Five weeks from Saturday, the 2006 April MCAT takes place. Like many others, I’ll be taking a Kaplan diag every Saturday from here on out. I’m starting to feel an adrenaline surge.
As part of my approach to tackling this beast, I am trying to get my life in order. I’m drinking more water, reducing junk and empty calories–i.e., no more slices of pizza, Butterfingers, and diet Cokes as “supper” before lectures, and maybe cut back on decaf coffee, the only kind I drink and which I can’t imbibe without liberal quantities of half-n-half, and cut back on various other empty calories and fat such as ice cream.
I’m also planning to increase my daily exercise in an effort to reduce my weight and get back to that “feel good” tone that I used to have, meditate more often, and make more time for both family and self while keeping up with classes and review. I’m also going to try to get used to rising before 6am so that it will not be too great a shock to the system come April 22, and maybe get to bed a bit earlier than 1 or 2am as has been my wont of late.
I’m also getting as much massage therapy as possible. Suggestion to all: massage helps move your lymph, breaks up adhesions, opens you up, relieves muscular pain and tension and makes you more relaxed. It seems to have psychological benefits as well and has been found to be nearly as effective as psychotherapy in reducing depression and anxiety (according to a metastudy cited in Psychology Bulletin). So treat yourself to one or two before the MCAT.
Good luck to all who are tackling this beast in April or who are past the test and waiting for interviews!
You sound like you have the right attitude. Just be careful not to burn yourself out, Terry. It’s a good idea to not study much during the last week before the test so that you will be rested and ready for the real thing. And good luck to you and everyone who is getting ready to take the April MCAT. 
Diag 2 was an improvement overall. My physical sciences section showed huge progress: 52/77 correct, up from 32/77, and verbal was fine (but perhaps not realistic because I had already done the neanderthal passage somewhere). My physics is paying off–I had the electrical stuff down, though I stumbled on some easy kinematics, dammit!
Whereas my life sciences score went down a bit. I felt a little burned out by the end of the writing test; I was daydreaming, finding it hard to focus, and perhaps my bio/orgo suffered a little as a result. Maybe I should have taken a nap during the lunch hour. Better to figure this stuff out now than the day of the real test.
It was inspiring to see so many people taking this thing seriously, studying their flashcards and formula card during breaks, quiet and attentive. This is a dedicated group of people.
The coolest part of the day was running into a physics classmate who turns out to be a professional massage therapist interested in learning osteopathy. I’m enrolled in the same massage therapy school he used to teach at, and his goals are similar to mine–to learn the practice of neuromuscular manipulation. After a somewhat rocky year and a half, things are coming together and I’m getting excited. Now just to survive physics and MCAT and the application process!
Terry,
the same thing happened to me! my physical and verbal sections went up, while my biology dropped. Although my cumulative score stayed the same for last 3 full-lenght practice tests the point distribution changed a lot. I guess at this point I should review some more + learn whatever I still haven’t learn. But it’s so hard to find a balance between studying and practicing. I just cannot wait to be over with this thing .
Kasia
Hi Kasia
I’ve been going through my diag 2 results and it’s kind of dismaying how many “dumb” mistakes I made. For example, “Which of these statements is NOT FALSE” and I somehow morph that into “not true” and pick the wrong one. Or I forget a basic kinematics thing, or I forget how many normals there are in 1M of H3PO4, or which direction current flows versus which direction electrons flow in a circuit. Just 2-3 of these would have bumped up my score, and I keep finding more and more. I guess this is good news because it’s easy to review and drill myself on these. Anyway… good luck on the next one!
-Terry
Kaplan full length #3 was brutal! I ran out of time on Physical Sciences with 4 passages to go, the worst I’ve ever done. Verbal was challenging as well. I noticed that all of the PS and VR passages were lengthy and dense and difficult to roadmap. I guess I have to work on my timing, though my grasp of content has improved. Verbal is going pretty well but I’m finding it challenging to make a dent in my science scores. I would like about 2-3 more points in physical and biological, and it’s a tough slog. Oh well–no one said this was going to be easy 
Yeah, #3 was tough, that was my lowest full length to date, but I recovered and am feeling good after #5, but Im in the same boat as you, Id like to see my PS and BS come up by 2 points or so, but easier said than done. Im just going to drill physics and bio problems for the next two weeks.
Full lenght # 3 was hard, but…to my surprise I scored the highest of all. My physics has been steady at 9 for last 3 tests, verbal has been oscilating between 9 and 11 on average, and biology sucks! after one time stand at 11 I keep getting 8! And I really make silly mistakes, becasuse I do know this stuff. I guess I have to concentrate on topic tests in biology and orgo!
Guys! Do you usually finish your sections? I notice that no matter how fast I go (I guess never fast enough) I’m usually left with one passage to go in Verbal, and 1-1.5 passages in science sections. It’s so frustrating. if you finish please tell me what you do! Do you read science passages? or you just skim them and come back? Thank you for all the tips!
This is the problem that I had with my Aug05 test, that I did not finish. I want to make sure that this does not happen again. What I tried, and it worked, during FL1 was to set my watch for 10 minutes LESS than the test time.
While my wife was proctoring and gave me the real time.
So I set it up as follows:
VR: 75min
BS/PS: 90 minutes.
One common mistake that people make is to read the passages too thoroughly and focus on the details rather than on the major points. Most people are not fast enough readers to get away with doing this, and it is not an efficient use of your time anyway, because you won’t ever get asked a question on most of the info in the passage. When you are reading passages, try to focus on getting the main gist of them, as well as on noting WHERE the information is located in the passage rather than on WHAT the info is. FYI: I typically read science informational passages in less than one minute, and argumentative (most VR passages, occasionally science ones) or experimental passages (where you do have to understand the experiment being performed) in no more than two minutes. I am a fast reader in general, but the biggest reason that I am able to do that is because I just skim the details on the first run through. So if you ask me what the point of the passage is, I can tell you the author’s argument or the purpose of the experiment that was performed, but I won’t be able to recall many specifics. Since the MCAT is an open-book test, you don’t NEED to be able to recall specifics. It is very, very hard for me to convince students to read like this and not worry about understanding the details, because this reading method is the opposite of what they have been trained to do for four years in their science courses. But on the MCAT, details don’t matter as much as arguments and purposes do, and if you DO get asked about a detail, you can always go back and re-read the relevant sentences more carefully. Again, you are not really being tested on your reading comprehension of details, as much as on your ability to understand arguments and apply them to new scenarios, explain how new evidence would affect them, etc. Does that help at all?
Thanks a lot Qumica.
I guess it does help. I just tried doing this with one of the biological sciences test and I ended 10 minutes earlier. I’m going to try doing the same thing on Saturday during my full length #4. Hopefully it will work.
Kasia
Another thing that may be obvious but bares repeating is when you come up against a question that you just dont know, guess and move on, if you finish in time maybe you can come back. This helps me a lot, I usully have a few minutes to spare in each section, and this is the time where I usually catch some of those stupid mistakes that we all make in haste.
Formerartist! I’ll try to do that next time. What usually kills me is the fact that I spend too much time on one question. And when I realize how much time I lost I still try to answer that question because at this point I know that I invested so much time in that question that I HAVE TO ANSWER IT!!! I know it’s not good and I should move on but it’s hard to convince myslef to do that 
And the circle closes and I’m sitll at the same point.
I still have at least 3-4 full lengths to go before the real thing so hopefully I’ll manage to fix it.
Kasia
I usually work on a question for about a minute, maybe less, and if I feel like Im not headed in the right direction, I fill in my best guess, circle the question so I know to go back to it, and move on. This has worked well for me on all types of questions, except physics, for some reason my best guess is NEVER the answer, and the physics section is the one where I usually have the least time to go back. Ive also found that finishing a few minutes early really helps to keep me relaxed throughout the test.
Make it a goal to guess and abandon at least THREE hard questions on your next practice exam. Promise yourself you can go back for them.
Remember, the easy questions are worth just as many points as the hard ones!
Quote:
Full lenght # 3 was hard, but…to my surprise I scored the highest of all. My physics has been steady at 9 for last 3 tests, verbal has been oscilating between 9 and 11 on average, and biology sucks! after one time stand at 11 I keep getting 8! And I really make silly mistakes, becasuse I do know this stuff. I guess I have to concentrate on topic tests in biology and orgo!
Guys! Do you usually finish your sections? I notice that no matter how fast I go (I guess never fast enough) I’m usually left with one passage to go in Verbal, and 1-1.5 passages in science sections. It’s so frustrating. if you finish please tell me what you do! Do you read science passages? or you just skim them and come back? Thank you for all the tips!
Me too; I got a very happy score on FL 3 and am hoping that this is predictive of my performance on the real thing. If not for one silly mistake, it would have been even better. In fact, I counted maybe 10 or 15 careless mistakes in each science section. Good grief! There’s a lot of room for improvement without even learning any new content.
Increasingly, I barely even skim over the passages; I sometimes spend as little as 30 seconds on a passage, especially a short science passage with a large table or graphic that is probably the most important piece. I’ll rip through the embedded discreets and spend an extra minute or so on the others and it seems to work out. Once in a while I have to go back and read through a paragraph. My Kaplan instructor suggested we stick to roadmapping the passage prior to looking at the questions but I find that approach a bit rigid.
You’re better off doing that than spending too much time reading the passage. Glad that it’s working for you. How are you guys all feeling? Anyone have some exciting post-MCAT plans?
Post MCAT plans include finals, then two weeks in Japan with my wife 
Im feeling pretty good at this point, and am really looking forward to being done with studying for this beast!!
I was feeling alright until I took an Orgo Subject test and was destroyed.
After the MCAT… I hope to get over to the New England folk festival which is a sort of annual pilgrimage for me. After some dancing and tunes, I’m going to try to gear up for a Physics exam that Tuesday, then finish up the semester and finally be able to spend some time with my wife and baby daughter! But I’m not really looking beyond the MCAT right now…