taking the mcat again...

[taketwo]

I recently applied to med school and did not get in (in part, I think, because of less than average MCAT scores). I am planning to take the MCAT again in April 2002 because I last took it after my senior year of college and my scores are no longer valid for next year's applications. I have since taken off time to work and earn a masters degree in public health.

Any advice from those who have attempted to take the exam several years after taking the prereq. courses? I plan to take a review class but I'm not sure if that will be enough to jog my memory...

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[Cobragirl]

If you haven't taken the pre-req courses for some time, you might want to save yourself several hundred dollars and just buy the review books only. I paid $1200 for my Kaplan course (yes, horribly overpriced because I went to a small, state school) and I ended up not going to 75%+ of my classes. Because of the short time schedule (classes are usually 2 hours a night, once or twice a week) and the vast amount of material they have to cover in just a few weeks (every science course you ever took)...the instructors basically just skim over the high-points and move on. If you haven't taken the courses in a while, you'll probably find, like I did, that JUST covering the high-points does nothing but confuse you (because you can't remember the basics). I found that it was much easier to just "schedule" that time for MCAT study and study directly from the review books and from old texts. If you take this approach, you'll spend MUCH more time actually studying, and much less wondering what in the H#LL the instructor is talking about.

It's a personal call, of course, but I just found that the intense pace of the course didn't "teach" me anything...and really, just made me more and more paranoid that I was going to bomb the MCAT. On the up side, the Kaplan/Princeton course DO allow you to take "practice" MCATs several times during the course. This does help considerably when it comes to getting your timing down for the passages. The review books that you buy at the bookstore will also have practice MCATs, but sometimes it's hard to sit down and seriously practice taking an 8-hour test unless there are others around suffering with you!

 

[figure five]

hi,

I was in a similar situation before I took the august 2000 mcat...I hadn't had any sciences in over 2 years, and I was worried that I wouldn't remember anything. So, I enrolled in the princeton review...and I was very happy with the results. I thought the teaching was very thorough (3 hours/night, 5 nights a week for 8 weeks or so), and the materials really helpful. Plus, we took 5 full-length exams that I thought were very accurate in terms of the actual test.

If you can't afford the $1100 tuition, there are scholarships available (I paid only $500). At least get a hold of the books -- the "SCIENCE REVIEW" book is really useful.

bottom line: my score went from a 20 on the first diagnostic test to a 38 on the real thing.

good luck!

 

[Resident Alien]

5 nights a week?! Where was that?!! I had Kaplan and the teaching was sub-par at best. If it was for 5 nights, things would have been different...

 

[showeeeeeeeee]

Holy moley! Figure five, you did terrific! I have a coworker who is going to give me his princeton review books to study with. I've heard good things about them.

 

[taketwo]

Thanks for the advice... it seems that it's possible but will take a lot of work. But, I guess that's just the beginning of a life of hard work, considering how grueling med school will be!