Guest gunner Posted May 18, 2005 Report Share Posted May 18, 2005 Greetings All: I'm in engineering (related to computers) so I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of the biology section of the MCAT. I have read in many posts of this forum that "first-year college texts" are indispensable references for fighting the MCAT war, so I'm wondering what are the MCAT veteran's picks for textbooks related to the MCAT biology. For physiology I already know that Guyton And Hall's Medical Physiology and Silverthorn's Human PHysiology are good texts, but that's only one part of biology. Any recommendations for the rest of biology? What about organic chemistry? Regards, Gunner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest peachy Posted May 18, 2005 Report Share Posted May 18, 2005 I suggest taking a practice test first to see how you do - you may find that you do better than you expect! There are free tests online (eg TPR or Kaplan sites). Also, I'd suggest using MCAT prep books (eg TPR or Kaplan) rather than regular textbooks, personally, because reading real textbooks will take tons of time and have far more depth than you need. For what it's worth, my undergrad was in CS/Math and I did well enough for the Ontario schools on the MCAT biological science section (11) with nothing but the TPR books, which I didn't really look at anyways. YMMV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gunner Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 Greetings Peachy: Hmmm...it's a comfort to know that this can be done. Thank you for your response. Regards, gunner Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi gunner, I'm an EE who wrote the MCAT twice. The first time I got an 8 on BS, then at the following August sitting I got an 11. The difference between the two was taking cell bio and genetics courses over the summer. I don't have any specific textbook recommendations, just wanted to share my experience. For me it wasn't really the details of the course material and texts that made a difference, as much as getting familiar with the "language" of biology. So when I (hypothetically - it's been too long for me to remember details) came across a passage that mentioned "tyrosine kinase", in April I spent too much time thinking "hmm, I wonder if those words are important...", while in August I could immediately think "ok, we're talking about signalling here". The MCAT is a test of problem-solving more than anything else, so my advice is don't get hung up on learning every last detail from whatever text you choose. Know the basic vocabularly and write a bunch of practice tests under the same conditions you'll face during the actual test and you should do fine. Cheers, pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) iD8DBQFCjTLL/HNgbK3bC2wRAjxFAJ9gz5iJAyAT43EHtBcbojzG0LnsoACgn2/4 mE39aZ73WD8QIkWLVmsaQkQ= =Bzm6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fizzicyst Posted May 20, 2005 Report Share Posted May 20, 2005 My undergrad was in engineering physics and the last time I took bio was grade 10 so I was in a similar situation. I skimmed "Biology" by Campbell and Reece. I was planning to take bio over the summer after I wrote the MCAT and I knew that this was the text for the course. I think having the book helped.. although probably not as much as the Kaplan course. I actually did better in BS than PS... still sort of ashamed about that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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