Guest coralrush Posted July 31, 2004 Report Share Posted July 31, 2004 So it's T minus 2 weeks until the big day and out of the 6 practice tests that I've done (combo of AAMC and Princeton books), I haven't been able to break the double digits on the bio section. It's weird, cause I'm a bio major (I've covered ALL of the topics in class before so there is nothing new to me)!!! My problem (or so I think) lies in my (lack of) ability to interpret and apply the passage info to what I already know. Any tips for improvement? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PhantomPhoenix Posted August 1, 2004 Report Share Posted August 1, 2004 Those Princeton bio sections seem to cover more way info then u need. I think it helps to be familiar with the subject matter if ur not good at interpreting new material, but I find interpreting the material in the relatively short amount of time is more significant. Take the orgo section...my orgo knowledge is @#%$...yet I pulled a 10 on my last bio section, because I am quickly able to knock out what I think are stupid answers which usually brings me down to two answers. I think ways of improvement are all relative. I am like the ani-verbal student in the Princeton course...I do NOTHING of what they tell me, yet I pull off 10's. I see student's who follow all the Princeton directions and suggestions and pull off half my score. Everyone has their own methods...u just have to figure out your own. What is good for me, may not be good for you. Saying that...I am in panic mode...its all MCAT now....:rollin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest avisee Posted August 1, 2004 Report Share Posted August 1, 2004 It's true.. some people have strategies that may help, but I think it's more a task of findign something that works specifically for you. Best advice I can give you is to look over practice exams you've written, question by question, and try to understand why the wrong answers are wrong. Try to work from a comprehensive set of solutions, and look at all of the wrong answers - especially the ones you picked, to see what makes them wrong. Also, try to see if there are certain types of questions you don't get right. Do you know all of the material well, or do you need to study more of the small details? (eg, for me, I'm making cue cards for the hormones and the Sn/E orgo reactions, because I'll never be able to get those straight if I don't). Or are the questions that you get wrong consistently passage-based? Are they ones relating to an experiment described in the passage? Are they assimilating information from a passage, or understanding some new theory? Try to see if there is a pattern, and focus extra attention on areas of weakness. Basically, there are two approaches you could take - try to make sure you know every little detail of theory, or else try to work out your analytical thinking on passage information. Hopefully one of these strategies will help, but maybe you just need a little more of each. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kirsteen Posted August 1, 2004 Report Share Posted August 1, 2004 Hi there, Best advice I can give you is to look over practice exams you've written, question by question, and try to understand why the wrong answers are wrong. There are a number of approaches that you can take to improve the Biological Sciences section, but as the time to exam day decreases, making drastic changes to your exam-writing approach may not be easy. The point mentioned in the above post reminded me of a tack that I took in aiming to score high in the BS section and it doesn't involve drastic changes. Further to the above advice, what I did was purchase a set of flip cue cards. When I completed a BS practice section (and I did this for Physical Sciences too) if it was a piece of BS trivia that I bungled, i.e., I couldn't answer the question properly because I didn't have that wee pearl of knowledge, then I'd write a question for that pearl on one side of a cue card, and the answer on the back. An example of this might be: "Which lung has 3 lobes?", or "What side of the heart holds the tricuspid valve?" No matter how many MCAT trivia questions I'd amassed, I'd review the whole stack every morning and every night in the days and weeks before the test. I had gathered quite a few by the week of the exam, but I could whip through 150-odd questions in a short space of time and many of them did come in handy for the exam. (This was also the first time I'd taken this approach and I somehow managed to bump up my BS score by 2 points to a 12.) Cheers, Kirsteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest T dawg 2004 Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Also, since you are a Bio Major, one of the hazards is that you are bringing IN outside material!! This is a major hazard of students who have studied the various disciplines - although in Physics and Chemistry it is harder to go astray because the calculations do tend to end up being numbers... But, when you are faced with conceptual information, in biology it is VERY easy to slip into the mode of OVERTHINKING or over-analyzing examples. Remember, a lot of the time, the answers are RIGHT there in the passage and you needn't worry about too much trivia outside of the passage. Moreover, reviewing Organic Chemistry will help you with your overall score as well - sometimes, in the Bio Sci section that is the sectcion we let slide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest antissa Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 wait, I thought it was for Verbal Reasoning that the answers were right there in the passage, but for the science sections you need outside info? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest T dawg 2004 Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 In Verbal - you're right, everthing is right there in front of you. In Bio Sci - You do need SOME outside info, BUT many of the times the answer is right in the passage. Once in a while, there are obvious questions where you'll have to bring in info you know from outside, but more often than not, the info is staring you in the face. Don't over think, and read carefully - us biology-type majors often make mistakes this way on the MCAT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coralrush Posted August 3, 2004 Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Thanks for all the ideas! I will try them out. I think I'm committing many of the blunders that you're all talking about (bringing in too much outside knowledge, letting orgo slide, troubles with experiment based passages, still a few details I can never remember straight) so it's sometimes hard for me to pick something to focus on. If I'm having trouble interpreting the theories or experiments that they give me in the passage, what's the best way to go about improving this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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