When to take the MCAT

[admin]

Wow, you don't like to ask easy questions!

I did review your GS History and you are in striking distance of a 36. And if you look at the student experiences on GS tests compared to the AAMC, students do somewhat better on AAMC tests as a rule. In other words, you seem to be in a good position.

Before continuing, I must caution anyone about predicting scores. Especially with the new format, 2 tough passages on subjects that may have been unexpected for a particular student can have a major effect on scaled scores.

Given that, the bottom line in deciding if you are ready to meet your objectives would be to do AAMC Practice Test 10 and evaluate your performance. Have you done this already? When and how did you perform?

For most medical schools, you will be fine to submit scores by August but because of rolling admissions, that would not be ideal. However, list 4 medical schools: 2 where you think your application would be very competitive and 2 which are your "dream" schools. Call or email them today and ask straight up if it would have any effect on admissions to their program.

General advice: take very, very brief notes on everything you have learned from your exam experience (AAMC + Gold Standard): equations, concepts, things you missed when interpreting an experiment/graph/table or VR passage. In all, it should just constitute a few pages (not more than 5; after all, you are not going to write F=ma or PV=nRT because for you, by this point, that information is hard wired). Never practice without reviewing those notes first. Go over those notes multiple times daily leading up to the real test.

Ideally, your MCAT Prep is about to peak so you can get your 35+ and pack for Argentina.

[admin]

Well, you are clearly on the right track. The information from the medical school also is a relief since it takes that pressure off of you. Unfortunately, Argentina does not seem likely. Even though you have scored an 8 on the real thing for VR and another today, it's too risky. Your overall score is very good, but you already know that you can do better and you don't want to take the MCAT thinking that it is possible that you might score below 8 in a section.

Patience, work on strategy, a bit of leisure reading and lots of practice will improve your verbal score. If you can do that and get one more point out of biology, you'll have a great chance of getting into one of your dream schools.

By the way, here is some Verbal Reasoning advice that I gave to a couple of students: http://www.mcat-prep.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=191

[admin]

There are those who believe that it takes years of reading such material to have a major effect. And I do believe that "big readers" often score very high in VR without even trying nor practicing. However, for those who are just trying to bring up the VR score by a couple of points, spending some "free" time reading can help with improvement. It will also help balance your study time as well as give you important practice in developing critical thinking and understanding.

In other words, schedule some reading time daily (as your "break"!). Read actively (as though you need to summarize the article. Debate oriented articles are best. Always distinguish between supported and unsupported claims.

Of course, you don't need to read all of the following, just choose your weapon!

Journals/magazines:

Best: The Economist
Others:
Science or Scientific American
The New England Journal of Medicine
The Wall Street Journal
The Atlantic
Psychology Today (a bit too much pop culture but there are some humanities/psych articles that are useful)

Papers:

Best: New York Times

Other options: USA Today (www.usatoday.com), Washington Post

Be patient with your progress. VR is the slowest section to improve your score.

[admin]

No better time than the present!

It may be a traumatic experience for you, however, I strongly recommend that you click on the link on the Login Home Page on www.mcat-prep.com or go straight to www.e-mcat.com and sign up for the AAMC's free MCAT Practice Test 3R (CBT). Do the whole test. You will not be happy with your score but, afterwards, look over your errors.

Sometimes, there will be things that you simply don't have the knowledge yet. But you have to understand the benefits: (1) it's the AAMC: they make the real thing; (2) it will help you restrict your preparation; alot of students will study too much material that is not relevant to the MCAT (building a little "MCAT library" at home!); but if you get a little taste of the real thing, you will have more confidence in the way you are currently preparing for the test; and (3) you will be able to mark your progress.

Afterwards, you should try to do about one practice test per week (Gold Standard MCAT CBTs or from the AAMC). Leave AAMC Test 10 until about 2 weeks before the real exam.

Again, don't worry about your first score, it's the last score that counts!

[admin]

Yes, AAMC CBT 10 is a reliable predictor. You are definitely on the right track and your timing is good in terms of peak performance being 2 weeks away.

Some warnings though: (1) preparing for the MCAT has a growth curve like the stock market so ups and downs are inevitable but if you are preparing efficiently, your score should go up over time; (2) the bell curve for any one sitting of the MCAT (especially in the summer when everyone has more study time) may shift a little bit so that the same raw score may translate into a slightly lower scaled score.

And finally, in my last year of premed before my finals, I got a letter of acceptance from med-school and went out for supper at a Chinese restaurant to celebrate with friends. I thought I would just coast for the rest of the year but my fortunate cookie read: "Increase your exertion to the end." Rats! Anyways, I give you the same advice!


PS if you want to see MCAT scores at the institutions which interest you: www.mcattestscores.com/usmedicalschoolsmcatscoresGPA.html

[admin]

Reports from students who have taken the new MCAT from the end of January to just recently is that AAMC tests 8, 9 and 10 are the closest to the real thing with 10 being the best of the bunch (keeping in mind the caveats that I previously mentioned).

Of course, as long as you practice with good quality practice materials (including test 7), and that you pour over the answers so that you learn from your mistakes and improve pattern recognition, then as I'm sure you already know, there is great value to practice.

You have likely also already heard but the following is how some students have assessed Kaplan's tests: BS is reasonably representative, PS is too much based on calculations and memory as compared to the real thing.

If you do strong post exam reviews, take Gold notes (just the top level concepts/patterns or more rarely missing knowledge) and then look over your notes prior to each new test, you can hit your target.

[admin]

In terms of your morning sessions, you may want to do VR and bio on alternating days. If you are practicing for a 400 m championship run then you should not practice only running 100 m at a time. That is especially important for VR where you need to keep up your concentration and active reading for 7 passages at a time. Doing 3 passages in the morning does not seem ideal.

One other thing, based on studies, ideally you would replicate exam conditions as much as possible to obtain your ideal score. VR is your biggeest challenge. If your confirmed date for the MCAT is in the morning, then you are fine. But if it is in the afternoon, then you should only practice your 7 passages at a time in the afternoon. The dynamics will be different and you must learn to optimize your performance. (PS I noticed that you are doing VR in the morning so you're OK!)

Clearly, doing MCAT CBTs is better than paper tests but I understand that you already are doing the 10 GS tests and the AAMC tests so there really aren't any other online choices which are available separately.

I'm assuming that your leisure reading is intended to help you raise your VR score. Thus you are using appropriate reading material and, very importantly, you are always reading actively.

Be sure that you have tried different techniques for VR so that you are sure that the one you are using will optimize your score.

Regarding Bio: seriously assess whether or not going into textbooks has any impact on improving your BS score. Given how you have been doing, are your mistakes really about knowledge or mostly application/strategy/mistakes in interpreting data? Going into textbooks at this point does not sound efficient. Don't fill your mind with unnecessary facts. You must prove to yourself that going into those books actually improved your score, otherwise, focus on practice/pattern recognition/interpreting experiments.

Don't stop going to the gym! Great idea!

The weekend schedule sounds great. Don't forget to develop your personal "Gold Notes" and to review them before each test including the real one.

Keep up the good work!

[admin]

Side note: please don't memorize structures of amino acids! You don't even need to memorize any names (expect for, perhaps, glycine because it's the smallest and R=H so it's the only one that is not chiral and the cystine/cysteine disulfide bond arrangement). You must understand pI, zwitterion, amphoteric, the consequence of the R group (hydrophobic, acidic, basic, hydrophilic), amide/peptide bonds, protein structure.

OK, back to the big picture.

Your schedule (# hours per day and # total weeks to prep) depends on the GPA you had in the basic sciences and any weaknesses which may be present in your pre-MCAT knowledge/experience. Before you even begin, you need to do one AAMC full length test. It might hurt a bit but it is a critical first step. (3R is free and you can get the link for your Members home page here on MCAT-prep.com)

Why?

Trust. Why should you trust me when I say don't memorize the names of the 20 alpha amino acids? What about those MCAT books that your 3rd cousin's ex-girlfriend lent you which list all 20 aa's with their pKa values and chemical structures? That's why you need to taste the real thing. No rumours, no second hand information. When you review your mistakes, take note of deficits in knowledge rather than deficits in strategy or understanding of the "way the question was asked."

The schedule that you iterated sounds reasonable but we will only know for sure if you are on target or if you need to ratchet up the intensity depending on your "diagnostic" test.

Don't worry about the score! It's only the one on August 9th that will count!

[admin]

Yes, the best plan is to maintain accuracy and improve speed with time, practice.

Depending on time available and by how much you still need to improve, you could consider a program for speed reading and comprehension which you can get on campus (try the career center or ask your premed advisor, etc) or find an online resource by doing a Google search or try www.MCATverbalreasoning.com which is integrated with this website.

Before purchasing a speed reading program, consider reading the following first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading