When Should I Take The PCAT?

[DreStylez]

I have all my study materials but I don't know how much time I need to prepare as in the number of months/weeks. I am going to enter pharmacy school in the Fall of 2011. Should I take my first PCAT exam on Januray 23 2010?

Completed Coursework
Gen Bio I, Gen Chem I, Eng Comp I, Pre Calc (17)
Gen Bio II, Gen Chem II, Eng Comp II, Calc I (17)
Speech (3)

This coming Fall Sem
Org Chem I, Gen Physics I, MidEast Civ, Crit Think (16)

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[crazybob]

take calc 2, organic 1 and 2, and microbio if you can. if you take courses like genetics and biochemistry, they can help too.

and january 2010 is kinda early to be taking the pcat for applying in 2010-2011 school year. wait until june or august 2010 to take the pcat. pearson will not let you sit for the pcat more than 5 times (look on top of page 9 of the brochure), so you shouldn't sign up for every test date you see.

 

[UArk2014]

I definitely agree with Bob about calc 2 and org 2. I was more than surprised to find several questions on Quant and Chem that were not from 1st semester of either course and they were not in the Kaplan study guide either. If you believe Kaplan, you could ace Chem with GenChem I, II and the first 3 weeks of Org I. That is not the case.

 

[siltears]

If you took IB or AP classes in high school, you are fine to take the PCAT whenever you want, just brush up using Kaplan. But if you didn't take Cal 2 , but I don't think you need organ2...but idk...depends on how well your GenChem 2 class was at introducing organic chem. Cause from what I remember from the PCAT, it was mostly naming and reactions.

 

[crazybob]

with the reactions part, they don't always draw the structures for you, so you have to be able to visualize how the molecules would look just from reading their names.

 

[siltears]

Yeah...I remember that question on the JAN 2009 PCAT...its the one with the sodium something or something right? But I think there were like...2? questions where they were like...find out what structure blah blah blah molecule is right?

 

[crazybob]

the only one i remember is forming an alcohol from some molecule. it listed all kinds of reagents.