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think 30 hours a week for the mcats is enough to do well on them..aka a 30? I can alot about 30 hours a week starting next week until the exam..think that is enough?
think 30 hours a week for the mcats is enough to do well on them..aka a 30?
- Thread starter amoxicillin
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That's overkill. You might do it until Feb, but then your brain gets tired around March/April (which is when you need it most) and you just get bored with the material....happened to me.
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It really depends on where you are starting from. If you've taken the pre-reqs, have a little background in physiology and microbiology, do well in logic-based problem solving and seem to do well in your classes, then I say 15 hours/week is plenty. I mean, you do have over 10 weeks, right?
I say, start off by paying the $80 and doing the mcat practice online tests. Take one diagnostic to see where you're starting from, and it will tell you what areas you need to improve on in your test result section. It's much more efficient to pinpoint your weak areas. Try to do a practice test every weekend.
30 hours/week plus class is too much. Alot some time for a beer 🙂
I say, start off by paying the $80 and doing the mcat practice online tests. Take one diagnostic to see where you're starting from, and it will tell you what areas you need to improve on in your test result section. It's much more efficient to pinpoint your weak areas. Try to do a practice test every weekend.
30 hours/week plus class is too much. Alot some time for a beer 🙂
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Personally, for me, I had finished all of my med school pre-reqs (+ a few extra upper div. science courses P-Chem, biochem, physio, Microbio, genetics, etc. )by the time I started studying. I took the Aug 2002 MCAT. Started studying in May of 2002. From May through August: During Mon-Fri I studied sun up till sun down ~9am-8pm (practice problems, and reviewing core content material). Saturdays were spent taking an all day mock up MCAT test. In all I took 15 full length practice tests to build up my endurace. Sundays I let my brain ooze out my ears.
In all, when i took the MCAT I felt prepared and confident of the material. In the end I got a 32P. 🙂
Hope that helps.
In all, when i took the MCAT I felt prepared and confident of the material. In the end I got a 32P. 🙂
Hope that helps.
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Okay, on the opposite end of the spectrum as MDTom here. When I started studying for the MCAT I had almost finished my pre-reqs (I was taking Org II and Phy II while studying). I hadn't taken any upper level science courses at that time. I took the Princeton Review class (went some of the time) and went to all the diags. So...from January-April I took 5 or 6 diags and studied ~6 hours a week. And I got a 32 as well. However, since I had crammed all my pre reqs into 3 semesters maybe I didn't have to review as much. Although I will admit that if I had studied more, my PS score would have gone up a couple of points. In any case, 30 hours a week is a wee bit overkill.
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30 hours is WAY too much. I would first determine what your weakest points are and work on those as stringently as possible.
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I think the take home message from this thread is that you need to sit-down and seriously do a couple of practice mcat tests as if you were in the real situation. Evaluate your score, and then adjust the study time to fill in your weak areas. In the end, you should spend the amount of time that is necessary to get the desired result.
The reason why I crammed so much, is due to my verbal and writing problems. My first practice test I scored a cumulative 29L with a 4 in VR, 13 in PS and 12 in BS. So most of all of my time over the summer was spent learning how to construct essays and deconstruct the VR section. Hope that clarifies things a little.
The reason why I crammed so much, is due to my verbal and writing problems. My first practice test I scored a cumulative 29L with a 4 in VR, 13 in PS and 12 in BS. So most of all of my time over the summer was spent learning how to construct essays and deconstruct the VR section. Hope that clarifies things a little.
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Everyone is different
I took the MCAT last August
Finished premed finals just before JUNE
Spent month of JUNE looking for a job and reading up on physiology, macromolecules, and about half of what there is to know about classical physics (subjects I never really had as an undergraduate). I also took my first half-length Kaplan test and performed miserably.
Took my first full length test (R-V) the first week of JULY and performed okay on the sciences and miserably in verbal.
Spent month of JULY sitting in on Kaplan classes (our teachers had been teaching for years and had scored 99% on the subjects they taught) and splitting my time more or less evenly between the three subject tests. I studied for roughly eight hours a day and more on days I took practice exams.
Spent first two weeks of AUGUST doing practice exams (AAMC I - R-VI) and reviewing (read "learning") unfamiliar material from the official AAMC MCAT syllabus.
Took one practice exam a day on the week and a half leading up to the exam. During that time, I also joked around with the kaplan kids (MCAT, GMAT, LSAT, and USMLE-step I & II students)... even went out to the bar the night before our friend left to go take his MCAT out of state.
I also checked out the building where I'd take my exam. Got a sense of how I could set my stuff up - how much space I'd have... after all, you're gonna be sitting there, writing for ten hours! I also worked out a time strategy... TIME STRATEGY, something few of my classmates thought much about.
The test itself was NOT BAD. I used my time strategy and finished each section with at least a few minutes to check my answers.
I think that unless you are a remarkable test taker, or your undergraduate college TRAINS you for the MCAT (mine sure as hell doesn't) then THIRTY HOURS A WEEK in the month or two leading up to the test should be a MINIMUM!
I am generally not a big studier. I can do just as well studying the night before an exam than studying an hour a day for it... HOWEVER, on the MCAT, there was a HUGE POSITIVE CORRELATION between the amount of time I put in and improvements in my score!
Your PRACTICE TEST SCORES should tell you where you stand and what needs work (the real practice ones... third party ones are garbage, esp in verbal).
Oh yeah, and I think the writing sample is scored by a five year old - I wasted a lot of time preparing for that. Should have picked up an astronomy textbook instead to prepare for that b* of a physics passage 🙂
GOOD LUCK!
I took the MCAT last August
Finished premed finals just before JUNE
Spent month of JUNE looking for a job and reading up on physiology, macromolecules, and about half of what there is to know about classical physics (subjects I never really had as an undergraduate). I also took my first half-length Kaplan test and performed miserably.
Took my first full length test (R-V) the first week of JULY and performed okay on the sciences and miserably in verbal.
Spent month of JULY sitting in on Kaplan classes (our teachers had been teaching for years and had scored 99% on the subjects they taught) and splitting my time more or less evenly between the three subject tests. I studied for roughly eight hours a day and more on days I took practice exams.
Spent first two weeks of AUGUST doing practice exams (AAMC I - R-VI) and reviewing (read "learning") unfamiliar material from the official AAMC MCAT syllabus.
Took one practice exam a day on the week and a half leading up to the exam. During that time, I also joked around with the kaplan kids (MCAT, GMAT, LSAT, and USMLE-step I & II students)... even went out to the bar the night before our friend left to go take his MCAT out of state.
I also checked out the building where I'd take my exam. Got a sense of how I could set my stuff up - how much space I'd have... after all, you're gonna be sitting there, writing for ten hours! I also worked out a time strategy... TIME STRATEGY, something few of my classmates thought much about.
The test itself was NOT BAD. I used my time strategy and finished each section with at least a few minutes to check my answers.
I think that unless you are a remarkable test taker, or your undergraduate college TRAINS you for the MCAT (mine sure as hell doesn't) then THIRTY HOURS A WEEK in the month or two leading up to the test should be a MINIMUM!
I am generally not a big studier. I can do just as well studying the night before an exam than studying an hour a day for it... HOWEVER, on the MCAT, there was a HUGE POSITIVE CORRELATION between the amount of time I put in and improvements in my score!
Your PRACTICE TEST SCORES should tell you where you stand and what needs work (the real practice ones... third party ones are garbage, esp in verbal).
Oh yeah, and I think the writing sample is scored by a five year old - I wasted a lot of time preparing for that. Should have picked up an astronomy textbook instead to prepare for that b* of a physics passage 🙂
GOOD LUCK!
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30 hours a week.
wow. thats all i have to say. if you have the drive to last that long every week then go for it.
if you feel totally unprepared for the test then i think you should take the time to get yourself organized and such and then modify the number of hours you study from week to week depending on how you feel with the material.
i took Berkeley Review and that was around 12 hours a week taking notes and listening. I was never able to go to the weekly tests which sucked so my 1st practice test i was able to take was their last one and then I took the mcat the week after.
Studying outside of class consisted of studying a day or so before the test, but i felt i had a good grasp of the concepts and i got a decent score. i got what i put into it basically.
I guess 30 doesnt sound too bad if I think of it as 5 hours a day for 6 days and rest on Sunday.
But if this is the way you like to study or is how you studied when you were in school then stick with what you are comfortable with.
wow. thats all i have to say. if you have the drive to last that long every week then go for it.
if you feel totally unprepared for the test then i think you should take the time to get yourself organized and such and then modify the number of hours you study from week to week depending on how you feel with the material.
i took Berkeley Review and that was around 12 hours a week taking notes and listening. I was never able to go to the weekly tests which sucked so my 1st practice test i was able to take was their last one and then I took the mcat the week after.
Studying outside of class consisted of studying a day or so before the test, but i felt i had a good grasp of the concepts and i got a decent score. i got what i put into it basically.
I guess 30 doesnt sound too bad if I think of it as 5 hours a day for 6 days and rest on Sunday.
But if this is the way you like to study or is how you studied when you were in school then stick with what you are comfortable with.
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Everyone sort of reaches a point while studying where their brain just stops and doesn't let them absorb any new information until they eat something, watch tv, or go out and play basketball.
That's why it's tough to talk in terms of hours studying. On certain days, I could hang out at the Kaplan center from ten in the morning to eleven or twelve at night. Subtract time spent chatting at the water cooler, checking email, checking voicemail, heading over to the pub for buffalo wings, and sitting through lightning round subject reviews... oh yeah, and reading parts of the New York Times... about eight hours of study time - sometimes less, sometimes more depending on my schedule that day.
Does it matter that I studied about eight hours a day for five or six weeks before the exam? For me yeah, but for everyone else, the best way to prepare varies with
1. how well your school prepared you for the mcat
2. how well you perform on standardized exams
3. how much time you have until the exam
4. how much time you need to devote to other activities
5. how badly you want to be a doctor
The AAMC practice exams are GREAT! Take one and see what you need to work on. The Kaplan materials were fine for learning subject matter and test strategies. See if you can get your hands on a copy of the old, AAMC practice passages. The more you work on passages and strategies, the more your scores improve. You'll be able to gage how much effort it takes to move you along and then you'll have a good idea of how much time you'll need to get the sort of score you're after... varies with the individual.
One last thought - when it comes to the single exam score that will determine more than anything else whether or not you will make it into medical school, you can never prepare too much!
That's why it's tough to talk in terms of hours studying. On certain days, I could hang out at the Kaplan center from ten in the morning to eleven or twelve at night. Subtract time spent chatting at the water cooler, checking email, checking voicemail, heading over to the pub for buffalo wings, and sitting through lightning round subject reviews... oh yeah, and reading parts of the New York Times... about eight hours of study time - sometimes less, sometimes more depending on my schedule that day.
Does it matter that I studied about eight hours a day for five or six weeks before the exam? For me yeah, but for everyone else, the best way to prepare varies with
1. how well your school prepared you for the mcat
2. how well you perform on standardized exams
3. how much time you have until the exam
4. how much time you need to devote to other activities
5. how badly you want to be a doctor
The AAMC practice exams are GREAT! Take one and see what you need to work on. The Kaplan materials were fine for learning subject matter and test strategies. See if you can get your hands on a copy of the old, AAMC practice passages. The more you work on passages and strategies, the more your scores improve. You'll be able to gage how much effort it takes to move you along and then you'll have a good idea of how much time you'll need to get the sort of score you're after... varies with the individual.
One last thought - when it comes to the single exam score that will determine more than anything else whether or not you will make it into medical school, you can never prepare too much!
Just take all the practice tests you can find, then go back over the material corresponding to questions you missed. Don't waste time studying stuff you don't need to.
I can't imagine studying for the MCAT 30 hours a week for 3 months. I probably studied about 30 hours total, not including all of the practice exams.
I can't imagine studying for the MCAT 30 hours a week for 3 months. I probably studied about 30 hours total, not including all of the practice exams.
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I agree with Super Rob here. I realize that I'm some kind of psycho, but I studied at least 30 hrs/wk. Basically, what it came down to was fearing the feeling of getting a lower score than I wanted, and looking back in retrospect knowing that I could have done more and tried harder. And so I tried to study to the point of not possibly being able to have tried harder.
It's over, I'm satisfied, and I still had 5 weeks left of my senior year to enjoy after the MCAT (we were on trimester).
