MCAT Study Strategies.

[med etudiant]

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I know SDN has some great MCAT resources, and JamesLynton has a thread on the MCAT; but I wanted to hear about the actual strategies on studying for the MCAT.

I'm on break now till the 12th of January.

Here is what I am thinking:

- Study in the morning ( 8am-12pm) M,W,F

- Study Saturday afternoon/early evening ( ~ 3hrs.)

-Study Sunday evening (~ 2hrs)

Would this be an appropraite strategie just for break?


What worked well for other users? I want to study pretty solid for 3 months.

[jameslynton]

What I found that worked the best for me was taking tests. I would do a section a day along with prepping concepts I did not know well. On every Saturday and Sunday - I would take a full scale tests just like the real thing. Use a kitchen time and work against the clock.

The MCAT rewards those who read with the best comprehension and speed. That is a skill. It can be learned and improved on. ExamKrakers verbal workbooks need to be the center of focus of your skill improvement in this area and vocabulary work helps. I like the small Barron's GRE study guide for vocabulary work.

These are some random thoughts on how to improve and prep:

What I would suggest is you start each day taking a different section of the old MCAT test you can down load and buy. Figure what you did incorrectly. Study area you missed problems in after you score the test.

Spend about 30-45 minutes a day working math problems like (chemistry and physics) for speed. Take one test or series of problems like 1001 physics/chemistry problems and work 25 of them. Mark your start time and finish time. Then the next day see if you can finish the same 25 problems faster. Do this for 4-5 days till you can see a speed improvement. Then do another 25 problems.

The verbal is the hardest part of the test. Make sure to do active reading of difficult material from different sources. Do twice the number of verbal tests than either Biology or Physical science. You will find that the verbal work will improve your biology and physical science long problems.

[Shiz77]

This is what I did

- Bought Exam crackers audio osmosis, listened to it every day and made notes, bought the books as well - excellent books!
- Bought used Princeton question books
- Practice, practice, practice as many questions as possible!
- A different subject each day (Physics, Bio, Chem, Verbal, Writing/Orgo)
- For Physics I cannot stress how important it is for you to understand the material well rather than memorizing the equations and hoping to plug in the no.s. I used the second strategy, I screwed up
- Use the Verbal book by examcrackers as your only guide for verbal reasoning and continue to use the strategy they teach for every single verbal passage--basically try to get to the overall meaning of the passage and relate the questions back to the overall meaning
- If you have time read a newspaper or political magazine every day, Washington Post or Time magazine is good as it gives you topics for the written section.

Writing is the easiest part, don't stress too much over orgo, I got only 1 passage and my sister and her friend did as well when they wrote it the year after. I got a 28 (10 Bio, 8 Physical, 10 Verbal) and R on writing sample.

[med etudiant]

Great points! Thanks again guys!