When? How? Help?!?

[The Hulk]

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Hey Guys,

I'm new to this area of SDN, so first let me say hello to everyone. Got a quick question... I'm a non-trad pre-med in a 2-yr post-bac program, just starting now... I will be taking the MCAT in April '04 before I'm completely finished taking orgo and bio... my question is, when should I start studying for the MCATs (I was thinking 12/03) and which prep course should I take? Also, did anyone simply buy alot of MCAT prep books and study themselves? If so, how did you do, and if you had to do it again, would you have done it that way? Thanks in advance for the help...

TH

 

[Dr. Wall$treet]

hey Hulk, im pretty new to this forum as well. I have taken the mcat twice now. This past april and august and i learned alot and adjusted my studying for hte august. I preped really well for april but did crappy on my verbal. Which actually was a shock cause i did prepare and was doing fine so it was out of left field. however i find it hard to prep for verbal. i mainly studied sciences.
First i would recomend starting to study in December.. Like yoiu said for april. If you have a light schedule, then january would probably be better cause you get really burned out. If you can, take a course in physiology and genetics. Those two helped a otn for biology.
The thing is no matter how much you know, it is really luck on the actualy day, cause you either can get stuff your good at or not. Especially physical sciences. I remember getting passages on FLuids.. 2 of them and that was the one thing i sucked at and hope i wouldnt see.. but i saw 2 passages! so alot is lucky.
I took kaplan.. i didnt go to classes, they were useless however their vast amount of practice material was worth it and the use of hte center for motivation to study! I relied alot on my text books and study guides from the texts. I used my Orgo text, phyiology, gen chem, and PHysics. I read and did problems in there the first couple months to build my base. Then i did alot of pracicite etc. You must do alot o fpractice to get yoru timing down etc.
I learned after april, to study a topic, then test yourself on it mcat style. And just proceed like that. I had a base already from april however so i didnt hvae to reviewa as much. Not sure what else to say expect for make sure you take as light a load as possible .. youll be fine. It sucks. and i stuided realy hard and only got 11s on the sciences, and i really put time in. Alot of really bright people here score 13s and above.. im just not that kidna brilliant specimen! good luck

 

[limit]

At this point, you don't even need to know what an MCAT is. If you haven't taken your pre-req's yet then you probably don't have the science base yet necessary to really appreciate it's difficulty. At this point, you should focus on your studies and make sure you know the material, even after you're done with the tests. If you cram for exams, then you know how easy it is to forget. The MCAT will test your knowledge of topics inside-out, sometimes even deeper then some superficial topics your textbooks will cover. You will discover this when you begin to practice for the exam.

Don't worry if you do notice that you are forgetting the basics, thats perfectly natural and it'll come back to you when you review. It's okay to leave holes here and there, but don't leave too many.

I guess the one mistake I saw many people make in preparing for this previous exam is as follows: They either bought many review books with sample exams or they took a prep course. In the end, they took either so many practice exams that they either had no time or no energy to take the official AAMC practice exams. Some didn't even know about them. Their fault. Very foolish. They've spent so many hours on corporate exams (those made by other companies) that they've had a defective perception of what the real exam would be like.

My planning was slightly off the mark, so I ended up taking 10 full length timed exams in 2 weeks time, and went over every answer (right or wrong) with the solutions guides, making sure there were absolutely no holes in my knowledge. Those two weeks were probably the most productive of the few months that I've prepared. So I'll leave you with this - take many practice exams and go through the solutions whether you get it right or not. REALLY go through it. But don't forget to take every single friggin official AAMC exam, no matter what. I almost took 2 in one day once, running short on time. Fatigue is just weakness leaving the body.

 

[Kry]

Originally posted by limit
At this point, you don't even need to know what an MCAT is. If you haven't taken your pre-req's yet then you probably don't have the science base yet necessary to really appreciate it's difficulty. At this point, you should focus on your studies and make sure you know the material, even after you're done with the tests. If you cram for exams, then you know how easy it is to forget. The MCAT will test your knowledge of topics inside-out, sometimes even deeper then some superficial topics your textbooks will cover. You will discover this when you begin to practice for the exam.

Don't worry if you do notice that you are forgetting the basics, thats perfectly natural and it'll come back to you when you review. It's okay to leave holes here and there, but don't leave too many.

I guess the one mistake I saw many people make in preparing for this previous exam is as follows: They either bought many review books with sample exams or they took a prep course. In the end, they took either so many practice exams that they either had no time or no energy to take the official AAMC practice exams. Some didn't even know about them. Their fault. Very foolish. They've spent so many hours on corporate exams (those made by other companies) that they've had a defective perception of what the real exam would be like.

My planning was slightly off the mark, so I ended up taking 10 full length timed exams in 2 weeks time, and went over every answer (right or wrong) with the solutions guides, making sure there were absolutely no holes in my knowledge. Those two weeks were probably the most productive of the few months that I've prepared. So I'll leave you with this - take many practice exams and go through the solutions whether you get it right or not. REALLY go through it. But don't forget to take every single friggin official AAMC exam, no matter what. I almost took 2 in one day once, running short on time. Fatigue is just weakness leaving the body.

Why does your story sound so familiar? 😀 heh

 

[limit]

Originally posted by Kry
Why does your story sound so familiar? 😀 heh

Yea you were the only one crazy enough to actually go along with our one-test-per-day-for-two-weeks strategy.

What a month that was!

 

[Kry]

heh, life sucked a big one during those 3 months. Hope it pays off for all of us. 🙂 I think we should have came up with a better strategy, almost falling asleep during the PS and BS section didn't help my score.