In this blog post I am summarizing my own experience of taking the MCAT (twice) and listing resources I personally found useful. Since everyone’s studying strategy is different, please take my advice with a grain of salt. If you have any questions, please ask away via email or instagram dm (@peppermint.adventures)!
Personal experience:
I wrote the MCAT twice. My first attempt was during the summer of my second year of undergrad. I spent around 2 months (~9 weeks) preparing, during which I was working full time, volunteering, and working on other personal projects. Looking back, I should not have written the MCAT then because I barely had time to study for it. My mark was not good enough to make the cut-off for some schools, so I decided to write it again. My second attempt was during the summer of my third year, and this time I had around 3 months to prepare. Aside from studying for the MCAT, I was volunteering at a few places but spent most of my time studying. I also changed my studying strategy – instead of doing lots of practice right away, I went back to review all of the material before doing practice passages/exams. My MCAT score improved by quite a large margin between my first and second tries, which I think is mostly due to the fact that I was not able to focus on studying in my first try.
Pro-tips for writing the MCAT:
1. Register early!!!!!!!! The spots fill up really fast, especially the exam dates that are later in the summer, so if you want to have more time for studying, you might want to register your exam as early as possible. AAMC releases their registration opening date, so look them up and keep them in mind when you are planning ahead.
2. Practice, practice, practice! The biggest change in terms of studying strategy when I was preparing the MCAT the second time was that I did a lot of full-length exam practices in the weeks leading up to the actual exam.
3. Get the foundations down before you practice!
4. Get used to the exam tools (highlighters, flag, etc.) to save yourself some time on the actual exam.
When to take the MCAT:
You can take it at any time that works for you, but keep in mind that your score only lasts a certain number of years depending on the school you are applying. If you are in undergrad, the summers of second and third years are popular times, but first year is probably a little too early.
A quick review of resources I used:
1. The Princeton Review is very thorough at explaining concepts. I found their Science Workbook, which consists entirely of practice passages, really useful. Full-length practice exam was way more difficult than the actual MCAT, but they were good practice regardless.
2. ExamKracker is more concise at explaining concepts and much quicker to read. Practice questions are of similar difficulty to the real MCAT. I used their 101 Passages for CARS and found it really useful.
3. NextStep* is really useful for CARS practice and full-length practice exam (those are the only resources from NextStep I used). I personally struggled a lot with CARS, and I found their CARS workbook (which included 108 passages) really useful. Full-length exam difficulty was most similar to the real MCAT. I only used the full-lengths that were free. (*: I found out as I am writing this that it’s now called Blueprint MCAT)
4. Khan Academy was one of my most frequently used resources. Given a limited amount of time and being a visual learner, I found Khan Academy super useful. Since I don’t have a background in psychology & sociology, I learned most of the psyc/soc material from Khan Academy.
5. AAMC is another useful resource – I did their practice questions and full-length exams just to gauge for myself the difficulty of the real MCAT. I personally found that the practice I did were similar (and sometimes slightly easier) than the real MCAT. Another useful resource from the AAMC website was the exam content document, which can be found here: https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/article/whats-mcat-exam/. I used the list of topics in this document as a guide for my studying. For example, I first used it to check which concepts I already knew, which ones probably need some refreshing, and which ones I had to learn from scratch. Then, I tailored my content review accordingly.
6. Youtube is another go-to resource I used when I was confused about a concept despite reading it from textbooks or watching khan academy.
Lastly, to set a realistic goal of MCAT score for yourself, check out the admission requirements or admission stats of the school(s) you are applying to on their website(s). Remember that the MCAT is just one part of the application. Stress less, study more. Good luck!
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