TAKING PCAT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OCTOBER; What's recommended?

[gzahalan]

Hello everyone,

I'm from Canada where the PCAT is not common nor required for any school except two - one of which I am most interested in (University of Toronto). This year is the first year that they will have the PCAT as their admissions test as all previous years included the UTPAT which is basically an IQ test.

I know I hate myself, too, because I should have applied last year... anyways...

I've been preparing for the PCAT (October) for the past 2 weeks and hope to continue to do so right up and until the test date. Here's what I've purchased so far:

KAPLAN PCAT 2008-2009 TEXTBOOK
BARRON'S 3rd AND 4th Edition to PCAT
1000 PCAT CUE CARDS
5 Practice Tests (i think Barron's).

So far, I've been reading the Biology section from the Kaplan book and nothing is sticking in my head... Having already reviewed this in my first 2 years of pre-pharmacy, I feel as if I should find the material easy-to-remember and a breeze but I'm flabergasted at how much I don't know and how much is NOT sticking in my head... I'm already feeling overwhelmed.

Is there a practice book(s) that any of you can recommend for me that will give me more practice instead of just pages and pages of text like the KAPLAN book seems to provide?

Also, do any of you think the cut-off will be relatively low this year since it is the first year that UofT considers the PCAT and that they are waiting on everyone's overall marks to determine a cut-off?

Any advice. Thank you to all.

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[AngelaCL]

My advice is to take notes from the books, do NOT just read it or you're right; you won't remember it. Take practice exams and make sure you mark not only the answers you got wrong, but the answers you only got right because you guessed. Look at the explanations for all the answers and take notes on that. Keep notes for chem, bio, and math, and maybe keep a list of vocabulary words you didn't know as well. You may want to note what book and page the information came from as well.

Also, use books like AP prep books, Bio/Chem for Dummies, Cliffs Notes Reviews, your old class notes... whatever you find that's easy for you to understand. Take notes on all this stuff.

Then, the week before the test go back over those notes! Highlight everything you still don't know. Go back to those pages where the answers came from and refresh your memory. After you finish this, re-read those highlighted notes AGAIN. By now you should have that stuff down cold.

And time yourself while practicing! This was my biggest hurdle for the math and chem sections - running out of time on test day and having to guess.

 

[gzahalan]

Wow. Thank you very much for the helpful advice, AngelaCL.
It is much appreciated. Besides the prep books listed, have you heard anything positive about ExamKrakers MCAT 1001 questions books?

I've been seeing a lot of posts on different threads on the websites that talk about the benefit of these books since they have so many practice questions... Do you recommend this or were there any other specific books that you purchased?

 

[AngelaCL]

I never used it. The only official PCAT book I ever used was Barron's, and I thought it was lacking in the math and chem sections - far too easy.

 

[Matrix187]

I'm taking notes from most of the Kaplan 08-09 book (mostly biology). I have my old binder full of Chem II notes from start to finish. I'm going to take very general notes besides ones regarding Biology/Chem/Math.

 

[lev zev]

Well I won't be able to tell you if how I studied was well enough since I don't know my scores yet, but this is what I feel. I used the PCAT Destroyer, Barrons, Cliffs, Cliffs AP biology, and the practice tests off the pearson website. I have always been weak at verbal, so for the verbal I hope I did well from what I know because you really can't study for verbal nor reading. The bio and chem, I probably did extremely well on because I knew pretty much 95% of the material tested. A really good book for the bio is the cliffs AP biology book. A really good book for the Chem is the PCAT destroyer because there was a good amount of organic on it and the PCAT destroyer does a great job with the organic section. Ummm for the math, I think the best practice is the pearsons practice test because nothing really in the books comes close to it. Overall to study I used the cliffs AP biology & PCAT Destroyer and for practice I used pearsons practice tests, cliffs, and PCAT destroyer. The barrons was extremely easy and too weak for the subject matter. I wouldn't recommend using barrons. Oh ya... its EXTREMELY important to time yourself... on the practices i would finish at least 10-15 min before time is up. However, on the actual I would seriously make it at the last minute.
Good Luck!

 

[virtue1]

Does anyone know how to prepare specifically for the statistics in the quantitative section? Like what textbook is good, what topics usually show up? i don't think mean, median & mode is part of it because that's just way too easy. I know probability comes out but what else? variance and standard deviation? pls advice

 

[pharmisdream]

Does anyone know how to prepare specifically for the statistics in the quantitative section? Like what textbook is good, what topics usually show up? i don't think mean, median & mode is part of it because that's just way too easy. I know probability comes out but what else? variance and standard deviation? pls advice

Hey, there are a lot of questions on mode, median and mean. Don't overlook this part. At times, they are quite lengthy, so make sure you practice them well. Usually they incorporate the concept of median, mean and mode in the same questions. For example, they will give you a set of date( not arranged), and then they will ask you, which one the following is true for the data. and the options will be something like this,
1) mode and median are the same
2) median and mean's the same. etc.
So, definitely go over that.
Also, I saw a lot of standard deviation and variance questions. They are very basic. Usually they don't require complex calculations. For example,
They will give you a set of data, and they will ask you what will happen, if you increase all the number by two.
and options will be,
Standard deviation will go up by 2.
SD will remain same, and mean will go up by 2. etc.

Good Luck

 

[gzahalan]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

One more question, which AP Books are you talking about?

There are many of these on www.amazon.ca/ when I search.

Btw, is AP 'Advanced Placement'?

In Canada, we haven't got those.

 

[mug3n]

Does anyone know how to prepare specifically for the statistics in the quantitative section? Like what textbook is good, what topics usually show up? i don't think mean, median & mode is part of it because that's just way too easy. I know probability comes out but what else? variance and standard deviation? pls advice

You'll have to know the normal distribution quite well, and some of the trends associated with it (namely the 68-95-99.7 rule, look it up). You might have to do a z-test, I've seen it in past PCATs.

Overall the stats are really basic and you probably won't even see a z-test. Definitely probabilities (conditional probabilities and such), mean/median, standard deviation/variance.

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

One more question, which AP Books are you talking about?

There are many of these on www.amazon.ca/ when I search.

Btw, is AP 'Advanced Placement'?

In Canada, we haven't got those.

There aren't specific books labelled "AP books" that you can find on online stores. We do have AP programs in Canada, it's basically an accelerated curriculum where you learn more advanced stuff than Grade 12 level (similar to IB, International Baccalaureate, if you ever heard of that one).

For the math stuff, get your hands on a Grade 12 calculus textbook and some 1st year university stuff and you'll be fine.

 

[alenadoma]

Study the flashcards, every single day. Carry them around with you, and every moment you have, take them out and start memorizing. Do not take the vocabulary lightly, it can really help your score if you do well enough.

I took the Kaplan course, and I found it incredibly helpful, but I don't think there is enough time for that now. Do a lot of practice problems, and make the PCAT your number one priority up until the test, and you'll be golden.

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[virtue1]

Study the flashcards, every single day. Carry them around with you, and every moment you have, take them out and start memorizing. Do not take the vocabulary lightly, it can really help your score if you do well enough.

I took the Kaplan course, and I found it incredibly helpful, but I don't think there is enough time for that now. Do a lot of practice problems, and make the PCAT your number one priority up until the test, and you'll be golden.

GOOD LUCK!!!

If i may ask, what flashcards are you referring to exactly, is it the REA's flashcard?
One other question on quantitatives, do you think there's going to be questions on derivatives that require application of derivative rules like quotient, product and square-root rule? I also realized some hard trig-integration from the harcourt practice test that i took last week. what's your opinion