Major advice needed!

[ashmap]

Hi guys, hoping someone could help guide me a bit.

 

So I've been out of school for about 2 years now and haven't taken a general science or chemistry course in over 5 years, hence I've got no idea where to start to prep for the MCAT. Should I be reading through all my first year text books, or will prep courses suffice?

 

Please help!

[switcheroo]

When I wrote the MCAT in 2008, it had been 5 years since I had taken general chemistry and physics, so I was in a similar boat to you. I decided to buy a couple prep books and work through all the material in both of them. I figured the courses weren't worth the money for me, since I find it fairly easy to get studying on my own (didn't need the course as an external motivator). Anyway, it obviously worked out for me, since I got in . I don't think I ever went back to my old textbooks to study from them. I found the prep books had more than enough detail in there, and helped me focus on exactly the topics covered on the MCAT.

[shin]

i agree with switcheroo. Try out prep books. If you get into your old first and second year text books you might get caught up in too many details that aren't necessary for the mcat. The mcat really wants you to know concepts and have a solid foundation in science. The nitty gritty details are mostly given to you in the passages. Of course, there are questions where you'll need to know details. but for the most part just a solid foundation of science will be necessary. A lot of prep books let you know what details are important and which details are not. Prep books are best because they are tailored specifically for the mcat. Whereas text books will have extraneous information that you can spend too much time on.

[nuD]

I agree with the previous posters. The problem with studying from first year texts books is that the problems you'll be doing will be far more in depth than what you'll see on the MCAT. I started studying from my first year chem book, but found that I was spending far too much time on problems that didn't really further my understanding of the concepts. I recommend studying from the prep books and doing simple and short questions to make sure you grasp the concepts. Once you start doing practice tests and you find areas that you need to brush up in, then go back and study those areas in more detail if needed.