How to study for the MCAT: 12 powerful learning tips

If you are interested in going to medical school and becoming a doctor, you accept probably heard of the MCAT. The MCAT, or Medical Higher Admission Exam, is a standardized test that many prospective medical students have.  The test is computer-based and a required component of the medical school admissions process.

According to the Princeton Review, moving from an MCAT score of 500 to one of 510 can triple your credence rate. However, studying for the MCAT can be daunting. Students are tested on problem-solving, critical thinking, written analysis and scientific knowledge. There is a lot to learn. You volition demand a dedicated, efficient report schedule to do well on the test.

We accept selected the 12 all-time study tips to make studying for the MCAT manageable and constructive.

1. Understand all the exam components

Before you tin begin to grasp what you volition need to study and how much fourth dimension y'all will need to devote to studying, you need to understand the MCAT. Yous demand to know what will exist covered and what depth of cognition you will exist expected to have in each topic area. One time y'all know what the test will look like, y'all can set and outset your study schedule.

The MCAT is a seven.5-hour  exam that covers iv major sections:

i. Biological and biochemical foundations of living systems

  • basic biology
  • organic chemistry
  • basic inorganic chemical science
  • bones biochemistry

2. Chemic and physical foundations of biological systems;

  • bones biochemistry
  • basic biological science
  • basic general chemical science
  • basic organic chemical science
  • basic physics

3. Psychological, social, and biological foundations of behavior;

  • Psychological, social, and biological foundations of beliefs;
  • introductory psychology
  • introductory sociology
  • introductory biological science

iv. Critical analysis and reasoning skills;

  • similar to standard reading comprehension tests, reading samples come up from a variety of disciplines

All questions are multiple-choice. For each of the scientific sections, you are given 76 minutes to answer 48 questions. Yous are given 81 minutes to answer 48 questions during the disquisitional thinking and reasoning section. Focus your research on figuring out what topic areas will be covered and what the questions volition look similar.

Likewise, enquiry the specifics of the exam process such as where you will accept it, when you volition be allowed breaks, and what you can bring.

*Note: COVID-19 has affected the length of the test. The break period for the MCAT as administered betwixt May 29, 2020 and December 31, 2020, has been shortened to 30 minutes total. This has changed the full testing time from 7.5 hours to v.75 hours. The change is designed to squeeze in three tests per day in social club to make upward missed testing dates due to COVID-19.

The number of tested questions will remain the same. Prepare in advance for this reduced break time and get used to spending more active time thinking through MCAT questions during your report period.

Knowing what the examination process will look like volition help you prepare yourself to function at your acme condition during the actual exam.

Before going into your MCAT test, simulate your test as precisely equally possible, downward to the exact timing:

  • Wake up at the time y'all will demand to on test day in order to bulldoze to the testing eye.
  • Start the false exam at the same fourth dimension your real exam will start.
  • Do a exercise test with the exact number of questions needed for each section and take your breaks.
  • On your breaks, eat the snacks that you lot will bring with you on examination solar day.

The more exact your simulation, the less daunting the 24-hour interval will feel.

2. Take a do test to determine what you need to study

The next step in preparing for the process of studying for the MCAT is to find your strengths and weaknesses to identify the areas you lot will need to focus on. The MCAT covers a vast amount of data and you have limited fourth dimension to study. If you are looking to score in the peak percentile, you will demand to continuously review content until test day arrives.

Take a full-length practice test earlier y'all begin studying. Treat the practice examination every bit if it were the real test, limit distractions, and interruptions.

Your study program should cover every topic on the test and you should aim to truly learn the material rather than just memorizing formulas. The MCAT does not just just test how well you memorize, information technology tests your ability to apply the material and will weed out the people who cannot just merely regurgitate formulas.

  • You can use the list from tip #1 to mark the areas that you need to focus on. Subsequently your do test, note the subject areas that y'all had trouble with. After the examination, highlight these areas to create a list of focus areas to build your study schedule around. For instance, if you need to focus on basic organic and inorganic chemical science, basic physics and introductory psychology, so the first four weeks of your report schedule might look like this:

Identifying your areas of weakness with a practice test will assistance you focus your fourth dimension and free energy where you need it most. During your dedicated study period, you should exist studying those weak topics more than often in order to acquire and reinforce those areas.

iii. Employ costless and low-cost online report guides and prep tests

You demand to brand use of every resource you can to make certain that you are getting the most out of your studying and are equally prepared equally possible to do well on your MCAT. There are numerous free and low-cost resources that are available through Quizlet and many other sources. Brand sure you lot use every tool at your disposal.

Finding out what resources are available is as simple as an cyberspace search ranging in cost from free to thousands of dollars. Quizlet provides numerous resource to assistance you prepare for your MCAT from practice tests to report guides, for example:

Similar this physics guide:

Or this biochemistry study guide:

You can also detect resources using a bones Google search, but Quizlet volition link yous directly to preparational resource. Your university also likely has resource available to you, or can at least directly you to valuable resources.

Hit upwardly your friends or classmates that have already taken the MCAT, every bit they may take MCAT prep resources that they no longer need and may be willing to office with them for gratis or at a reduced toll. It might accept a little more time, but with some persistence you should be able to source the written report items you need without shelling out big bucks.

4. Brand a study schedule six months alee of taking your MCAT

You lot wouldn't embark on a road trip without a map, correct? Then don't embark on one of the most of import tests of your life without a plan.

A personalized report plan is incredibly important. It will serve as a checklist of how efficiently y'all are studying.

Every pupil's study plan volition be different. A i-size-fits-all study plan does non be for MCAT prep. One educatee may be able to dedicate ii directly months to study without needing to work and can score well. Just another may need to work part- or full-time, thus having to spread studying out over six months to cover the content well enough for success.

Y'all demand to expect to spend 300+ hours studying for the MCAT. Ideally, you need to take the MCAT practice exam and build your study schedule six months before yous plan to take the exam.

Creating a report schedule right abroad and sticking to it volition assist you stay on track. But creating the program volition probable take y'all several hours. It's worth the attempt.

A true, report programme will become down to the very minute details of what y'all are expecting to study and should include actively learning the material multiple times over your study menstruum. Prepare your exam date and create your study programme backward from that examination date.

Then, ready aside a item time each day, preferably when yous are at your peak for mental activity and brand that a priority for the day.

Even if y'all aren't at peak concentration or don't have as much time as y'all planned on a particular day, withal get your study time in. Something is better than cipher.

Follow these steps to build your 6-calendar month study schedule:

  1. Schedule your test date
  2. Determine how much time y'all are able to dedicate to MCAT examination prep each week
  3. You will want to have your study period fall into a fourth dimension in your life when you are less decorated to focus on MCAT prep. You may want to take into account the following as possible distractions/prior commitments. (Classes, studying time, lab work, holidays, work, etc)
  4. Build your study plan and stick to it. If you lot want to take the MCAT in two months, you will be studying daily, probable for several hours each day.
  5. Try to written report at the same time every twenty-four hour period
  6. Stick to your written report plan. If you autumn behind, use your strength areas to make up fourth dimension by spending less time studying them; withal, practise non completely ignore them, yous want to keep those areas every bit strengths for the actual exam twenty-four hours.

Having a study schedule will assist you avoid procrastination by breaking the material into manageable chunks that you tin can have 1 day or one week at a time.

five. Passive vs. active learning

Passive learning is reading material; however, you do not truly wrestle with the material and button yourself to fully empathize the cloth. An active learning approach is a more than challenging way to report, but y'all volition truly acquire the fabric rather than forcing yourself to memorize endless details.

If y'all take infinite and some extra coin, buy a whiteboard panel from your local hardware store and attach it to a wall in your room. This will requite you a identify to write and work through ideas that yous would otherwise be learning from the book.

View study set

For instance, instead of looking and trying to memorize the Kreb's cycle for the 10th fourth dimension, stand at your whiteboard and draw information technology out completely with step and byproduct. This is an case of active learning and will prove to be much more than memorable when y'all get the next question on what byproduct is built upwards when a role of the Kreb's cycle is affected.

6.  Take a practice MCAT test regularly through your study flow

If you have the power to take a full-length practice exam every few weeks, this should help reinforce that your study schedule is improving your ability to reason through the MCAT questions and arriving at the correct reply. If you are not showing comeback in the same areas, consider switching studying methods.

You can find full-length practice exams on AAMC for $35 per test. These are official questions, which accept been used on previous versions of the MCAT. If you can afford these tests, you can spread the four tests throughout your defended study catamenia to make sure yous are improving, and hopefully budgeted your score goal. This also will increment the number of questions you lot run into and volition help ready you lot for the real test day.

When you study, you will naturally learn more, but y'all may not learn everything at the aforementioned rate. Re-testing often volition help y'all figure out what you are learning more than easily and what is more hard for you. Retesting often will also help you go comfy with the procedure of taking the MCAT. This will help you focus on the test, and not your anxiety.

vii.  Report one or two hours every day for the starting time four or v months

Studying one topic for six hours every day takes a great deal of mental and physical energy and is not easily sustainable. If yous do not have the time or the mental energy to do this, you lot volition want to give yourself fifty-fifty longer than six months to study.

In this instance, begin your MCAT study routine, nine to 12 months before you plan to accept the exam. As previously recommended, you should set aside dedicated written report time at the aforementioned time each day and make studying for your MCAT a non-negotiable priority. Have on a drib-everything-and-read mentality.

viii.  Make studying your total-time job for the last one or 2 months

While nosotros don't recommend studying a single topic for 6 hours a day, when it comes to the MCAT, at that place's no way around an immersive, concerted report approach during the last stretch before the exam. There's simply too much cloth to comprehend. Y'all will need to immerse yourself in the fabric for a period of fourth dimension in lodge to acquire everything you need to know to do well on the MCAT.

Brainstorm immersive studying betwixt one and iii months before your MCAT exam, depending upon how much you take left to larn at the three-calendar month indicate.  If yous tin manage it, it's best to schedule your MCAT just earlier fallr so you tin have the summer to written report without the lark of coursework.

During immersion studying you will desire to study for 6-eight hours each day. Studying for the MCAT will go your total-fourth dimension job.

Immersion studying is necessary non only to learn all the information you need to know but also because information technology volition get you lot in a mindset focused exclusively on the MCAT.

9. Use interleaved studying

You need to learn a lot of information efficiently, but you lot also need to learn it well. This ways non only memorizing the data, but agreement how it all relates.

Interleaving is a practise of interweaving the topics you are studying, shifting which sets of information y'all study back to back. When you process information – especially similar, cumulative, or interrelated information, in a particular guild your mind forms ordered connections between these topics. The process of interleaving creates a web of information rather than a line, facilitating your mind's power to see the interconnections between diverse topics.

To reap the benefits of interleaving, look at your study plan and shift the social club in which you study each area over the course of a month. So shift the order in which you report concepts inside the surface area over the class of a week.

10. Questions, questions, questions

Practice makes perfect, and that is true likewise with practice questions. Multiple companies take their own question banks, which attempt to accurately simulate the existent MCAT questions. The more ways that you run across questions and textile, the faster and more than comfortable you will be in answering the questions. This also allows you to identify daily topics that you demand to refresh or relearn.

If yous have the means, get access to a defended MCAT question banking concern and employ the system daily in improver to your studying methods. Pick a target number of questions you lot would similar to do during your study period each day. Later answering the questions, go through the explanations and read nigh why the other answers were wrong.

You can larn equally much from the correct answer as from the other wrong choices. During your defended studying time, y'all should intersperse questions and studying content to break the monotony of reading.

The actual MCAT is a multiple-choice examination that to some degree can be made easier by seeing thousands of questions written in the same format. The goal is to see every type of question on every topic earlier your test twenty-four hour period. This will help you learn how to narrow downwards the choices to a couple of plausible options when faced with a tough question.

11. Utilize your "free fourth dimension" efficiently

Nosotros know, if you are studying for the MCAT you lot probably don't have whatever gratis time. But you can stillfind creative ways to study when you are doing normal daily activities. If you have a commute, consider using MCAT sound prep resource to larn the fabric passively. You tin absorb MCAT tips and tricks via audio resources such as podcasts or audio lectures while cooking or commuting.

There are multiple audio resources that have been produced over the final several years. The content and product of values of different products range quite dramatically then finding the 1 y'all interact with best is the ultimate goal.

The goal of defended written report time is to really immerse yourself within the content in multiple forms. You will be reading and studying from books, watching lectures, and answering practice questions. Adding audio sources can potentially gain y'all a couple of additional correct questions on the real exam and go from a good score to a swell 1.

12. Use the study techniques that have worked in the past

The major priority for the MCAT is to learn the data in the nearly efficient way possible. Assuming that your current written report habits work well, now is non the fourth dimension to work on developing new study habits. Now is the time to focus on tried and true methods of learning and retaining information.

Focus on study techniques that have proven successful for you in the past. This means existent studying, not cramming. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Do you study better alone, with a partner, or in a small group?
  • Where do yous study best - for example, at the library, at your kitchen table, at a cafe?
  • What time of solar day are you nigh focused (morning, afternoon, evening)?
  •  Do you learn best if you take notes during and/or later reading/studying?
  • Practice yous learn best using flashcards and/or concept webs and/or reading notes?

Figure out what works and go with it. Utilise it to your advantage to learning as much as you lot can, also every bit you can, as efficiently as you can.

Terminal Thoughts

When you go through MCAT material critically and force yourself to consider every angle of why the fabric makes sense, you are more prone to learn the cloth and somewhen be able to arrange your noesis to different questions that may prove up on the test. The MCAT truly is a examination of your ability to adapt rather than regurgitate facts and formulas. You demand to know the facts and formulas, but being flexible to answer questions is more than vital to your success on the test.

The MCAT is a huge attempt. Cramming is not an choice. The amount of information you demand to master, remember, and interconnect is daunting, but manageable, if yous begin early on and focus on using methods to make your studying both efficient and effective. These 12 tips on studying for the MCAT will set y'all upward for success, making sure that you lot are structuring your study schedule and habits around your main focus: acing the MCATs.

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