Up2Date Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 Hello, I find that physical sciences is my worst section. Does anyone have any helpful tips on how I can improve? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drogba Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 Make sure you are comfortable with all the formulas/concepts. Be able to manipulate the formulas to relate concepts. You can start off by doing discretes in the areas you are weak in, and then pound the practice passages. The more exposure you have to the various ways of asking the questions, the better you will become at recognizing how to approach different problems. Heavy practice and post game analysis, rinse and repeat, is in my opinion the best way to approach the PS section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ondansetron Posted July 13, 2012 Report Share Posted July 13, 2012 If you're spending too much time reviewing prep books, it might be your problem. Start practising actual problems as much as possible. I found that excessively reviewing didn't help me a lot. But practising and then looking at explanations for why I got the answers wrong helped me think more critically and in the right places. At the same time I was also do calculations much faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gametime24 Posted July 14, 2012 Report Share Posted July 14, 2012 Hello, I find that physical sciences is my worst section. Does anyone have any helpful tips on how I can improve? Thanks! It's best for us to help if we know where in the section you are struggling, and how much you are struggling. Tips for improving from 5 are much different than improving from a 12, etc. Is it the physics or the chemistry mainly? Which concepts in them? What have you done to study so far? I'm not an mcat tutor or anything along those lines, but I have tutored chem and physics before and got a 14 in the PS when I wrote, part of that is definitely thanks to some of the ppl here, so I'm game to try and return the favor as much as I can! PM if you don't want to make your scores public or anything like that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ondansetron Posted July 14, 2012 Report Share Posted July 14, 2012 It's best for us to help if we know where in the section you are struggling, and how much you are struggling. Tips for improving from 5 are much different than improving from a 12, etc. Is it the physics or the chemistry mainly? Which concepts in them? What have you done to study so far? I'm not an mcat tutor or anything along those lines, but I have tutored chem and physics before and got a 14 in the PS when I wrote, part of that is definitely thanks to some of the ppl here, so I'm game to try and return the favor as much as I can! PM if you don't want to make your scores public or anything like that! do you have any general tips? what prep books did you use? what material did you use to practice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBookWorm Posted July 14, 2012 Report Share Posted July 14, 2012 Are there any specific areas of PS you are having difficulty with? Are you having problem with understanding concepts or are you good with understanding but face problems when you actually do a test or sample passages? One thing that helped me a lot was that I focused on chemistry and physics separately. When I write a test, I do all chemistry passages and questions first and then move on to physics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gametime24 Posted July 14, 2012 Report Share Posted July 14, 2012 do you have any general tips? what prep books did you use? what material did you use to practice? General tips aren't really that useful and there are loads of them already around this forum. Study hard, make sure you know the concepts, don't forget your equations, be careful with you math (if you're not good at it, write it out and make sure you get it right so you don't waste points), read the passage critically, do LOTS of practice tests and go over EVERY question you got wrong to make sure you understand the concept behind it, how it was applied, and where you went wrong. Analyze your tests and see what topics are truly giving you issues (it's easiest to do this effectively after you have done 3ish tests because then you have some decent amount of info to go off of). All of that should apply to everyone, past that, if you know you are struggling with an area or something, feel free to post and I will try to help out as best as I can. Or pm, either works for me. OP, if you do a test and find you really struggled with one of the passages (as long as its from EK books or AAMC practice tests), you can feel free to message me and I will try and go through it with you to offer some more specific help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gametime24 Posted July 14, 2012 Report Share Posted July 14, 2012 Are there any specific areas of PS you are having difficulty with? Are you having problem with understanding concepts or are you good with understanding but face problems when you actually do a test or sample passages? One thing that helped me a lot was that I focused on chemistry and physics separately. When I write a test, I do all chemistry passages and questions first and then move on to physics. ^^ Good advice. I didn't separate the sections, but you definitely need to identify exactly where your troubles are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medhopeful64 Posted July 17, 2012 Report Share Posted July 17, 2012 Hello, I find that physical sciences is my worst section. Does anyone have any helpful tips on how I can improve? Thanks! Understanding units is really helpful for physics. Understand what a Volt is, what Newtons are (in terms of units), etc. It'll really help on you on your MCAT, because more often than not they won't ask you to calculate the actual value, rather, they'll ask how you to solve for a new parameter based on the equations given in the passage. If you're good with units, you won't have too much trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jessikario Posted July 18, 2012 Report Share Posted July 18, 2012 You can try some physical science courses, http://www.gccaz.edu/appliedscience/mainweb/A_S.Courseinfo.PHS.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Up2Date Posted July 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 19, 2012 Thanks everyone! I'm at an 8-9 range and I'm trying to go up to a 10-11 range. I'm mostly struggling with physics. Fluids is such a difficult chapter and so are electricity and magnetism as well as lights and optics. For chemistry, I have difficulty applying concepts to solutions problems. I feel like I understand the concepts, but when it's time to apply them, I somehow get a lot of questions wrong. Thank you for all your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gametime24 Posted July 19, 2012 Report Share Posted July 19, 2012 Thanks everyone! I'm at an 8-9 range and I'm trying to go up to a 10-11 range. I'm mostly struggling with physics. Fluids is such a difficult chapter and so are electricity and magnetism as well as lights and optics. For chemistry, I have difficulty applying concepts to solutions problems. I feel like I understand the concepts, but when it's time to apply them, I somehow get a lot of questions wrong. Thank you for all your help! If you'd like I could take a look over those chapters and find some practice passages from some of the old aamc tests that cover them and we could get on skype together and try working through a few of them to help you out? Sometimes it can be useful to see how someone else is applying the concepts to the problems and hopefully it will help you get into that 10-11 range! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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