Time for studying PCAT with Dr. Collins

[WSUWarrior012]

Hi everyone, its a no-brainer that it seems that Dr. Collins is the preferred study aid for the PCAT. So heres my situation: I am taking A&P right now which ends on the 29th of July. I am currently signed up to take the PCAT on September 5th. I am planning to start organizing study materials (I am planning on buying Dr. Collins as well as studying old exams from classes, and maybe vocal from kaplan) for the first couple days than plan to start heavily studying starting August 1st. I figure I wan't to study for atleast 3-6 hours a day for 6 days a week. So that would be about 30 days of studying. If I primarily focus on studying Dr. Collins, do you think, given this amount of time, that It would be sufficient enough to get a good score? (Aiming for minimum 80th percentile). I know answers can vary depending on different students but I would say I am fairly good at memorization. And I've also noticed that when I went over some concepts that I "think" I forgot about, they ended up clicking in my brain and I remembered it on the spot (for most, not all). I have heard that Dr. Collins is more for review rather than learning the subjects which is exactly what I want because whats the point of reteaching myself on a subject that I already learned in my previous classes(unless I completely blanked on the subject)! The only subject that I haven't learned in terms of what Is being asked on the PCAT is Orgo 2. I have taken Orgo 1, however. Does Dr. Collins do a fairly good job of covering Organic Chem 2 and just the chemistry section in general? Feedback would really be appreciated!

Thank You

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[sunshao]

dr collins does very well of prepping u for chem section. For bio, I haven't taken a and p 2 personally yet, but still scored 86 based off being a senior bio major.

 

[mjpchoi]

Ochem 2 isn't tested too intensively on the pcat. I don't recall any mechanism outside of sn1/sn2/e1/e2. There may be a type of 'here are the reactants what are the products?' question from ochem 2. Maybe familiarize yourself with some reactions. I wouldn't fret about that though.

 

[O.State]

I remember a bit of bio chem but almost no o chem. Even with the Dr. Collins classes, the o chem section was mostly ^^the mechanisms mentioned above by @mjpchoi and also naming conventions, oxidation/reduction and that was basically it.

Some emphasis on peptide bonds/amino acids, metabolic pathways, but mostly gen chem stuff (charges on elements in compounds, theoretical yield..that sort of fun stuff)

 

[raeon21]

To be honest, I didn't spend more than 1 hour for studying ochem but did some questions from dr. collins after reviewing the inorganic. I only reviewed ochem looking at the reaction packet on the back of Kaplan prep book. I was still able to get 97 on chem. What helped me most from studying dr. collins was verbal section. I saw more than 8 questions exactly same from the analogies list. I thought I would get lower than 50 on it but I was able to get high 70. However, I had hard time reading dr. collins biology packet b/c it was full of memorizing instead of explain. But you said that you were good at memorizing so I don't think it would make any problem. In addition, I only studied about 6-7 hours in 2 weeks and made 87 composite score. I think you will get at least 80 if you put some efforts in it.

 

[Thestrugglez]

Disclaimer: I did not use Dr. Collins and relied solely on my Kaplan book to prepare for the PCAT.

O Chem was not really prevalent on my PCAT. I think I had a total of ~5 or 6 O Chem questions and maybe 1-2 of those had to do with Orgo 2 so it's definitely not worth learning all the mechanisms (if you don't remember them off the back of your head already, which I didn't.) If you know naming and Sn1/2 E1/2, you should be able to get >half the O chem questions. I ended up getting 90+ on my chem section and I would say if you know your general chemistry, you are good, although I had some biochem stuff as well.

Not sure about Dr Collins, but Kaplan actually does pretty well covering the key concepts of General chemistry IMO. None of the stuff that appeared on the exam surprised me after a light refresher.

Judging from the fact that things are clicking in your mind, I think you should have plenty of time. I didn't even know I was going to take the exam until about a month and a half before the actual test and I had summer school w/lab as well. It's important that most of the things you're seeing in the review books are things that you understand, but have merely forgotten. However, it really depends on how strong your verbal and reading comp abilities are. Those will probably be the hardest to improve in a short amount of time so I would focus on making sure you know your science and math first, especially math if you are not spectacular at doing mental math under a time constraint. Also, do reading passages so that you get familiar with the types of questions as well as the time constraint.

 

[raeon21]

In addition to my earlier reply, I would get a copy of MCAT reading book b/c RC section on Dr. Collins is not good enough to make you prepared. Although I didn't use Dr. Collins for ochem at all, my friend said that it covered pretty well.