Studying Biology

Question: How “in depth” do I have to study biology to be prepared for the MCAT?
Example: The book’s description of the glycolitic pathway is detailed to the extreme, listing the name and chemical structure of practically every protein, enzyme, etc that’s involved and the products at each of ten “substeps”.
The professor on the other hand, is more interested in the “big picture” and how the pathway compares to say, the Krebs Cycle.
Do I need to memorize all these names and chemical structures to be prepared for the MCAT?

In short, Nope! That's more indepth than the MCAT gets. If they want details about structures, etc, it's usually info found in a passage that you have to wade through. Know the big picture for sure!

Agreed–big picture, mostly. You will have to learn all this specifically for the MCAT, in a way–when you do a review course it will focus you on what you need to know. If it's more detail than you picked up the first time, then you can pick it up. That's one of the great virtues of review courses, in my view.
good luck!
joe
ps–be grateful for this kind of prof!

but if you have to learn the steps of glycolysis - I have a whole routine of hand motions showing where compounds are phosphorylated, where things rearrage, molecules split etc. - quite entertaining -
I have a routine for meiosis too smile.gif

It's a good idea to get yourself an MCAT review book and look through it, it will tell you clearly what you need to concentrate on. Your prof may require more or less on a given topic than the MCAT.
A big thing for me was realizing that some major topics were on the MCAT but not covered in my classes.
wmkayak