Assistance with planning

[Doctor or bust]

Hi all, so I've been spending this summer studying for the MCAT and will be taking it on August 24th. I'm about halfway through content review but because of an unfortunate housing issue (pest infestation), I ended up needing to move and such which caused me to lose a few weeks of time studying. I was hoping to be a lot further along than I am now because of that and was wondering if I were able to get in at least a full month of strictly practice passages and problems if that would be sufficient? I should be finished with content review (I'm reading both the Kaplan and TPR sets) by July 20th or so and will begin working on EK 101 passage books and all of the AAMC materials.

How long does it take to thoroughly go through all of the AAMC materials? I do not want to skimp out on those. Is about a month of dedicated practice passages enough?

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[Doctor or bust]

Hey man,

I think 1 month would be enough for the AAMC material. This is including the official guide, Qpacks, Section banks, the three FLs, and a thorough review of them all. Probably 20-25 days of work total. I think having more time for practice would be very beneficial though - if you could speed up content review to be done by, say, July 13th instead of 20th - that'd be enough time for a few 3rd party FL exams before you get to the AAMC stuff. The more the better and practice is key!

Best of luck!

Thanks for the response, I ended up deciding to finish up just the Kaplan books and then going through the TPR books slowly throughout doing practice passages so that I can 1. finish reviewing all content already and 2. begin doing practice passages and other similar content. I should be done with review by July 4th or the week of at the latest.

Have you taken the MCAT before? Since I'll have a decent amount of time for practice passages, are there any in particular which you would recommend? If you have taken the MCAT already, what do you wish you would've done differently or focused on that you think would've been beneficial? Thank you for your time!

 

[wasteofskin]

Going to hitchhike on this thread.

I'm considering writing the MCAT this year. I haven't started studying or even looking into any study plans yet. Is September 9th too early? It gives me about 2 months but I'm also taking Orgo 2 right now.

If I don't take it on September 9th, when do you think the next earliest date will be? January 2018?

 

[Doctor or bust]

I'm actually taking it on August 3rd, so not far off from you at all! For practice passages, the EK end of chapter 30 minute exams were pretty helpful (PM me if you need those). They weren't just a bunch of discrete questions like Kaplan's end of chapter stuff, and they let me know some of my weaknesses. But I admittedly haven't been doing many passages, I've just been taking 3rd party FLs since I finished content review about 10 days ago. If you're interested I'll post my rough schedule on here if you want some ideas!



I don't think Sept. 9th is too early, but it depends how much work you're willing to give yourself. 11 weeks would definitely be enough time as long as you can responsibly allocate work between orgo II and the MCAT. It deserves 3-5 hours a day during content review, and towards the end of studying, FLs will take 8 hours each (which you'd ideally be taking once every 3-7 days). Can you juggle that with orgo II without sacrificing your well being?

If you could post your schedule it certainly couldn't hurt! I've been doing some stuff with EK such as their 101 passage books and they seem pretty good from the little I've done so far.

Going to hitchhike on this thread.

I'm considering writing the MCAT this year. I haven't started studying or even looking into any study plans yet. Is September 9th too early? It gives me about 2 months but I'm also taking Orgo 2 right now.

If I don't take it on September 9th, when do you think the next earliest date will be? January 2018?

If you are in orgo 2 right now, have you finished biochem? That is a must if you plan to take the MCAT and at least at my school you need to finish orgo 2 before being allowed to take biochem.

 

[Doctor or bust]

Straight through the books I see, I can appreciate the golf and long john silvers at the end lol I have a schedule I've been keeping to as well to stay on track but I've been pumping out 5 chapters a day, I wouldn't recommend it. It is also much more randomized than that chapters wise. No days off I see though, feel any burn out?

 

[wasteofskin]

If you are in orgo 2 right now, have you finished biochem? That is a must if you plan to take the MCAT and at least at my school you need to finish orgo 2 before being allowed to take biochem.

I finished biochem and got an A+. Orgo isn't a prereq for it at my school.