MCAT Score 30 plus

A heart surgeon gave me advice before I started studying for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). His advice was not an elaborate 30 day all night study session with red bull


The advice was to practice and read what you DO NOT know. The biggest mistake someone can make is thinking they have to read their textbooks again in order to do well. You need to take practice questions and exams with and without time limits.

How do you practice? There is alot of bogus material out there. Let me explain. They are marketed as review books with questions at the back. I went through many of these books. The problem with these type of books are the questions are designed from the review material. You can usually guess the right answer b/c the question will mimic some point in the review material. Well, the actual exam will be broad and they will present detailed material only to ask basic principles.

The bottom line is you need questions almost exactly like the real questions asked. The following are my recommendations for each section of the MCAT, which have questions almost exactly like the MCAT.

1. 
   
   
   Examkrackers 1001 Questions in MCAT Biology - There is no better preparation for the BIO section than this book. When you are asked a question on endocrinology and you do not know the answer, go to your text book and only read the sections pertaining to endocrinology. There is no need to start reading about the nervous system or basic cell biology, just focus on material pertinent to the question.
   
   
2. Examkrackers 101 Passages in MCAT Verbal Reasoning - Verbal can be a frustrating section especially if your first language is not English. You may feel verbal is one of those sections you are either good or bad at. Unlike the SAT, which tests pure memorization of dictionary definitions of words, the MCAT will all be reading passages. During the real MCAT, you will probably read a scientific article, an art article, a history article, a political article & a pop culture article. Examkrackers presents all these types of articles. This is a big deal b/c some of these articles are so dry you will start to lose focus.
   
   
3. Examkrackers 1001 Questions in MCAT Chemistry (Examkrackers) While this is a decent book, it feels more like a book of homework questions. The best way to go through this book is very quickly. You should pick and choose the questions to answer. It will take too much time to answer every question some of which are trivial.
   
   
   
4. Examkrackers 1001 Questions in MCAT Organic Chemistry,ExamKrackers 1001 Questions in Physics are not worth buying. Unlike the Biology & Verbal books, which are arranged in passages like the real MCAT, these books are individual questions. Once again, if you are going to use the Physics book please chose your questions to work on. It will take too much time to do all the questions especially with all the trivial questions. For Organic Chemistry, I recommend you take the MCAT immediately after O-Chem. If you do not, you are going to have alot of work cut out for you going over S1,S2,E1,E2 & etc reactions.