Now that the MCATs for me are over, I wanted to give you guys my impressions, my mistakes, and some of things that worked for me. Hopefully it helps some of you.
Timeline:
I started studying for my MCATs back in September of last year, by signing up for a Kaplan course. My first Kaplan MCAT practice test was a 19 so I realized from the beginning that I had a long way to go. I took the actual MCAT April 13th so if you’re like me, and juggling a full time job and a family, 8 months may be a more practical timeline. I tried to approach studying for the MCATs as a full time job (40 hours) so I built my schedule around that. Realistically, I was probably close to this in the 2 months before the actual MCAT exam than in the first few months of studying. I dedicated each weekday to studying a specific subject matter, took Friday off, Saturday for review, and Sunday for practice MCAT. I did not do any studying for the writing section until the last few weeks where each week I wrote an essay based on a prompt from the AAMC website (they list a whole bunch).
Resources:
I found the Kaplan books to be a good start on the material, especially on topics that were a little old for me. I read each of the books twice. Kaplan does a good job with the graphics and gives you some helpful mnemonics. The actual course and instructor was ok, but I’m not sure about their focus on strategies. I personally found the course to be a waste of 1/2 my time, if that makes any sense. However, their online resources are excellent. I took every practice test, quiz, subject matter test they had. I would highly recommend doing this because it gives you a lot of practice.
This type of studying can get a bit mind numbing, so to give my brain a break, I used the videos on khanacademy.org and bozemanscience.com to supplement my learning. I’m a visual learner so watching a video was sometimes easier than reading or listening. Especially when you’re learning about muscle contraction or the Kreb’s cycle. I also tried to use EK’s Audio Osmosis but I found the added effects to be too annoying. If it works for you great, but for me I found ThinkMCAT’s biology audio to be much better.
I bought EK’s 1001 problems which I barely used. The actual MCAT does not have many discrete problems so I found the Berkely Review books to be much more applicable. The only problem is that while I felt Kaplan was a bit underkill (is that even a word?), the BK books are a bit of an overkill. Nevertheless, they have tons of passage based problems which I found helpful. I didn’t get a chance to do every problem, but I do think I would have done better if I did.
Near the end, with a week to ago, I pulled out the MCAT AAMC guide which has a few practice problems at the end, and did those.
Impressions/Mistakes from actual test:
Look, you either know it or you don’t. The hard thing about the MCAT is that it tests a wide variety of knowledge. Personally, I found the BS section the hardest and so I shifted my studying near the end to focus on some areas in BS. Bad mistake. I should have either reviewed all aspects equally or postponed my exam. For the PS section, you need to do a lot of practice problems. You need to be able to write down the formulas from memory. If you can’t do this, you need to develop your own nuemonic for different formulas. I found using Kaplan’s online resources to be helpful with this.
I was originally signed up for the January MCAT but then my son was born so I had to push that back. That was a good decision. Even if he was born later, I was not prepared and I’m glad I took it in April.
Test Progress:
After the diagnostic, I tried to setup a schedule where I was taking a practice every Sunday in the library. I saved the AAMC ones for the end because you only have so many of those.
Here are my scores:
Kaplan PS VR BS Total
Diagnostic 7, 6, 6, 19
1 - 9, 10, 6, 25
2 - 10, 9, 7, 26
3 - 9, 9, 9, 27
4 - 12, 9, 9, 30
5 - 8, 9, 8, 25
6 - 9, 13, 9, 31
8 - 9, 13, 8, 30
9 - 10, 13, 6, 29
10 - 10, 9, 5, 24
11 - 7, 5, 6, 18
AAMC PS VR BS Total
10R - 11, 11, 10, 32
9R - 11, 9, 10, 30
8R - 10, 8, 9, 27
11R - 10, 11, 9, 30
7R - 11, 9, 11, 31
5R - 10, 10, 11, 31
4R - 9, N/A, 7
Actual - 12, 11, 9, 32
