My first choice school is UOP but I also applied to USC and Western. I took the PCAT so I could apply to out of state schools. I haven't applied yet because almost all of them won't look at your app until after they get the PCAT score and they are all due in Feb/March 2008. Also, have to check each schools website because some schools have a 3.0 minimum to apply.
Right now, I'm thinking, maybe, it's a good thing not to apply since I got an interview for UOP. If I get in I won't have to apply anywhere else. They say they let you know about 4 weeks after the interviews. That would save me a lot of money.
As for studying for the chem section, the Kaplan course book has way, way too much material. I took the August exam, no score, to check it out and it did not have that many reactions. But the difficult part is knowing which ones they will ask you, so you have to know them all.
I thought the Kaplan course material was not that good. It's much harder than the real PCAT and also the question are asked in a different format than the real PCAT. It's like when you take a new professor and the first test is sorta hard because you're not used to the format of the test and how the professor asks the questions. You'd hope the Kaplan tests would be similar enough to simulate the real PCAT style but I found it not to be.
I should also elaborate more about my situation. I started at about a 2.1 but for the past 2 years, I've been taking at least 20 units a semester and getting all A's. Most classes at my school are 3 units with the occasional 5 unit science class, if the class has 2 labs a week, so I was taking 6 classes a semester sometimes, ie. O-Chem, Micro, Econ, Psych, Public Speaking, Stats, this was all 1 semester and I work as a tech too. Yes, I have no life, I haven't seen a movie in a long, long time.
