4 years post undergrad (sGPA 3.903) and taking the MCAT early June 18. Graduating pharmd spring 18, I can study part time till mid March and then full time till test day. Pretty rusty from my undergrad years since drugs is pretty much all I know now, so foundation is minimal.
Do I study each section in its entirety before proceeding to the next?
Do I take a diagnostic now or after I’ve gone through it all once?
- When should I start taking the AAMC practice exams to evaluate my weaknesses?
I saw Kaplan recommends starting with a diagnostic, then rotating through each topic chapter by chapter while looking at CARS daily. But my diagnostic right now would look like a 5th grader took it.
Thoughts?
If you know you’re globally weak, the diagnostic isn’t going to tell you anything you don’t already know. You might as well save those questions for practice later on.
As far as your study strategy, it depends on how you learn best. If you do better at variety, then you should probably jump around subjects like Kaplan kind of recommends. If you need continuity in order to build on prior concepts within the same subject, then you should probably solidify each section before moving on to the next.
If you really feel you’re starting from scratch, there’s really no point in taking any practice tests for probably the first half of your study time. There are a few things that you really need to do throughout your studies, and the number one thing is to not psych yourself out or get down on yourself for not acing the practice questions while you’re literally still learning the material. Your initial phase should primarily focus on getting down the fundamentals. Later on, you should start doing practice tests in order to really build upon your test taking strategies, timing, etc. Only towards the end of your study time should you really feel like the practice exam scores are an estimate of how you can perform on the real thing. You have to always keep in mind that there are so many different topics within each subject area that there is a chance that your real exam will be nothing like the practices you’ve done.
One of my best friends in my class right now was a practicing pharmacist. He said he took the MCAT during undergrad after studying for the PCAT and bombed it because the exams and content were so different. He did fine once he really focused on MCAT specific studying.
Really appreciate it.
If I’m better with continuity learning, and practice tests are as beneficial as is said (not context based testing but reasoning evaluation), as I move on to subsequent section should I buy the AAMC problem set for the previous unit and do passages from those frequently? Or wait till mid-March to start sample questions when I can full-time study till June first test date? The fact they limit the number of openings on the question sets adds a different dynamic.
Good to hear I’m not the only pharmd deserter. I see a lot of flack for that elsewhere, but hopefully something beneficial came out of his PharmD while in med school. And yes, the pcat is absolutely nothing like the mcat. Comparing apples to airplanes doing that.
There are at least 2 pharmD folks within the senior classes at my school (one practiced 10 years, the other straight from pharm school).
I honestly don’t know anything about AAMC problem sets. I went with the Kaplan qbank while I was studying (came with my on-demand course through them). I used Kaplan qbanks for MCAT and Step 1 and thought they were pretty useful.
I did the qbanks while studying and practice exams later in my study time. Just one way to approach it.