I didn't keep to a rigid timeline – my school and work schedule made that impossible. Instead, my goal was to study for at least 1-2 hours every day, more on days when I had the time. 2 hours was always enough time for me to go through old flashcards in Anki, create enough new flashcards to have some on board for the next day, and do a little bit of reading or practice passages. Here's an outline of the stages that I went through in preparing for the test. The text in [bracketed italics] is to give a rough timeline of how I did it, but none of this is set in stone; e.g., don't think that you need to start content review exactly nine months before the test in order to be adequately prepared.
1. [As early as possible] Sign up for free MCAT question of the day emails (there are four that I know of, from Kaplan, ExamKrackers, Next Step, and mcatquestion.com). Doing the questions of the day each morning is a quick, easy way to get in some practice, and helps to keep your eyes on your goal.
2. [As early as possible] Get Anki. If you're not familiar with the wonder that is Anki, your life is about to change forever. It's a really versatile spaced-repetition flashcard software; there's a free computer version, as well as a $25 app that is the best money that I've ever spent. I made Anki decks throughout my prereq courses and content review, and tried to do 100 review cards and 25-50 new cards every day. It adds up fast: by the time my MCAT date rolled around, there were more than 12,000 cards in my Anki decks. This is by far the best method that I found for consolidating and maintaining info for the exam. There's a lot out there about how to make smarter/higher-yield flashcards for Anki... I won't duplicate that here, but can post more about how I wrote my cards if people are curious.
Edit: several people have asked me if I'm sharing my Anki deck. I'm not planning on posting it, for two reasons:
1. The cards are pretty customized to my strengths and weaknesses, so there is a lot of detail on some topics, but other topics I skipped entirely.
2. The exercise of making your own flashcards is good review in and of itself -- you probably learn more by making them than by reviewing them.
In the long run, I think it is way more valuable to make your own deck!
3. [nine months before test] Start content review. I started studying with PR's MCAT 2015 prep books when they came out in August – reading a chapter a week during the term, a chapter a day during school breaks. My process was:
- Read the chapter, taking notes on all info that wasn't covered in my prereq courses (or that I didn't remember, or never learned clearly).
- At least a day later, make flashcards from notes.
- Once I'd finished learning all of the flashcards from a chapter, I went back and did the questions and passage at the end.
I was still working on some prereq courses at this point, so used the physics MCAT prep book alongside my regular textbook as I went through the course. Otherwise, I went through one book at a time, starting with the books that had the most new/unfamiliar content. Some study plans rotate through subjects (psych on Monday, bio on Tuesday, gen chem on Wednesday, etc.)... I don't think it particularly matters which way you do it, it's just a matter of individual preference.
4. [three months before test] Transition from content review to passage practice. By this point I had basically finished reading the PR books, but still had a backlog of flashcards to learn. As I worked my way through the cards, I gradually decreased the amount of time that I spent learning new flashcards each day, and increased the amount of time that I spent on practice passages. The goal at this point was to make sure that there weren't any major gaps in my content review, and to become familiar with the style of MCAT passages. Initially I used passages from Khan Academy; if I hit a passage on a topic that was unfamiliar, I watched the associated video(s) for review. Once I was consistently getting 4/5 or 5/5 questions right on KA passages, I switched to the AAMC practice packs.
5. [six weeks before test] Prepare for exam conditions. By this point I had learned all of my flashcards, was pretty confident that I knew most of the important material for the exam, and was basically familiar with the tone and style of MCAT passages. The goal at this point was to build endurance for the test itself.
- With the remaining questions in the AAMC practice packs, I would sit down and do as many passages as possible in 60 minutes, then spend half an hour or so going over the answers and reviewing any weak spots as necessary. I kept a spreadsheet tracking how long each passage took, the percent of questions that I got right, and which topics tripped me up (@$%*# enzyme kinetics!).
- A month before the exam I started doing one or two timed practice tests a week, under test conditions as closely as possible. This was hellishly difficult to fit in around work and school – at one point I did a practice test from 6 PM to 1 AM, after going to class in the morning and working all afternoon – but absolutely critical. I can't understate how hard it is to get used to maintaining focus on a 6+ hour exam. For wrong answers or tricky questions, I made a flashcard with the question and the explanation of the answer. I tried to focus these on concepts or reasoning skills that are broadly relevant, rather than the specifics of that question.
The last five days or so before the test I kept up my Anki flashcard routine, but pretty much chilled out on practice exams and passages in favor of getting lots of sleep, eating doughnuts, etc.
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How I prepped for a 526
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