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how much psych is relevant for mcat and what are classes that helped you best prepare for the exam? What about sociology? Anthropology?
Which PSYCH courses for MCAT?
- Thread starter prettybaby73
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This completely depends on the course description and often times even the professors are teaching class. Basic or introductory psychology and sociology courses should cover a good amount of the concepts that are required for the MCAT, however, there is quite a bit variability across campuses. Introductory psychology and sociology classes certainly can’t hurt, so if you have time and room in your schedule to take them, why not? I don’t think however that anthropology will be very relevant.
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Hi @prettybaby73, I took the MCAT in June of 2017 and am now a tutor. I took a couple psychology courses as well as sociology courses at my school, and can honestly say that there wasn't much overlap between those courses and the Psych/Soc on the MCAT. If you want to take courses to get fundamentals down, you can but I think you can easily learn psych/soc through other avenues. When I was studying, I really utilized the Khan Academy Psych/Soc videos to learn concepts along with this 300 page Khan Academy PsS notes packet and would make lots of Anki notecards to help me memorize all the terms and concepts. I scored a 131 on my PsS on my actual MCAT and averaged around a 129 through the 12 practice FLEs I took prior to the actual exam.
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For me personally, the classes that really helped me were General Psychology, Biological Psychology, and Cognitive Psychology (or some sort of Learning/Memory course). I was a psychology major however so these courses were part of my curriculum and understandably not everyone has to/will take these or similar courses. If possible I would recommend taking at least a General Psychology course not only for the MCAT but some Med Schools recommend/require a semester of a social science (could also take Sociology). The rest can honestly just be memorized as terms and/or might be encountered in a Biology course (anything about neurons and the nervous system).
