Medical Education US

Hello Admin,

I'm about to take the MCAT soon, and was wondering if you have any advice on how to study for it....

How often did you study a week? How many hours a day? What was your weakest subject and what did you do to strengthen these weaknesses?

Thanks in advance...

When I was in college, I took the Kaplan MCAT Course. I really don't remember how much time I spent studying - and I'm not really sure how helpful it ultimately was. I went to the first lecture, and then found that it wasn't that helpful, so I just used their tapes and went through as many of them as possible. I took the MCAT the first year they used the new version - so a lot of the Kaplan materials were designed for the old exam format. I did also review the books they provided and I found those reasonably helpful to focus my studying efforts.

For me, the verbal section was my weakest part. There really isn't any great way to prepare for the verbal part that will improve your scores (as far as I could tell). I did a few different practice exams and found what pace / approach seemed to work best for me.

I was in the opposite boat from Doc Admin.

I did great on the VER section, fine on BIO, and not as hot on PHY... I think that breakdown is going to be mostly based on what kind of an academic background you have. Mine was arts-&-letters, personally, so I cruised in that area. People who major in Bio tend to do great on that section, no big surprise there. Oddly, some Physics majors I spoke with thought that Physical Science was the toughest section, too, but I think that varies from person to person.

I took the Princeton Review course, and I found it fairly helpful, but not Jump-Up-And-Down-And-Kiss-Your-Instructor helpful. (That being said, one of my instructors was totally hot, and I would have gladly done it anyway...)

The best advice I can give, and what seemed to help me the most, was to get my hands on as many practice/old MCAT exams as possible, and crank them out UNDER TIME CONSTRAINTS. That will get you used to it, you know?

I found the MCAT much more challenging than the GRE (which I took for grad school), and I think that prepping in a timed test environment (with a full bladder) as much as possible makes a huge difference.

OK, ideally not with a full bladder.

Good luck!

CN