How to study for the MCAT (and do well) – Part 1

Khalil: You’re welcome! I took a classroom course with Kaplan.

Kirin: The photos usually come from Creative Commons !

Martha: I don’t mind at all! My score breakdown was 13-11-13.

Maksim: 40 hours/week for 3 months before your test date. However, those are just recommendations, and it really depends on you and your situation. As for myself, I tried to study full-time from the start of June to the end of July, took two weeks off work, and wrote the test in mid-August.

I understand how NSERC can eat up a lot of your study time (been there, done that!). It’s great that you are taking a month off to study. However, having to cram the entire MCAT in a month can be overwhelming, especially if the test date is at the end of that month. I would suggest that you prevent panic and burnout by studying part-time (e.g. full-time on weekends) from now till that month. I know that sucks, but it’s a lot better to lose just one summer than to have to lose two!

Z: I’m sorry to hear that you are having difficulty with Verbal. Like I said in my post, a lot of students struggle with this section too, so you’re not alone!

I can definitely offer some tips! Do a lot of practice tests: try for at least one timed test per day, score yourself, and go over every answer – right or wrong. (You can get a lot of practice tests from ExamKrackers or other books. I know that Kaplan also offers a lot of practice tests.) You should aim to spend more time reviewing your corrected answers than the 60 minutes it takes you to do the test. It also helps to read a lot on your spare time. I don’t mean Harry Potter or the newspaper here. (The newspaper is rarely useful because even Canada’s National Post writes at only a grade 8 level.) Pick up some reading materials like the Economist, literary reviews, scientific articles, or philosophy pieces. Pick a section with an appropriate length, and read it attentively in 4 minutes, while asking yourself, what is the author’s point? What are some possible questions that can be asked from this passage?, etc. Lastly, since you are taking Kaplan, I would suggest that you try to use their strategy too. It is quite difficult to pick up a strategy and use it, but if done correctly, it definitely produces results. Hang in there with it!

How to remain focussed during the test? This is hard, because the content of the passages is often quite dry. Verbal Reasoning requires that you really understand the content too. Personally, when I first started doing my daily timed tests, I listened to music while doing it. I find that it helped me to be less bored, letting me stay on track more often. I also stuck to paper tests because I was able to take notes on the margins, circle keywords, etc. I know that on the computer-based test that this isn’t possible, but I still practiced initially on paper. I also did my practice tests earlier on in the day/after coffee when my brain was alert. Eventually, I moved on to doing computer tests with music, and then without music.

I hope that helps!

Anil: Sorry for the tardy reply! As for myself, I didn’t use a particular verbal “strategy” (unlike the ones taught my prep companies). All I did was a lot of practice to familiarize myself with the test format and to get my reading speed faster. I used the ExamKrackers 101 Passages in Verbal Reasoning book, Kaplan Verbal Reasoning workbook, all the Kaplan practice tests (I ended up only doing the verbal section for some of them), the AAMC practice tests, and finally, old books that my friends donated to me (Princeton Review mostly). Good luck on the MCAT!

Khalil: I think that the ExamKrackers and Kaplan books worked best for me. A lot of people recommended the EK 101 passages back when I wrote the test, so I decided that it wouldn’t hurt. I found that the passages and questions in EK 101 focussed more on details and that the question style was different from what I was used to. I do recommend giving EK a try!

As for how to do 7 passages in 60 minutes – yes I was often able to finish on-time. I would time myself vigorously and only allow myself 8 minutes per passage. If I wasn’t done a passage within the 8 minutes, I had to move onto the next. At the end, there is at least an extra 4 minutes (60 – 8 x 7 = 4), so in that time, I go back and guess/quickly fill in the answers that I wasn’t able to get. In order to finish passages in 8 minutes, I would spend around 3 minutes reading the passage and at the same time, underlining anything important in the passage. I would spend the rest of the time (5 minutes), answering the questions. I felt that it was important to spend more time on the questions because the points are in the questions, not the passage. I would learn not to reread the passage and train myself to be able to answer the question based on my one-time pass of the passage. Proper underlining was a skill that I had to master too – as I read the passage, I’d try to predict what questions would be asked, and underline the “answers”. I’d underline the main argument, any anti-arguments, purpose of paragraphs, author opinions, important details. Those helped a lot with not having to go back to the passage and saving time.

I’ve heard of a strategy taught by a prep company where students are encouraged to spend most of their time on 6 passages and really try to get all the answers correct from those 6. They then skim/guess the answers for the 7th passage. Their rationale is that if you spend more time on 6 passages rather than speeding through all 7, you can get more answers correct. Getting 3/4 of the questions wrong in passage 7 will only bring your score down so much. Personally, I’m not a big fan of this “skip a passage” strategy, because it seems like you’ve already given up before you started. But if you are hitting good scores with just finishing 6 passages, it might be something you want to look into.

Sara: That is a little worrisome how your score has not really improved even though you have been studying fairly intensely for the past 4 months. Don’t despair though – you can find out why your score hasn’t really increased and work on it. What prep materials/company did you use? How are you studying? Also, what was your baseline score and what is your target score?

I’ve talked with Josh about the “implications” of re-taking the MCAT. Our views differ on this. Canadian medical schools usually look at your best score, but all test scores are available to them. I feel that it may hurt your application to show that you’ve taken the MCAT more than once – even though officially, there is no penalty for writing the MCAT more than once. However, no one really knows, and that’s just my speculation. I have a few friends who felt that they weren’t ready for the test even after a summer of studying, and decided to go ahead and write the MCAT for the experience, but voided the test afterwards (there is a screen at the very end of the test to ask if you want to void). They then rewrote the MCAT the next summer.

Josh, on the other hand, thinks that Canadian medical schools don’t care at about having a previous score on record and will only use the highest score for cutoffs. Based on his view, I think that he would recommend that you go ahead and write the MCAT for the experience. (Josh can correct me on this). If your score is good enough for medical school applications, then you would be able to submit an application this year, which is a big bonus.

I am not sure about how American medical schools treat the MCAT, but I believe that they might average or seriously consider all your test attempt scores. Don’t quote me on this – but it’s worthwhile figuring out if you are thinking of applying to the States.

Hope this helps!