Studying Methods

[PreMedJen]

So all throughout my first two years of undergrad, I have been writing out my notes after lectures to help with retention and then re-reading/ teaching my self out loud while studying before an exam (and using whiteboards). But of course, this was over a longer semester period and with fewer subjects to know. I am writing the MCAT Sep. 1st and was just wondering (because of the vast amount of information we need to know/ understand for one test) would you recommend following my same procedure or using typed notes which I review? *I am also balancing a job on top of this so I do not have the same time/ study schedule as another student devoting their whole summer to this. 

How did you/ do you study? Thanks in advance! 

[frenchpress]

I worked full-time when I was studying for the MCAT. I had about 10 weeks to study,  and had to learn roughly 1/3-1/2 of the material from scratch in this time. I studied four weekday evenings each week about 2-4 hours, and in the mornings on Sundays. Saturdays I alternated between doing practice passages/practice questions all day or doing a full length practice exam, although the last 4 weeks I did a practice exam every week. I managed a 514, which I was quite happy with given the time I had available. 

I used the PDF of exam content that the AAMC provides as a study guide. I went through that and counted how much material I knew well, how much I needed a lot of review on, and how much I'd never heard of, and then I roughly mapped out how many weeks I thought I needed to spend on each subject area in order to have reviewed all the material at least 2 weeks before the exam (e.g. 1 week on physics, 0.5 weeks on bio chem, etc.)

For the actual studying, I used a similar procedure to what you describe. As I went through my MCAT books and the PDF of topics, I made my own notes that I'd be able to review later. I spent most of my 'study' time during the week and on Sundays just going through the material and making those notes. Then when I did practice questions or practice exams on Saturdays, I would review the questions/exams after and use those notes to help me understand where I went wrong, and I'd add things here and there to them to focus on what I was learning were the most important concepts. 

With that much material to cover though, I found it impossible to take notes on everything in the time available. So I tried to be judicious, and only take detailed notes on things I needed to really work on or that were completely new to me. I just did really short summary notes for things I thought I didn't actually need that much help on. Doing practice exams and looking at the PDF guide also helped me realize what I did and didn't need to spend time making notes on. For example, I realized my Biochem notes from a class I'd recently taken were actually really relevant, and I ended up just going through them and bookmarking the important sections. The practice questions also help you realize what kinds of details are more relevant to the test.

In the last couple of weeks before the exam I used those notes a lot to target my 2nd and 3rd reviews on concepts. I was really glad I had them, because they condensed the material in my review book down into something I could actually manage to get through in a reasonable period of time.

[Sauna]

I didn't study for the MCAT.

Let me give you some context  After 2 years of undergrad, I was familiar with most of the science content that's tested on the MCAT (I'm assuming most people who take the test are on the same boat). Because of this, I didn't get much out of reading textbooks / notes. It felt very low-yield and inefficient, but also pretty boring. I think studying for the MCAT like you would study for a university course is a trap many fall into.

So what I did instead was just do practice. 1 timed CARS test (9 passages) / day + 1 timed science section / day for a total of ~3 hours / day. My CARS improved from 125 to 129/130ish by the end of the summer and for the science content I was solidifying any gaps in my knowledge by reviewing the mistakes I made. I also did a full length every Saturday and reviewed it on Sundays. All this practice made the real test very.. anti-climatic haha. I walked in the test centre and it was just like doing another practice test. 

Funny story: at the beginning of my prep I planned my lunch for test day to be super healthy (i.e. nothing that would raise blood sugar too high etc.) but on the test day what I actually ended up eating was a pack of chicken nuggets from McDicks

[frenchpress]

13 minutes ago, Sauna said:

Funny story: at the beginning of my prep I planned my lunch for test day to be super healthy (i.e. nothing that would raise blood sugar too high etc.) but on the test day what I actually ended up eating was a pack of chicken nuggets from McDicks

Hah, this was basically me too.

My sister-in-law had given me the advice to use my practice tests as an opportunity to practice how I would eat that day. So every time I wrote one I was sure to make myself all the snacks and lunch I would want the night before, and then only eat / drink coffee during the allowed breaks. And then on test day all I ended up eating for the whole day was the chocolate I'd brought  nugs would have been good too! 

[darth_doctor]

In my experience writing the MCAT, one of the most recurring topics was amino acids.  Knowledge of their structure and reactivity was required for a lot of passages in basically everything except for CARS (and maybe psych).  I made a point of memorizing them inside and out and it served me well.  I used this app to quiz myself often, and I'd recommend it to anyone for this purpose (plus it's free).  Here's a link to the app on the iTunes store: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/amino-acids/id1197922551?mt=8

[ballsortahard]

On 6/9/2017 at 10:05 AM, frenchpress said:

had to learn roughly 1/3-1/2 of the material from scratch in this time.  

Would you mind me asking if this was literally the case or if you're exaggerating? I am in a similar situation, I haven't taken a lot of the traditional pre med classes.

[frenchpress]

7 hours ago, ballsortahard said:

Would you mind me asking if this was literally the case or if you're exaggerating? I am in a similar situation, I haven't taken a lot of the traditional pre med classes.

This was actually the case, as I also had not taken a lot of the relevant classes. I had taken some of the relevant courses because they used to be required for prereqs for UBC, but not all of them, and I also had some familiarity with behavioural research and experiment design from my MSc, which was helpful and relevant for the PSBB section. 

I figured out what I had to cover by going through the list of all the topics on the MCAT and marking off what I knew well, knew a little, and what I didn't know at all. In the end, I found I had to learn from scratch basically all the physics material, about 1/4 of the chem and organic chem material, 1/2 the bio and bio chem material, and probably 3/4 of the psych and sociology material. There wasn't much to know for CARS except for practicing.

Edit: one thing I'll clarify though is that I think having a little background on a major topic, even if it's not much, does make it a lot easier to learn new content in that area quickly -- because you've got a place to start. It would have been harder for me to learn what I needed if, for example, I knew most of the material in some subjects, but had never taken any bio or biochem at all and was learning those areas entirely from scratch. In my case, physics was hardest for me because that was the area I had zero background in.