How much time is taken in undergrad. for mcat preperation?

[Guest shoopshoop]

hi all,

i'd like to know how much time is actually devoted to the courses for doing the mcat in the end in undergrad. . Do u have to study ur butt off as soon as u step into the universities hallway or in the last couple of yrs is fine?

any personal experiences or views would be great.:smokin

ALSO what is helpful for taking in undergrad. that would help me in medicine if accepted?

thanks

[Guest Lactic Folly]

Commonly people take a year each of bio, general chem, physics, organic chem, and English, and these should cover the basics of the MCAT. If you are applying to enter medicine after your fourth year, then you need to take the MCAT the summer after third year at the latest. If you wait a long time to write the MCAT after taking those intro courses, you will probably need to refresh your memory a bit more.. of course, MCAT scores do expire after a few years.

 

Remember your courses are not simply preparation for the MCAT - they also contribute to the GPA that you need to get into med school! Also, if you have properly learned the material the first time around, it will be that much easier preparing for the MCAT. If you meant studying for the MCAT, a few months before the exam is fine, depending on your background.

 

I'm sure many advanced bio courses will contain some material that is helpful later on.. but you never know, so could the behavior modification stuff that you learn in psych, or in any of the other courses that you experience as you pursue an education. Take what you enjoy and can do well in.

[Guest adlinner]

I think if you enjoy process more than the product, MCAT studying can really be all the time. The MCAT tests first and foremost, your thinking process and reading/writing skills. That is, can you take in information fast, process it, see it from different points of view or in light of new information, and give it back? These types of skills can be developed the next time you read an editorial in the paper, watch a movie with a good script, open a novel, talk about big ideas with old friends or study for undergrad courses. These skills can be found really in any area of study - as long as you enjoy what you're learning and find what you do stimulating enough to keep thinking about why things work the way they do (process), rather than, what will be on the test (product).

 

I firmly believe that if you're take an interest in - and are good in - English, or History, or Visual Arts, or Psych, or any non-life sci degree, then you should consider majoring in that area (with perhaps a few science electives to satisfy prereqs). Your marks will be higher, you will be happier and you will develop your reading/writing/thinking skills faster than you will in the first two to three years of undergrad science/life-sci, where the classes are huge and the curriculum is geared towards memorization of old facts rather than the more noble process of scientific inquiry in which these skills also come to play. Being able to communicate, and to think logically as well as abstractly, are skills that come in very useful for the MCAT. Humanities and Social Science students score slightly better than Biology majors on the MCAT( www.aamc.org/students/mca...char99.pdf ). To summarize the data, the median score is presented for a few majors:

 

Major VR PS WS BS

Biological sciences 8 8 9 O

Humanities 9 8 9 P

Physical sciences 8 9 9 O

Social sciences 9 8 9 P

 

Not only that, there are data to suggest superior performance in VR and WS are predicative of performance in the clinic - not so with the performances on the science sections (Daugherty et al., Hojat et al.).

 

That said, there will certainly be science things you have to know to do well on the MCAT. You can take a liberal arts or music degree in undergrad and just study hard for the MCAT. But most people take courses in undergrad so they can learn the MCAT stuff twice and more importantly make it a little easier on themselves the first year of meds. The obvious courses you'll need to take are first year general bio, first year general chemistry, 2nd year organic chemistry, first year general physics, 2nd/3rd year physiology and 2nd year (half-)courses in cell biology/genetics/biochemistry/ecology. These cover 95% of the MCAT concepts. The first four will cover - during my admission cycle - the prereqs for med schools in Ontario. I think the only things these courses won't cover are immune system and NMR/Mass/Absorption spectroscopy - which would be a couple to few hours read at the library when you're actually studying for the MCATs anyways.

 

My personal experience is that I just took courses I was interested in and never really worried about having enough credits for a major. (I'm starting meds next year with a general BA.) I took English and Bio courses mostly, with a music performance credit and a psych credit in there too. I really enjoyed almost all of my courses and there was never the pressure of learning something I didn't like just to get the credit. Having a broad based education helped for the MCAT: there were verbal reasoning questions on ethics and literary canons which I had explored in humanity courses, making those sections extremely easy (and interesting) to read. It also helped during my interview: those tough questions on politics, those metaphysical questions on if you had to be a kitchen appliance what you would be and why, and those fun questions like what book you would recommend or who you'd invite to dinner from the 19th century - were all things I had been thinking about as a part of my education which included the humanities and the social sciences. The biggest benefit is that a broad based education has opened me to a much larger world of ideas outside of science, and more importantly, other students, profs, authors and philosophers who think in it. And that's made life more interesting, that is, made the process an end in itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Hojat, M., Erdmann, J.B., Veloski, J.J., Nasca, T.J., Callahan, C.A., Julian, E., & Peck, J. (2000). A Validity Study of the Writing Sample Section of the Medical College Admission Test. Academic Medicine, 75, 25S-27S.

 

Daugherty, S.R.; Nora, L.M.; Schmidt, J.L.; Goodman, L.J. Identifying Poor Preclinical Performers Who Do Well in Clerkships, Academic Medicine, 67;S72-S74, 1992.

 

 

 

Edited to fix link. Cheers!

[Guest TimmyMax]

Hey adlinner,

 

Thanks for the references! They will provide me with a few hours' distraction a little later on...

 

Best of luck!

Timmy

[Guest shoopshoop]

well thanks alot for the "essay", i didnt expect such a free-timed guy to answer this much.:eek

im beginning to see some light in the tunnel...:|

[Guest adlinner]

lol

 

well i guess the real lesson here is becareful what you ask for... there will be someone out there who just might make sure you get it.

 

good luck with the whole tunnel thing!

 

yours

 

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[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there adlinner,

 

A couple of things: first, congrats on your acceptance this year!! (In what school will you be donning that white coat this fall?) Second, (although I'll have a wee look at the references later), I wonder what the data suggests re: folks who do well on one of VS or WS, but not the other with respect to their clinical performance?

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest adlinner]

Hi Kirsteen,

 

Thanks for the congrats. On Aug 27 I'm attending the White Coat ceremony at Western. It was a tough choice! I had my heart set on Queen's for most of undergrad, but in the very very end (like half way into June), with the choice between both schools, Western's better clerkship program won me out.

 

I just hope the VR correlation doesn't mean that clerks who read info off their PDAs faster do better than the clerks who actually try to cram the science in their heads. :rollin

sigh... I did well on my VR... Palm Pilot or Sony Clie?

 

Cheers

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