MCAT Study Tips
Scheduling your studying
There are four sections of the MCAT:
1) Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems
2) Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems
3) Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior
4) Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills
The content on the MCAT may seem endless, but in truth it’s a mile-wide but only an inch deep. It is definitely important to know the content, however more important is knowing how to tackle the style of questions the AAMC asks, as well as developing the endurance to take on so many questions in one sitting. Thus, I believe practice problems and practice tests are more beneficial than simple content review.
Many students spend too much time reviewing content, whether that be watching videos or reading and re-reading prep books, but then barely do enough practice problems. I believe around equal time needs to be spent; if studying for 3 months, around 1.5 months of content review (with some light practice), and then 1.5 months of heavy practice. When in doubt, do more practice.
The trickiest part of studying is, well, the studying. As someone who was working 2 jobs, it was hard to incorporate time to study every day without going crazy. That’s why I gave myself more time to study, approximately 5 months rather than the standard 3. I started in November, and intend on taking the MCAT in March. I average around 2-4 hours of studying a day November/December, and then did 4-6 hours of studying daily in January-March, giving myself 8 hours on Sundays for my practice lengths. I gave myself every Saturday off.
COVID-19 Update: Unfortunately my test has been delayed for the foreseeable future. However, up until the cancellation, I scored strongly on my AAMC FL1-4. For me personally, I did the bulk of my content review last year, spending November and December going over the Khan Academy videos and doing some light reading of the Kaplan books, while supplementing with some Anki cards everyday. January, February, and March consisted of UWorld practice problems every single day, culminating in doing the four official AAMC Full-Lengths, the AAMC Sample Test, and 2 Kaplan Full-Lengths in February and March every weekend.
July 2021 Update: There have been several test cancellations due to social distancing guidelines at my testing facility. Despite this, I finally was able to take this exam successfully on July 22, 2021! It feels so good to be done with this!
Logging your errors
Here is a sample Error Log tracker you can use, made by the MCAT Bros Facebook group. This is EXTREMELY helpful, as it allows you to review mistakes you make whenever you get a question wrong on a practice exam. This helps you determine whether the error was due to not knowing the material (and thus you know what you need to learn), or whether you misread the question, or if you simply ran out of time and got frazzled.
The link included is just a template with some examples to get an idea of what to do. Make a copy of the Google Sheets (File –> Make a copy), and then fill this out for yourself as you do your practice!
Predicting your score from practice tests
Practice Exams Score Calculator
How is the MCAT scored? In each of the four sections, (Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems; Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems; Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior; Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills), you will receive a scaled score that is between 118 – 132. Thus, these scores are then combined from each of the sections, so you get a composite score of 472 – 528.
Obviously, scoring higher is better. However, you will find that a lot of the third party test prep material give you a much lower score than the official AAMC material (this is likely to trick students into thinking they need to pay money for a prep course). Don’t be too disheartened if your Kaplan practice scores are much lower than you expected, there’s a good chance that your scores will be severely deflated.
After taking a full-length exam, use this calculator to see what you’re predicted to score on an actual MCAT exam. This calculator includes predictions for the official AAMC full-lengths as well as the Kaplan exams.
Example activity log
Example Day-By-Day Activity Log
This activity log was generously shared by Reddit user fVANILLA, and serves as an excellent example of how his daily studying routine went. He studied from May to August, for approximately 3.5 months, to ultimately score a 519 on the final exam.
Tracking your exact, daily progress isn’t something that’s necessary (I did not do this), but it can no doubt be helpful. If you would like to do something similar, make a copy of the Google Sheet (File –> Make a copy), clear out his writing, and fill it out for yourself to track your daily studying!
There are four sections of the MCAT:
1) Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems
2) Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems
3) Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior
4) Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills
The content on the MCAT may seem endless, but in truth it’s a mile-wide but only an inch deep. It is definitely important to know the content, however more important is knowing how to tackle the style of questions the AAMC asks, as well as developing the endurance to take on so many questions in one sitting. Thus, I believe practice problems and practice tests are more beneficial than simple content review.
Many students spend too much time reviewing content, whether that be watching videos or reading and re-reading prep books, but then barely do enough practice problems. I believe around equal time needs to be spent; if studying for 3 months, around 1.5 months of content review (with some light practice), and then 1.5 months of heavy practice. When in doubt, do more practice.
The trickiest part of studying is, well, the studying. As someone who was working 2 jobs, it was hard to incorporate time to study every day without going crazy. That’s why I gave myself more time to study, approximately 5 months rather than the standard 3. I started in November, and intend on taking the MCAT in March. I average around 2-4 hours of studying a day November/December, and then did 4-6 hours of studying daily in January-March, giving myself 8 hours on Sundays for my practice lengths. I gave myself every Saturday off.
COVID-19 Update: Unfortunately my test has been delayed for the foreseeable future. However, up until the cancellation, I scored strongly on my AAMC FL1-4. For me personally, I did the bulk of my content review last year, spending November and December going over the Khan Academy videos and doing some light reading of the Kaplan books, while supplementing with some Anki cards everyday. January, February, and March consisted of UWorld practice problems every single day, culminating in doing the four official AAMC Full-Lengths, the AAMC Sample Test, and 2 Kaplan Full-Lengths in February and March every weekend.
July 2021 Update: There have been several test cancellations due to social distancing guidelines at my testing facility. Despite this, I finally was able to take this exam successfully on July 22, 2021! It feels so good to be done with this!
Here is a sample Error Log tracker you can use, made by the MCAT Bros Facebook group. This is EXTREMELY helpful, as it allows you to review mistakes you make whenever you get a question wrong on a practice exam. This helps you determine whether the error was due to not knowing the material (and thus you know what you need to learn), or whether you misread the question, or if you simply ran out of time and got frazzled.
The link included is just a template with some examples to get an idea of what to do. Make a copy of the Google Sheets (File –> Make a copy), and then fill this out for yourself as you do your practice!
Practice Exams Score Calculator
How is the MCAT scored? In each of the four sections, (Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems; Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems; Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior; Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills), you will receive a scaled score that is between 118 – 132. Thus, these scores are then combined from each of the sections, so you get a composite score of 472 – 528.
Obviously, scoring higher is better. However, you will find that a lot of the third party test prep material give you a much lower score than the official AAMC material (this is likely to trick students into thinking they need to pay money for a prep course). Don’t be too disheartened if your Kaplan practice scores are much lower than you expected, there’s a good chance that your scores will be severely deflated.
After taking a full-length exam, use this calculator to see what you’re predicted to score on an actual MCAT exam. This calculator includes predictions for the official AAMC full-lengths as well as the Kaplan exams.
Example Day-By-Day Activity Log
This activity log was generously shared by Reddit user fVANILLA, and serves as an excellent example of how his daily studying routine went. He studied from May to August, for approximately 3.5 months, to ultimately score a 519 on the final exam.
Tracking your exact, daily progress isn’t something that’s necessary (I did not do this), but it can no doubt be helpful. If you would like to do something similar, make a copy of the Google Sheet (File –> Make a copy), clear out his writing, and fill it out for yourself to track your daily studying!
Example 3-month study schedule:
Here’s an example of a comprehensive 3-month schedule, provided by Reddit user u/ChemMed to share. As you can see, the first half primarily consists of content review. As the weeks go on, the schedule shifts from pure content review –> content review and practice problems –> in-depth practice problems and practice exams.
This is an example of how your schedule should look for the most part; mostly content review in the beginning, and then transitioning to more and more practice problems. By the time you get to doing full-lengths, you should be familiar with the majority of the content.
After doing a practice exam or a set of practice problems, it is key to look over every wrong answer, and thoughtfully reflect and analyze WHY it was wrong. This is probably the most vital step you could do to ensure success! Going over your wrong answers will reveal whether you need more help in answering certain styles of questions, or show if you rushed and made a silly mistake and thus have to be more careful, or simply could show a gap in knowledge. The Error Log Tracker posted above should be used extensively, to record which questions you get wrong and why you got them wrong.