This is by far my biggest worry. I've done really well in my bio coursework, but there's just so much information it's ridiculous. I honestly don't really see how anyone could be confident going into this section unless you really have a photographic memory, but anyhow... what did you all who did well on the bio part study to prepare (kaplan, etc.)? And what kind of topics are covered? I'm also a bit worried because I think my classes emphasized different material than is usually covered in bio classes (i.e. we covered a lot of phylogeny in animal bio. but didn't go into hardly any detail into different systems). Any help is appreciated!
-
CycleTrack and SDN are teaming up to make medical school admissions more transparent and accessible! Read the announcement to learn how we’re supporting the future of CycleTrack’s free application-tracking tools .
The bio section
Started by Pharmwannab
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
Pharmwannab said:
Hi, I got a 98 on bio section. Here's what I did - reread almost all the entire freshman bio book (I had not taken this course since 1985). I went over all the Kaplan book, all the questions in the Kaplan book multiple times. Then, I did the practice tests and for every question that I missed on the practice tests, I went back to my original book and looked up the answers. I also made up homemade flash cards on the items that I missed or was confused about and carried those around for a few weeks.
Actually, I found that there was less human anatomy/physiology on the oct. test than I was expecting. And, remember that the PCAT is somewhat designed to measure how you reason. There will certainly be questions that you don't know the answer to, but if you remember anything about the answer choices then it will help you to narrow down answers. Good luck!
I did absolutely nothing so I did not get a good score in Bio.
I got a 98 on that section as well. I had freshly taken Bio and Anat, so it was still in my mind fairly well. I found that section to be extremely easy, the easiest portion of the test in fact. There is a lot of material, but they really only tested basic stuff in my opinion.
Pharmwannab said:
Though I didn't do so well on the pcat, I got a 90 on the biology section. I guess I focussed so much on it because I was worried just like you before the exam. So I bought audio- learner. I listened to it every evening while working out at the gym or at the park.. It has three biology cds, I made sure I was familiar with everything on it. Then I reviewed the biology section in kaplan. That was how I prepared for the biology section. hope this helps
janbran said:
ordered it from Amazon.com. I got a used one
taken2 said:
it is actually 5 cds audio learn. it has 3 biology cds, 1 general chem cd and 1 organic chem cd. I think the biology is the strongest. I didn't use the chem cds as much and may be that's why i got 53 in that section.
I'm going to order those Audio Learner CDs. I will admit that I am more scared about biology than any other section. The reason for this is because I took my intro bio courses in the summer and cannot remember all of this basic stuff that was covered like the mitosis/meiosis, etc. I took A&P last semester and am doing very well on that, but the Kaplan questions seem hard for the intro bio stuff. I'm going to make lots of notecards. I hear Kaplan questions are often harder than the PCAT ones - is this true?
