Which additional course is the most helpful in MCAT?

[pezzang]

Hi, I am a rising junior. I have to take one of the courses listed below but I want to know which class (if taken in the first or second semester of my junior year) can help me the most in biological section of MCAT. Please let me know:
W3002 - Intro to Animal Structure and Function
W3006 - Physiology
W3022 - Developmental Biology
C3032 - Genetics
W3034 - Biotechnology
W3041 - Cell Biology
W3037 - Whole Genome Bioinformatics
W3150 - The Cell as a Machine
C3501 - Biochemistry
W3512 - Molecular Biology

G4001 - Intro to Neural Development
G4008 - Advanced seminar in neurobiology
G4011 - Neural systems: circuits in the brain
G4600 - Signal transduction

Also, I have to take Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology I and II to graduate. Do you think it is worth taking this course before MCAT? Does Neurobiology in MCAT? Or should I wait until after taking MCAT to take these classes? I hear these classes require significant amount of time studying. What do you think? Thanks for helping me in advance.

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[QofQuimica]

Moving to main MCAT forum.

OP, no biology is required for the MCAT beyond one year of freshman general biology. My personal feeling is that physiology would be the most helpful class, because much of that material isn't covered in general bio courses. (Well, it wasn't in mine, anyway. )

 

[FizbanZymogen]

After having taken numerous practice tests I have come to realize that for me Human Anatomy and Physiology helped the most. The AAMC says 1st year basic Bio is fine. This will get you around a 7 or 8 on the BS section. Physiology, Genetics and Biochem are the three I would highly recommend if you want to score higher than a 10 in the BS section. Just my own experience.

 

[pezzang]

After having taken numerous practice tests I have come to realize that for me Human Anatomy and Physiology helped the most. The AAMC says 1st year basic Bio is fine. This will get you around a 7 or 8 on the BS section. Physiology, Genetics and Biochem are the three I would highly recommend if you want to score higher than a 10 in the BS section. Just my own experience.

Thank you very much FizbanZymogen. If you are to take one course, what would you choose to be the most beneficial one of the three? Comments from others are welcome as well! Thanks.

 

[Arsenic]

Thank you very much FizbanZymogen. If you are to take one course, what would you choose to be the most beneficial one of the three? Comments from others are welcome as well! Thanks.

pezzang, since you had started 2 threads about this in both the mcat subforum and main forum I just went ahead and combined them for you. just wanted to let you know what happened to the other one. good luck!

 

[Sashko]

those look like columbia courses...
i took physiology with a different prof, but that should be the class to take, that' the most relevant course on that list.

 

[pinfeathers6]

It would be helpful to know your major first. If you're going to be getting more of a certain type of class in your upper divs or something, then try to branch out and cover more bases. For example, I was a microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics major so I've got a lot of the molecular level stuff down pat, but I never had the opportunity to take an anatomy course. As a result, going into mcat prep i knew nearly nothing about body systems. I would say go with the one you know least about. If you feel you have a pretty good foundation in one thing, take a class in another.

 

[DF38]

Physiology. About half the biology information tested seems to be stuff I learned in physiology, rather than basic bio. All the different organ systems are a big part of the test.

 

[EMH]

Cell biology and Physiology I would say are both critical. However you can just study the stuff from some mcat books. In physiology they tend to like the kidneys, and the endocrine system.

 

[MasterMD]

physio and cell bio ^^^ for sure would help a lot

 

[HunterGatherer]

physiology or cell biology

Yet, MCAT physiology and cell biology can be learned well from all of the big MCAT prep companies' (TPR,eK,kaplan, and berkeley) Biological Science study materials. You could learn both subjects in a matter of a couple of weeks and master them in about a total of 10 weeks of MCAT prep.