Congrats on your AMAZING score!!! Would you mind sharing with us what books/prep materials you used to prepare for the MCAT? Thanks!
I exclusively used TPR for content review. However, I ended up not using TPR for biochem, CARS, or orgo because I had just taken biochem that semester, and I felt really confident in CARS and orgo. I took 2 TPR FLs, but I felt they didn't really reflect the style of AAMC questions that well. I gained a little insight into my weaknesses, but overall I wouldn't recommend dwelling too much on them. I would honestly say that I had a really solid foundation from the beginning due to my classes, and content review was much more a "refreshing my memory" process rather than actually relearning material (except for psych). AAMC material was INVALUABLE. HIGHLY recommend doing all the FLs and buying the SB. I used some of the qpacks - if I had to spend my money differently, I would've only bought the individual qpacks that I thought would reinforce my weak spots instead of buying the whole bundle, because I ran out of time after only doing 3 of them.
As for a study schedule, yeah you're not gonna get much help here lol - it was pretty poorly organized and not consistent at all. I started some content review in the summer (but kind of casually... and I only did physics and P/S), then completely stopped Sept-most of Nov because I had a heavy courseload. I think I struggled with consistent content review because it really felt like to me that I was going over material I'd learned and relearned multiple times, so I would get quickly bored/unmotivated. I ended up going against SDN wisdom and took the AAMC sample test as a diagnostic near the end of November, and then I finally felt like I had a direction in terms of what I should work on. I did chemistry/completed P/S/physics review end of november/beginning of december, then took another 1.5 week break to study for finals. Luckily, I had a biochem final and a physiology final so that was basically like studying for the MCAT at the same time, even if that wasn't the intention. Then I studied full time for winter break, which was about ~1 month: this is when I did the bulk of biology, P/S retention, FLs, SB, and qpacks. It was very stressful and I did feel crunched for time towards the end, but I did really well on FL3 so that allowed me to relax in the last few days.
Another really big key thing is just understanding WHY you're getting questions wrong. I started noticing patterns of how my thought process would be wrong in approaching certain types of questions, and I consciously tried to work on ways to prevent myself from doing so.
As a more in depth breakdown:
C/P: I went over physics the summer before I took the MCAT using TPR - this I did pretty thoroughly/slowly compared to a lot of my other content review, although I had done very well in physics class so it didn't feel that difficult. Later on, I found a physics equation sheet (on sdn perhaps?) that someone else had made and made my own sheet based off of that and my own studying - this helped a lot not only with reviewing the concepts but also just consolidating everything into a compact space that was easy to refer back to. In the ~2 weeks leading up to the exam, I went through the entire physics AAMC qpack as well to review actual physics problem solving. That, combined with SBs helped a lot too with identifying what physics questions they like asking.
As for chemistry, I'm a biochem major so I've been continuously using a lot of chemistry material in my everyday life, but I still went through TPR chemistry really quickly to refresh on basics that I'd become rusty on.
I really recommend becoming very familiar with chemistry and biochemical lab methods though - I skimped a little on this and was hit with an ochem lab procedure in the actual exam and spent 5 minutes trying to mentally flash back to my ochem lab! Also chromatography.
CARS: Only time I practiced CARS was on the AAMC FLs. This section comes very naturally to me and I quickly realized I didn't need to spend extra time on it. All I can recommend is to read the passages completely before even looking at the question (this applies for every section actually). Ask yourself the main idea/argument, then what each paragraph is saying and what role it plays in contributing to the overall argument. When reviewing your answers, ask yourself if you can support your answer solidly with specific evidence from the text. If you can't, you're probably doing something wrong. Another good exercise is looking at the choices you DON'T think are right and asking yourself if you can use evidence from the passage to disprove those choices, or asking yourself why they're wrong. Read the question carefully, and ask yourself if the answer choice fully and directly reflects and answers what the question is asking for. Also, try to find the passages interesting! I find the section pretty fun because I think a lot of the selections are interesting.
B/B: Again, I had just taken biochem so I didn't really do any true in-depth content review because I had literally done that to take my biochem final lol. However, DRAW OUT THE BIOCHEMICAL PATHWAYS. Understand what is going in and out of each cycle/pathway, know the intermediates, know the purposes of those pathways.
I read through TPR biology - again, I'm a biochem major and I've been taken an extended, in-depth biology sequence at my university which basically hit every MCAT bio concept pretty thoroughly, so I mainly just selectively studied my weak spots. However I think TPR biology covers pretty much all the concepts quite well, and I definitely recommend becoming very familiar with organ systems. For me this section became more about interpreting the experiments in the passage based questions. Take your time to look over the graphs and take in the background information presented!! Again, it's super important to be familiar with experimental procedures and techniques, and to ask yourself what kind of results you would expect if X were true. Similar to CARS, you have to ask yourself if your answer choice can be properly supported by evidence in the passage. If you can't justify it to yourself, then maybe you need to take a second look at the passage.
Also, the Bio1&2 qpacks were great for content review and keeping yourself refreshed on bio stuff when reviewing other things.
P/S: I reviewed P/S using TPR over the summer before the test. I made my own anki deck a couple months later from my notes, and went over them pretty frequently. In the last 2-3 weeks though, I went through premed95's P/S deck almost completely, and I also looked over the P/S content outline provided by r/mcat. This was definitely my weakest section because I'd taken psych in freshmen year, but it's also more straightforward because it's more recall based than the other sections.
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