying two years before you take it.

 

[once]

I plan on taking it after my senior year but no reason I can't start preparing now right?

I know it is convention to start studying for the MCAT a few months in advance, but I feel like the MCAT can be something I can improve on and make one of the strongest points of my application.

 

[NickNaylor]

I plan on taking it after my senior year but no reason I can't start preparing now right?

I know it is convention to start studying for the MCAT a few months in advance, but I feel like the MCAT can be something I can improve on and make one of the strongest points of my application.

Yes there is a reason: it likely won't help you at all. If you spread out your studying too much, you'll forget the things you started with and it ultimately won't help you. It won't hurt you either, but I think there's probably better things you can do with your time.

Also, why are you taking it AFTER your senior year? Are you planning on taking a year off? Most people take it during their junior year so that the scores are available for their application during the following year.

 

[phltz]

If you're planning on taking it in two years, my advice would be to focus on your regular classwork. Maybe take a full length MCAT to get a feel for it, but then do your own thing for the next year.

One of the big skills the MCAT tests is your ability to read a scientific passage and understand what's going on. Excellent practice for this can be reading your text book, reading scientific papers describing new research, etc. These are things you're probably already doing in school. There's no need for extra studying. If you're good at reading, processing, and understanding this sort of stuff, you'll do well.

If you're really worried about the basic content, my advice would be to work or volunteer as a tutor for other college students or maybe for high-school AP students. That'll help you completely master the basics more than years of review ever will. And you'll be doing some good for others in the process.

 

[MCAT guy]

Yes there is a reason: it likely won't help you at all. If you spread out your studying too much, you'll forget the things you started with and it ultimately won't help you. It won't hurt you either, but I think there's probably better things you can do with your time.

Also, why are you taking it AFTER your senior year? Are you planning on taking a year off? Most people take it during their junior year so that the scores are available for their application during the following year.

both cole and the previous poster are correct. I tutored ochem and I actually tripled my understanding during this time. Tutor the basics and you will get really good.

secondly, don't prep now. It won't do you any good. People say this for a reason. In the end the MCAT is going to come down to deep understanding, timing, and test skills. Notice that 2 of the 3 don't have anything to do with prepping 1 or 2 years ahead of time. You can read a lot of humanities stuff, maybe even get a minor in humanities and up your VR score but you don't need to prep chem or ochem or bio this far in advance, it won't help. The actually knowledge base isn't hard to pick up in about 3-6 weeks depending on your rate, the hard thing on the MCAT is learning the test skills and making decisions quickly and reasoning in weird ass passges. The things I just described won't be improved by reading over your physics or chemistry texts dozens of times.

There is an "MCAT shape" that you want to attain but this isn't the way to go about it. You want to be in "shape" before the exam, not 2 years before.

You can either listen to advice of smart people like Cole or some other people on this site (Cole scored in the top like 0.1% of test takers this year), or you can do your own thing. But trust us, we've actually be through the prep and understand what will help and what will do little to nothing.

 

[MCAT guy]

I feel like the MCAT can be something I can improve on and make one of the strongest points of my application.

Make everything a strong point of your application, then you don't need to worry about the MCAT as much. Plus you never know if it will be a strong point. If you are not a good test taker then the MCAT will be tough. A 13 I believe is in the 95th percentile. These people who get these scores are very smart/quick. You can't always work your way into these higher scores, there is a certain innate ability that must be there.

You may have it or not, but don't think if you put in years of prep you will somehow be at an advantage.

Tutor the sciences. Do all the problems in your text while learning. Master the sciences. But don't prep over years, that won't help in anyway. Prep is review and fine tuning.

 

[Fletcher Moore]

The content of the MCAT is actually pretty straightforward and much more restricted than the information you will go over during your college classes. For example, in organic chemistry they make you memorize an unreasonable number of reaction mechanisms--fairly detailed step by step algorithms tracing the movement of each election during a reaction. On the MCAT, you only need to know a subset of the reactions you will go over during the class, and only to the extent that you know where atoms end up. (They tend to ask something like, "We replaced oxygen with oxygen-18. Which of these is the correct product?")

From your physics classes it is more important that you have an intuitive understanding of what an equation means. Eg, if you had to choose, you would be better off intuitively knowing that the doppler effect increases the wavelength when the objects are moving apart than the equation which will give you the exact change in frequency. The simple relationships that you gloss over in physics are the most important ( f = 1/T. p = mv, friction = u N, and so on), and they are not hard to memorize.

What I am getting around to is learning to beat the MCAT is about learning to beat the MCAT, not learning the scope of material. If you give yourself 6+ weeks, you will have more than enough time to revisit all of the MCAT science topics to sufficiently relearn them. I make 0-2 content-based mistakes on a given section on the practice exams. The easy majority of the questions I miss are because I failed to read the questions carefully enough, made a math error, did not notice a critical piece of information in the passage, etc. The only way to improve on these kinds of challenges is to take practice tests under test conditions, and unfortunately there is only so much practice material.

Long story short: focus on your grades until right before the MCAT. Your grades matter quite a bit to the admissions committees as well, and if you can pull off a 3.9+, that is a better use of your anxiety.

(And I seem to be late on the reply... I agree with the MCAT Guy)

 

[MCAT guy]

. The easy majority of the questions I miss are because I failed to read the questions carefully enough, made a math error, did not notice a critical piece of information in the passage, etc. The only way to improve on these kinds of challenges is to take practice tests under test conditions, and unfortunately there is only so much practice material.

(And I seem to be late on the reply... I agree with the MCAT Guy)

lol. I just read this and was thinking the same thing. Spot on advice.

 

[Fletcher Moore]

This is off topic a bit, but I last took the test in 2008, and I am planning to take it again Aug 4th. I took all the official (e-mcat) practice tests then, and I have done most of them again in the last 6 weeks. The good news: despite having taken them before, it doesn't seem to weaken their usefulness that much. All I seem to remember is that a given passage was difficult for me before, and so I pay more attention while going through that passage (which I wish did not happen).

The odd thing is, I score roughly the same on any given PT as I did in 2008. In fact, in PT 3 verbal, I missed the same number of questions. 1/2 were the same questions, and for a substantial portion I picked the same wrong answers. I could only do this kind of direct comparison with PT 3 because when the other tests expired, e-mcat seems to have tossed the actual answers I gave and only retained the final tally. It was extremely discouraging that 2 years of reading non-fiction has done nothing for my verbal score.

Overall, I seem to predictably miss a number of questions that as far as I can tell is only correlated with my mood and attentiveness at the time of the test. It is a weird ceiling. On the one hand, I have confidence that my score come test day will be solid. On the other, I am really disappointed because it seems like my natural limit is short of 40 no matter what I do, and if I were to make that pretty 4 happen, I would have only serendipity to thank.

 

[MCAT guy]

This is off topic a bit, but I last took the test in 2008, and I am planning to take it again Aug 4th. I took all the official (e-mcat) practice tests then, and I have done most of them again in the last 6 weeks. The good news: despite having taken them before, it doesn't seem to weaken their usefulness that much. All I seem to remember is that a given passage was difficult for me before, and so I pay more attention while going through that passage (which I wish did not happen).

The odd thing is, I score roughly the same on any given PT as I did in 2008. In fact, in PT 3 verbal, I missed the same number of questions. 1/2 were the same questions, and for a substantial portion I picked the same wrong answers. I could only do this kind of direct comparison with PT 3 because when the other tests expired, e-mcat seems to have tossed the actual answers I gave and only retained the final tally. It was extremely discouraging that 2 years of reading non-fiction has done nothing for my verbal score.

Overall, I seem to predictably miss a number of questions that as far as I can tell is only correlated with my mood and attentiveness at the time of the test. It is a weird ceiling. On the one hand, I have confidence that my score come test day will be solid. On the other, I am really disappointed because it seems like my natural limit is short of 40 no matter what I do, and if I were to make that pretty 4 happen, I would have only serendipity to thank.

dude. 40 is a great limit. Only 1% of test takers are able to achieve that score. SO having a limit that is better than 99% or 99.5% is really insignificant.

My "limit" is probably 5 points lower than yours because my verbal isn't amazing (trouble breaking 10). Anyway, in life and in this profession, there is a lot more important things than being in the 90th percentile or 99th percentile on a multiple choice test.

I saw a deuchebag doctor last week who was like superstar HMS guy who was super arrogant and couldn't relate with patients. He probably had an amazing MCAT but a doctor with a 30 MCAT and people skills will be better than a 40+ that can't relate. (this of course is not to say scoring high is bad, but instead to say being balanced is best).