MCAT: The final stretch

[Guest dr555]

Hi,

 

With about 3 weeks left to go and with the PR course finally coming to an end, I"m putting together a study schedule for myself. For those of you who have written, or even are writing it in August, what was your strategy for the month before the test?

 

I know that practicing passages and timing is key. For studying the material though, there's a huge difference between PR's books to the Gold Standard. Is the Gold Standard too little information, or the PR excessive?

 

Also, I'm sure that many ppl are in the same boat for being concerned about verbal. If we haven't improved in the last few mocks, should we just keep ploughing through practice passages and hope for a miracle?!

 

 

Thanks a million,

dr555

[Guest Jag]

I did a practice full length MCAT every 3 days, and a full length verbal plus studying weak areas on the days inbetween.

[Guest dr555]

Did you do this for the whole month of August?

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

For verbal, keep trying more passages, but try to do quick evaluations on the types of questions that consistently seem to trip you up, then concentrate on strategies targeted specifically to successfully combatting those types of questions. (These strategies are commonly provided by formal MCAT courses.)

 

For the science passages, you might want to try one approach that I found handy if you're planning on practising some passages between now and the exam. Grab a set of spiral-bound flip cue cards. If you make mistakes on any of the questions that are trivia-based as opposed to calcuation-based, i.e., which hormones are secreted by the posterior pituitary, etc., then make a question for yourself on that cue card, with the answer on the back. As you do more science passages these types of questions might accumulate. What I found helpful was to go through the stack of cue cards every day--once in the morning, once at night. Happily, I encountered quite a few questions on the actual MCAT which had appeared in my cue cards and which I could answer quite zippily.

 

Best of luck in the final stretch.

 

Kirsteen

[Guest Jag]

Last August the MCAT was earlier than this year, i think around the 14th or something if i'm not mistaken? I followed the plan that I stated earlier for about 2 weeks or so before the real MCAT, and took a day or 2 off before the real test day.

[Guest dr555]

I've tried the cue card trick and I think it's actually really effective! Thanks:)

 

Now it's just mastering those verbal passages...