MCAT - Making the most of your summer

MCAT studying is definitely tough, and if you are planning on writing by September 10th (this years last date) you are in full swing. If not I am here to help you on your way. I started with a score of 18 (25 percentile) and ended up getting a 33R (91 Percentile).

You may have noticed the tips from the AAMC here a bit lacking -- I noticed that too when I was studying so I am interested in helping you all out -- this blog is in the nether regions of the internet so if you have crawled upon it I hope you can make good use of the topics herein.

My MCAT study course was through Kaplan MCAT (PS- search online to find a coupon for an extra 10% off) this was a really rewarding experience and I hope you get the most through your studies by following a similar schedule to mine:

Schedule:

April 22 is the day I started Aug 13th is the day I wrote -- as time went on my efforts intensified, you too should see studying for your MCAT easier as time goes on. The first 3 weeks were really tough
Day 1 - Physics Chapter 1 -- 2 hours, 1.5 hours making flash cards and doing problems
Day 2 - Physics Chapter 2 -- 2 hours, 1.5 hours making cards, doing cards and doing problems
Day 3 - Physics Chapter 3 -- 2 Hours, 1.5 hours review
Day 4 - Online component -- 3.5 hours
Day 5 - Chemistry Chapter 1 -- 2 hours, 1.5 hours making cards, doing problems, reviewing physics
Occasionally: Write one 30 minute essay using the topics from the AAMC writing prompts page. Don't slack -- find super hard topics, for me it was business, and select a different one every time. Write it using Notepad (Win95-7) or Textedit (OSX). Save your essays and evaluate your essays based on the samples in the Kaplan writing book that comes with your course.
PS --  don't get too bogged down in organic chemistry, you can still get 10s in BioSci with just a superficial knowledge of it the Alkenes and Alkynes chapters are super important take your time there.

Another tip for the verbal and essay portion is to read a lot of books. I logged on to Powells.com/ and ordered used:
Father and Son & Co.
Last-Lion-Winston-Churchill-1932-1940
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
The first two really complemented each other as there is a large narrative that overlaps the WWII era. This really improved my synthesis of cohesive examples for my essays.

Basically schedule yourself as above until you're finished all the chapters. When you are done the chapters I suggest buying this Verbal Reasoning book. With this book I did one test, then just read a test without doing the questions. There are so many passages you can afford doing this and if anything you need to know how to read these passages effectively. Unless you read voraciously you need practice just reading to make sure you parse all the information you need to recall for questions.

Online projects with Kaplan are really good. First I suggest doing only the required (red) links as you go through and then when you are all finished you will follow this kind of schedule for the 14 days before your MCAT

Day 1: Practice AAMC real MCAT online
Day 2: High intensity problems
Day 3: Online recommend (green) links
Day 4: Review problems or start at Day 1 again if not burnt out.

One thing I did very wrong was do a practice MCAT every other day about 3 weeks before my test. I got super burnt out and had to take a whole week off MCATs and just do flash cards and problems. However do NOT slack off and write the MCAT piece meal. MY friend ended up getting roughly the same on sections of the test when just doing her BioSci and my BioSci, but on test day she lost stamina and seriously bombed with a mid 20s score. Write complete MCATs. Take your 10 minute breaks and follow the official MCAT exam schedule religiously. Do not go overtime in any section.

One thing that was covered in this great book I read recently Moonwalking with Einstein was that by reducing your time, you can innately find strategies that will improve your time over all. If you go over time in your Physical Sciences do a couple practice tests with only 30 or 35 minutes. I usually had 5 to 10 minutes to spare; on test day I had about... 10 seconds to spare and had to guess on the last question so make sure you have time to spare!

Good Luck!

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