Year Three, Part II

All right, so I know I want to be a doctor. I've gotten my ass in gear and started doing things to help me get into med school. Oh yeah, there's this thing called the MCAT. You've gotta take it if you want to apply to med school. Also known as Mm, College After Three Years. Yes, that's MCATY, but it's a pretty accurate description. Remember those prereqs I talked about earlier? Say hello to the final over all of those, in the span of a Saturday.

At least for the paper MCAT, my testing day started around 7:30 - when I got to the testing site. Sidenote about the paper MCAT, I don't think I would like taking this test on a computer, which they're moving to for 2007. Also for some reason, they feel the need to fingerprint you before you can take the test. At least they use this cool ink that doesn't leave anything on your fingers. Anyway, testing started around 8:40 and I was done for the day around 4:40. Strangely enough, the day flew by. The MCAT's broken down like this: 200+ questions split into three sections of Verbal Reasoning, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, with two writing samples thrown in. Verbal consists of reading 10 or so passages in 85 minutes with 60 questions. Bio goes over organic chemistry, and you guessed it, biology: 77 questions, 100 minutes. PS goes over physics and general chemistry, same breakdown as bio. A writing sample consists of an ambiguous prompt being given, you being asked to support, attack, and argue which is right - 30 minutes each and there are two of these puppies. About the actual questions - yeah it's a decent amount of material to review. But, equally as important as knowing your stuff is knowing *how* to take the MCAT. For one, it's not just straight up regurgitation of facts. The vast majority of the science questions are going to involve reading some sort of passage and answering questions based on what you can gather/infer from the passage and what you know. Another thing is that timing is a ridiculously valuable commodity on the MCAT. When I took my first practice test, I didn't finish verbal (had two passage that hadn't been read yet) and definitely had to rush towards the end of the other two. So, time management is huge on the MCAT. Lastly, please take a practice test or two before the real thing. It helps you figure out timing and gets you used to the question style - which for me, was different than my undergrad exam style.

I mentioned taking practice tests as part of my prep. I opted to take a Kaplan class for my MCAT prep. Kaplan offers practice exams, review books, and obviously the class. There are those who do prep through Kaplan or Princeton and those who do it on their own. Personally, I needed something to keep me reviewing at a reasonable rate, so I took a class. Now, I don't know if it was worth the $1500 I spent on it, but it definitely helped. Also, whatever prep you decide to use, get some sort of review series/book(s) - your undergrad notes are just too detailed for what you need to know on the MCAT. So my second semester junior year was pretty busy for me: MCAT prep, classes, research, and all the ECs I'd been doing from first semester. But when it got down to the two weeks before the MCAT, I pretty much dropped everything else. Up until that point my prep consisted of looking over stuff from the review class and book just so it would be floating around come April. The last two weeks for me were spent 1.) going through the review books, practice problems, and working on stuff that I had trouble with 2.) taking practice tests.

So the MCAT's not so bad, you've just gotta know your stuff and know how to take the test. And work your ass off. It was a pretty good feeling walking out of that building knowing I was done with that damn test and all the prep. Now I just have to wait two months for my scores.