MCAT tips and tricks

[Guest dopetown]

Hi,

 

As seen in other posts, you may have read that I'm preparing for the next MCAT. I'm studying alone with just textbooks and practice exams. I'm not taking the Kaplan or PR courses because I think I can manage a satisfactory mark without spending that kind of money. Ultimately, I think, regardless of whether I take a course or not, I would end up with some amount of knowledge and experience to hopefully do well.

 

However, courses like Kaplan and PR teach beyond the required knowledge and show students some tricks that may save time, improve efficiency, or whatnot.

 

For those of you who has taken the courses, would you mind sharing some tricks that you've learned either from courses or from others?

 

I've tried looking into this myself. The only two tips I can offer is to skip the difficult questions and, when answering passages, read over the questions first and then read the passage. Any more?

 

-Dopetown

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

This is a neat idea for a thread. Hopefully lots more folks can kick in some tips from previous experiences. Here is at least one that I learned from Kaplan and PR:

 

1) For the science sections, turn to and tackle the discrete questions first. You don't need to read passages to complete these (basically, they're simply biological of physical science trivia questions) and get your 15 relatively easy, non-passage-based, marks out of the way first so that you can concentrate on the passages thereafter.

 

Cheers, and best of luck this August,

Kirsteen

[Guest UofT Student]

Hey dopetown,

 

Like you, I'm not taking a course, because I think I can do well enough without one. Good luck to both of us and everyone else!

 

Here's another tip: if you found a section particularly difficult, don't stress about it and let it make you do badly on other sections of the MCAT. Chances are, many others found it difficult as well.

 

Remember that your mark is curved relative to how others did, so if others found it difficult, your mark will be curved to reflect this and you'll get a better score than you would have originally gotten, had there been no curving.

 

Hope this helps!

[Guest Lactic Folly]

Not from a prep course, but from personal experience:

 

1) If you are writing at a centre with many test-takers, the time needed to distribute and collect papers for each section effectively serves as a mini-break, thus making the day less taxing than it otherwise would have been.

 

2) Go easy on the fluids during the day of the exam (replenish yourself the day before). :b

[Guest 007]

Bubble in your answer sheet after each and every passage!!! WAY too many of my friends got 29's because they simply ran out of time bubbling in on a certain section.

[Guest hydes79]

Hi,

 

I'm also not taking any courses, becuase I have a busy summer job.

 

I have one tip from the books that I'm reading: Answer the passages with more questions first. By doing that you will make sure to get more questions correct.

 

Hydes

[Guest Lorae]

Make your practice exams as "real" as possible. Learn how to time yourself properly because pacing can make or break you.

 

Pee at every opportunity (know where the bathrooms are ahead of time - find one that's farther away but won't have any line-ups on test day). Don't do anything out of your normal on test day (ie. don't suddenly take up or give up caffeine). Eat good snacks!! No simple carbs or you *will* crash during BS!!

 

For PS and BS I only skimmed the passages (looking for themes, values, formulas, etc). I found a *huge* number of the questions were stand alone or just up/down manipulation of a formula... reading the whole thing (before attempting the questions) would have been a waste of time.

 

For verbal I read the first 3 sentences of the passage and would decide immediately "now" or "later." I learned what types of passages were good or bad for me and I went with that. Do NOT waste time on killer hard ones, leave them until the end then go back.

 

For written make sure you give *specific* examples!! Use phrases like "a specific example is..." and "in contrast..." etc. They are not looking to be wowed by your literary prowess... they want you to follow the task exactly.

 

Good luck!!

[Guest dopetown]

Thanks for the additions, everyone.

 

Hopefully we can all benefit from these tips by using them during our practice exams.

 

Does anyone have a specific technique to go about the VR passages? I've heard from a person who wrote the LSAT that reading the topic sentence of each paragraph first is good to give yourself an idea of the overall flow of the essay. I was also recommended reading the VR questions before the passage to know what to look for in the essay. Lastly, I read somewhere that underlining important words in a question would keep you from falling in some traps.

 

What have you done in the past?

 

What worked?

 

What didn't?

 

Thanks,

Dopetown

[Guest peachy]

Here's a VR tip that worked for me, but I don't know how helpful it would be for anyone else.

 

My problem with VR is that I kept getting down to two answers for a particular question, and wasn't sure which to pick. I would try to imagine convincing someone (say, my MCAT instructor) that each one was the right answer - and that would sometimes help me find which one had the more convincing or obvious reasoning.

[Guest physiology]

Do lots of practice exams. The more familiar you are with the exam the better.

 

The stand-alone type of questions ranged from ridiculously simple to moderate difficulty. An example of an easy one was "Which of the following ions is the nitrate ion?"

 

But what I suggest is knowing how to read those passage questions and learning how to answer them. Most of the times, the answer can be found in the passage. You just need to learn how to think about it in the MCAT-style.

 

So practice, practice, practice!

[Guest Boxerbc]

Hey, does anyone know where I could get some cd-roms or possibly DVDs on the MCAT? I've heard they exist, but not sure where I could find them... supposedly some are of the actual classes Kaplan gives.

[Guest ryguy]

I took the Kaplan course and I used their vhs material (probably dvd now) for certain Org Chem topics. I had to sign them out from the library that was holding the kaplan materials.

 

 

One trick for me on the VR was to pay attention to when Kaplan outlined the types of questions on the MCAT and what types of answers they might give you as possibilities (bad logic, misleading...) I practiced to recognize the answer traps. I got 11 on the VR - which for my VR ability was no small achievment!

[Guest CHUBBY]

I took the princeton review course and for the physical sciences scetion a good strategy i used was to try to answer as many of the questions within the passages using the graphs, charts and equations...and then if there is a question that requires the passage read it after these questions have been answered. Also some passages may have questions that require long calculations that may take 5 minutes or so...the best strategy here is it leave it and do it later b/c all questions on the mcat are weighted equally..therefore instead of speading a whole 5minutes answering one question...one could probably complete another 5 short questions..

 

good luck to all for the august mcat

[Guest threeputt]

I studied from Examkrackers books, and found that the tips they had for VR worked very well: Don't get caught up in the details of the passages, try to develop an overall thesis for it instead, and this in itself will make the questions easier to answer. Also, sometimes the way a question is posed automatically eliminates it from being correct. It's hard to explain without working through examples - I suggest the EK books anytime - they focus on the MCAT content and not much more, allowing you to focus on the important stuff

[Guest dopetown]

Hi ryguy,

 

Is there a consistency with the VR traps? I have noticed some misleading or illogical answers, but how do you know for sure they're traps?

 

Right now, I'm focusing on the grammar of the question to help me identify some clues.

 

-dopetown

[Guest CHUBBY]

hey guys..

 

i have the exam krackers verbal 101 passages book..is there another examkrackers book on verbal that has tip on approaching verbal questions

 

thanks

 

chubby

[Guest UTStudent03]

hey Chubby,

 

EK does have another book on verbal, it's the EK verbal reasoning guide (in the same format as the other review books). There's a bunch of practice passages in the book also. Good luck this August.

[Guest Boxerbc]

hey RYGUY, is there anyway i could check out (buy a copy of) those tapes or do you know of any other source for that kind of info? boxerbc

[Guest box]

i'd like to hear peoples' opinion on this...

 

in my princeton course, they said to bring lots of chocolate with you, and in between sections, pop some in your mouth. it'll give you a jolt, but the key is to time it correctly, so that the sugar low happens just after the allotted time for the section. i tried practicing this on mock exams, but i'm not really sure if it made a difference. any ideas?

[Guest Lactic Folly]

Well, I'm the kind of person who never notices any difference after consuming lots of sugar or caffeine (except an increased heart rate), so I'd have no reason to suppose it would be any different for the MCAT. However, chocolate could help if you eat it while you prepare for the exam.. then when you take the exam and eat chocolate again, the smell and taste will serve as a memory trigger. (Way to make studying less tedious )

[Guest ploughboy]

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Gold Standard suggests the same thing except only for the final section of the exam, since hitting a sugar low in one of the early sections could really mess you up. I followed GS's advice, and it seemed to help. It definitely perked me up and helped me slog through the last section. I crashed hard during the final 10 minutes or so, but by then it didn't matter since I had answered all the questions I knew, and was down to guessing (I scored in the 30th percentile on that section, but that was due to my deficient knowledge-base, not my blood-sugar level).

 

I'm probably going to drink a small cup of coffee before BS in August. I've semi-permanently* switched to decaf but I'll make an exception for the MCAT. I'm not like Lactic, caffeine has a huge physiological effect on me. When I have caffeine the fog lifts from my brain, colours seem brighter, and the world is simply a better place. That's why I gave it up, it's too addictive.

 

I think the key is to do what you're doing now - experiment with nutritional/chemical pick-me-ups on your practice tests, so that you don't get a nasty surprise during the real thing. A related tip - do at least one of your practice MCATS in a loud environment like a busy mall. This will help you get used to shutting out distractions and focusing on the test questions even if you get stuck beside a gum-snapping, sniffley-nosed foot-tapper on exam day.

 

 

pb

 

 

*Like a friend says about smoking: giving up coffee is easy. I've done it a hundred times...

 

 

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[Guest dopetown]

Aight,

 

I agree with the scottish chap from another thread that understanding the passage is key. When I read, i'm not only trying to understand but also memorize some key facts or take note of some important points.

 

The problem is the timing. Do you people allot yourself a certain amount of time to read and do the questions? Since there are 60 questions in 9 passages in 85 minutes, do you think 5 minutes per passage is good enough? 5 minutes per passage means 40 seconds per question.

 

Anyone else time themselves with respect to passage reading?

 

-dopetown

[Guest UofT Student]

Some books I've read suggest taking on average 27 minutes to read and answer questions for THREE (3) passages, because some passages may take longer to read and answer questions for than others.

[Guest dopetown]

For VR, who here reads the passage thoroughly and then answer the questions, and who here skims the passage by reading the first sentence of each paragraph and searches for the answer to each question?

 

I find reading the passage thoroughly first is the best approach. I try to remember as much as I can the first time through. This approach also helps me to understand the general point of the passage.

 

-dopetown

[Guest UofT Student]

Yup, I've found that I do best by reading the passage and understanding its arguments, and then tackling the questions. I don't like to briefly skim the passage and then go to the questions, because then I waste time going back to the passage and re-reading things that I should have read the first time.