It is all about stamina

[Guest epsilon11]

The MCATs are in my opinion a way to gauge someone's ability to think under pressure. I did not study at all for them and had mononucleosis while writing them on a 33 degree day with no air conditioning, and I did fine.

Not exceptional, but fine.

Sure, studying can make you do better, but it can also make you paranoid about finding the answers in your mind instead of on the page they give you, where the answers usually are.

VR is just luck. Plain and simple. You can be well read, you can be practically illiterate - it doesn't matter because there are no "right" answers(although there is in this case...:S). There are ones that are the most correct. So don't feel bad if you screw that part up - I don't see why that determines one's ability to be a doctor anyway. It is all just luck. Same goes for WS.

So, in my opinion, don't try so hard. Don't go memorizing pneumonics and all that stuff like they tell you to do on the American websites. Just get a general understanding of what they'll ask( best way to do this is by reading the table of contents from an AAMC test book and determining what you think you know and don't know about. What you don't know about you can research) and relax.

[Guest aneliz]

epsilon has made some valid points...however, the MCAT is not totally *luck*....if it were there would be no reliability at all....and there is a correlation between your MCAT score and later US board exam performance....as well there is internal reliability....you are likely to achieve within one scaled score in either direction if you re-write the MCAT (assuming that there was no extenuating reason for your first set of scores!). If it was all about luck, this would be a pretty difficult stat to 'create'.

 

However, as epsilon has pointed out, the key to doing well on the MCAT is not *studying*....reviewing content will not give you the same reward for time invested as it will for an undergraduate exam. The key to doing well on the MCAT is *preparing*...this means PRACTICE. Get your hands on as many practice exams as you can. Get used to the time constraints, how questions are asked, often used 'tricks' to try and throw you off and what topics are favourites. As pointed out, almost ALL of the answers are on the page in front of you...you do not need to have 'facts' in your head to get the answers right.

 

The MCAT tests your ability to reason, read and react under pressure and time constraints...that's all. It is not designed to test your mastery of basic sciences. However, there is always a bit of an element of luck on the day of....if the test version you get has topics that you feel 'comfortable' with, how the lighting is in the room, if it is hot, if you are sick, etc. However, with smart preparation strategies (not memorising facts or mnemonics), you can maximize your performance on the MCAT....but, that said, there will always be a 'wall' that you will hit where you are unlikely to alter your scores by more than a point in either direction....This doesn't mean that you haven't worked hard enough or that you aren't smart enough or that you would not make a good doc...it just means that your standardised test taking ability is in the Xth percentile compared to other MCAT writers!

 

Good luck!

[Guest epsilon11]

Good point Aneliz. I just realized that I spelled mnemonic terribly wrong. Man, what was I thinkin:P

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

I agree with most of what you guys have said, but the MCAT, like functioning as an effective physician, requires stamina, an ability to think quickly and under pressure, and also, an armory of knowledge (among other things ). The knowledge is an important factor and I wouldn't underestimate its potency in raising MCAT scores.

 

To wit: I masochistically subjected myself to the MCAT three times (not something that makes me feel particularly boastful ), to try to increase one section or another, here or there. My marks in each section were generally above average each time, but enjoying a challenge, and figuring that I had summers to burn, I thought it would be fun to try to do a little better. During the second go, my marks emerged pretty much the same as the first, except for a two-mark boost in the writing sample. However before the third iteration, and aiming for this to be the last, I thought I'd really try to play to my strengths and hammer the biological sciences home, to give the section a real battering. So I devised a few new strategies to try to learn each and every bit of the BS (no pun intended) minutiae. It worked. I finally managed to break out of the 10-slot that I'd been stuck in for the latter two years and worked myself up to a score that was beyond the +/- 1-point bracket.

 

Having an excellent grasp of the concepts and the factoids helped to afford me a seemingly large amount of time on the Biological Sciences section, and I was able to spend a great deal more time on the one trickier passage (Lac operons got 15 minutes' worth of sweat). Furthermore, it was nice to have a swoop of confidence that is much needed at the end of a hellaciously long and tiring day, when you know that the end is nigh and that it's awaiting just beyond your strongest section. So, although all those other MCAT skills are elemental (building stamina, speed, and other such test taking-abilities) if you have the time between now and test day, it may pay off to absorb the details.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest coolguy3650]

Although I would agree that practice is far more improtant for the mcat than memorization of facts, I think most people still should put in some time learning the details. Although most of the time the answers are "right in front of you," the mcat is a very time pressured exam and knowing the details (especially jargon) will help you get through the passages quicker. Also, you have to know details to answer the discrete questions. There are even some passage based questions that have little to do with the passage itself, and instead require outside knowledge. I also have to disagree with the assertions that the VR section is all about luck and that VR questions don't have a single right answer. There is a certain skill that you need to be able to properly approach the VR section. I, for example, did consistenly well on the VR section on all my practice tests and the real test(got 12 or 13 on each one), and I think it's unlikely that I was lucky each time. The key is to understand the tricks the mcat people use to fool you. For example, false answer choices often consist of true details, but details that don't answer the question properly. Also, some answer choices seem right, but are out of the scope of the passage. These types of answers can seem right but are nonetheless wrong. I will concede that the VR test is pretty stupid, in that the only skill that is tested is the skill of taking standardized tests. Skill, though, is the important variable, not luck. However, you people are right in that memorization can only get you so far. I know an intelligent girl who spent over 300 hours studying, and she only got a 30 (a good mark, but paltry compared to her intllegence and amount of studying). Her mistake was reading notes and text books over and over. I, on the other hand, a not so intelligent person (3.7 gpa), got a phenomenal (for me) 38, mostly because I practiced quite a bit. So boys and girls, the moral is: study the details, but concentrate on practice.

[Guest UBClebronjames]

in my opinion.. doing all you can is always better that 'just' doing one thing. So instead of just practicing without any background knowledge I would suggest studying all the material for each PS and BS section well before hand. Understand/memorize do whatever you have to to keep it in your memory.. it make life a lot easier when the answer just jumps off the page on the real test than having to think logically through and understand the passage well enough to get the answer that way. That being said, there is no subsitute for practice. I took the MCAT twice and the first time I gave myself 3 months to prepare (although I was taking a Kaplan course that started three months before the exam date). Nearing the end of the Kaplan prep I thought I would just concentrate on learning the material in thier throughly prepared books. I thought that having a strong understanding of each topic would allow me to answer any question the AAMC could throw my way.. but this is the wrong approach. First of all, there is more info to learn and remember than you can possibly memorize and understand before test day. Plus the exam only tests you on a fraction of the material. Also you loose proper test taking habits when you memorize for long periods of time. I find that when you read on the MCAT you have to read to absorb the jist (according to the mantra preached at Kaplan) not the details of the passage (this is especially true for VR). But when you are sitting and memorizing material day in and day out you loose that ability to change your mind's eye to focus out of the passage.

 

So, I would suggest: 2-2.5 months before the test read and learn all the material for exam (I highly suggest Kaplan or Princeton Review material since it is everything you need to know, nothing more, nothing less). Have all your reviewing done with 1 month to go. Also do practice tests while your initial studying phase, but when it's one month to go: PRACTICE. Practice timing techniques (with a wrist watch that doesn't beep) and methodically outline how you will aproach each section. For instance will you do all the questions from front to back or do the descrete first, or all the descrete together in the middle or whatever. The most important thing to do is after you practice make sure to look why you got things right and why you erred. This is the most important thing. Cause there are only so many ways to ask certain questions and if you understand the logic to a question type you will get it everytime. Using this approach I raised my scores 8 points (11 if you count the WS) to a mid-thirty score. My friend also used this and went up 11 points. It works.

 

The MCAT sections aren't luck, as the first thread suggested. They may seem like luck cause you think you did poorly but you get a great score, or vice versa but that is due to the bell curve scaling and the fact that AAMC has over 40+ different tests it administers. You can't change that, but you can still do you best with whatever they give you and it will pan out for a good mark. You can go into the MCAT and basically have not studied physical sciences for the longest time and still pull off a 9 since the range of people at that value is so large (~12% or the 60,000 people writing or so) so it seems like luck, but it isn't. VR scores can be improved you just have to bend your way of thinking and wrap your mind around the passage each time for 9 passages. Focus, concentration, staying relaxed when you need to, and basically putting in all your effort for each section is better than just thinking that you'll just wing it.

 

good luck

[Guest LIPOSUCTIONATOR]

The difference between an 9 in verbal and 10 in verbal is only about 3 questions wrong (judging from AAMC practice exams). I'm sure even the people who do very well on verbal guess a handful of questions. So if luck makes the difference between a 9 or 10 in VR, in other words whether or not you meet a certain medical schools cutoffs, the MCAT is a lot about luck, especially in regards to VR.

 

In regards to pracitce, the more you practice the luckier you get.

 

BTW, I really hope Le Bron James improves his game in the regular season. With all those endorsements he's under a great deal of pressure to play well.