MCAT prep for students WITH science background

[bival]

Hey everyone!

I'm starting to study for the MCAT this summer and I was wondering if it's necessary to do a prep course if you already have a background in science? I've taken pretty much all the courses that the MCAT touches on except for pysch and soc.

Also, does anyone have any book recommendations? I was looking at the Kaplan books but I'm not sure which ones are more geared towards people who already have a science background versus beginners. 

Thanks for the input! 

[Eudaimonia]

If you have a background in science, you know what topics are your strengths and weaknesses and should address them accordingly as you go through the MCAT outline. There isn't a need to take a structured class which will more or less devote time depending on class need or test expectations (remember that they cannot predict the content on your MCAT any better than you can). You don't need to have taken psych soc to do well, it's very manageable to self study it. 

Spend your money on more resources instead. Kaplan is good overview so not great for beginners. You might like them but I found them a little too sparse on some topics. Every book has useless details or glossing over of important things, so diversify.  

[AVSS HDS CSM]

IMO prep course is usually not necessary and can be a waste, especially if you already have the background. Kaplan is good for a review, as Eudaimonia mentioned, and that's what I used. I think the best way to prep is to buy the AAMC online practice package (through the MCAT webpage), and use it as much as you can! The other companies' sample questions and exams generally do not compare well to the real thing, and can be harder or easier than what you need, but the AAMC stuff is very representative. Use a review book set such as Kaplan to brush up on everything, and use the questions in AAMC to sharpen yourself. Then, every few weeks write a practice test (begin with the unranked sample exam, then move on to the two ranked exams). You will need to simulate test conditions and write those tests as if they were real, and then take a couple days to review them and see where you could use some strengthening. Pay attention to why you got things wrong (or right for that matter!); lack of knowledge, misunderstood question, lapse in thinking, etc. There are only three tests, so space them out appropriately to take maximum advantage. You probably don't need more than three months, max 4, (any more than that and you will be forgetting things and it probably won't help in my opinion), so can write one each month perhaps. The Kaplan book set comes with three exams as well, but not as accurate for gauging your score, good practice though.

For CARS, I found that the various strategies taught in prep books involving outlining passages and categorizing each question type ended up wasting all my time for the question, so I recommend just practicing reading faster with high-level material. Read a good newspaper or journal every day and immediately summarize the point(s) of the article to yourself, with some time this should help you read critically and succinctly. The practice AAMC questions will help teach you what kind of questions to expect and what to pay attention to.

Psyc/soc is hard to completely prep for, even psych majors have told me there were things in there they had never heard of before. I just used Kaplan and it was fine, even with no psych background (molecular bio).

There is also this cool site http://www.wikipremed.com/ which is kind of hard to follow and is super thorough more than you'll ever need, but if you get into it it's a nice 3 month program to review it all... Can track your progress as well. I didn't really use it. Also Kahn Academy, good review and explanations, but I found it to be not very representative of the question types.

If it matters, I scored a 521 (129 CARS) last year with only Kaplan book set and AAMC online package.

Best of luck!