Before the MCAT, I had never gone through the process of studying for a standardized test, and retrospectively there are many things I wish had done differently.
Content Review
Much of the MCAT is a performance to show that you can memorize and contextualize diverse facts and knowledge areas, which is a valuable and important component of medicine. Traversing the distance between a low score to a median score is largely based on content knowledge. While there are many things that you will need to know that are rote memorization, building a conceptual foundation with concept areas you are less comfortable and confident with is what will lead to initial improvements of a lower score. The initial work of any study plan is going to be focused on content review. While many of the resources available will come at a cost, there are also a variety of free/inexpensive resources that you can use to aid in your studies (link included here). Of purchasable 3rd party review content, Kaplan tends to be the gold standard for C/P and B/B, while most of the P/S content can be captured in the document in the free link, and CARS through Jack Westin. Initial content reviews should be more of a skim than a deep dive, unless you haven’t taken coursework in a specific area. In addition, I would recommend focusing on understanding broader concepts rather than small details that can (and should) be memorized. The essential part of this process is reviewing the content in active ways after covering/learning about it in the books or videos that you are using. I would strongly recommend Anki for this purpose – I don’t think there are other tools that work nearly as well for the long-term retention of information in a systemic manner. If you have never used Anki before, watch this video from The Anking An easy workflow early in the studying process is to read/watch materials in a topic area, and then unsuspend Anki cards in that topic area to review. The amount of time you devote to content review will depend on many factors, namely how recently you took any coursework overlapping with MCAT content, and how much time you can devote to studying per day. In general, I think it’s better to try to shorten the time spent doing a dedicated content review, as time is often better spent reviewing content and doing practice problems and problem sets. If you’re studying “full-time”, you can likely cover the content in about a month, and with partial effort (a much more likely scenario) it can take ~6-8 weeks, again depending on how recently you’ve taken courses on the material and how much time you can spend covering content and reviewing.
Practice, practice, practice
At the end of the dedicated content review is when the focus will change to primarily doing practice problems and reviewing any weak spots in your knowledge. This will likely take 4-6 weeks if studying full time, and 6-10 weeks if studying part time. UWorld is the preferred tool for practice problems but carries a hefty cost, and Jack Westin seems to be the preferred recourse for CARS specifically. I would recommend a consistent routine of practice question banks every day to get into the practice of answering questions, which is the real purpose of this (and any) exam. This would look like a combination of a few CARS passages from Jack Westin, and then question banks from UWorld, following by review of the mistakes, making any new Anki cards if needed, and then doing daily Anki cards. In general, I have two major recommendations for this period in studying. The first is to do weekly full-length exams (FLs) in a setting like that of the real exam – this is something that you can also do in the content review phase of your studying, and I think doing this with 3rd party exams during this time is particularly useful. For your practice exams, go to a quiet place, eliminate any distractions, and take breaks in the same order and timing as the real exam. The goal of this is to practice the process of exam taking, so that the real exam will be a continuation of the practice that you have been doing, as opposed to something new and foreign. However, unless you’re taking AAMC FLs, this will essentially be a question bank that is completed in one sitting, which although maybe not perfectly representative of the real exam, still has merit for building endurance and routine. There are a lot of opinions regarding which 3rd party full-length exams are worth taking and most representative of the real exam, and though this has certainly changed in the many years since I have taken the exam, people seem to prefer Altius, NextStep, and Kaplan, although the CARS sections for both companies (and most 3rd party FLs) are not representative of AAMC. AAMC FLs should be saved for the end of your studying and completed in the last weeks before the exam. The second (and more important) recommendation is to rigorously review mistakes made in the full-length practice exams – after taking a break post-practice exam, the rest of your study time for that day should be spent reviewing the exam as the content and your rationale is still fresh in your mind. Of course, if you find your focus waning during this time, just split up the review, as it really shouldn’t be something done by “going through the motions”. This was challenging for me to do during the MCAT, and it wasn’t until Step 1 that I felt like I was able to be honest and not dismissive of my mistakes. A good way to do this is to make a spreadsheet of the mistakes, and then make Anki cards of the subject/content if the mistake was in conceptual/content knowledge. In the spreadsheet, you should include the content category, subtopic, rationale and mistake in your reasoning, and then the correct reasoning. Categorizing and cataloging the mistakes will help you to identify trends or areas of weakness in your study which you can the remedy through focused content study, and I reviewed I reviewed my version of this document all the way through the week before my actual exam.
Parting words
My last recommendation is to ignore FOMO. Make a plan and stick with it. You can be flexible in adding or removing things that are not working in the studying but try and set hard limits/be firm with how much advice and change you’re willing to read/make during your study process. For both the MCAT and Step 1, I remember seeing posts on SDN/Reddit of people who got exceptional scores on the exam with their breakdown of what to do (I do see the irony in this given the purpose of this post and website…), and I would try and adapt and change what I was doing out of the fear of missing a crucial technique or way to potentially improve my score. Don’t get lost in the sauce. Before you start studying, find/purchase all the resources you intend to use. Set aside time to make a personalized plan of how to approach studying, integrating the advice from myself or others on Reddit or SDN, and then follow your plan. Make sure to include breaks and flex time within your schedule, as things will inevitably come up and disrupt your plans, and devoting focused time to studying is much better than burning out because you didn’t want to take a day off (except for Anki, keep reviewing that on your “off-days”).