Hey...so it turns out my parents had my scores but didn't know that PCATs were done by pschological corp so they thought it was junk mail
Verbal: 92
Biology: 96
Reading Comp: 96
Quantitative Ability: 91
Chemistry: 94
Composite: 97
Well here's my two cents on how to study for the PCATs for those who care what my opinion is...
Verbal section: The vocab wasn't very difficult. Try to find a long ist of medium difficulty words and memorize them if you feel that you don't know enough vocab. An SAT vocab list might be good. On the vocab section the only think Kaplan taught me was that in the analogies the answer has to be a strong connection. Basically don't ever talk yourself into an answer in the verbal section cuz then its probably wrong.
Biology: I used the Kaplan book to just learn what topics were covered in the PCAT so i didn't have to read an entire biology textbook. There are like a total of 12-15 chapters in a general bio textbook that are tested on the PCAT. Just read those chapters a few times and actually make sure you learn each paragraph and not just assume you know it. DO NOT rely on kaplan to teach you bio. Just use it to narrow the topics for you to read in your bio textbook.
Reading Comp: I'm not sure how one can prepare for this. Kaplan had a really crappy way of doing this section. They said to write next to each paragraph what the point was and what was covered. I thought this wasted more time. I think the best way is to read the passages slowly (not that slow though) and make sure you understand what you just read before you go onto the questions. This way when you are answering the qeustions you don't have to reread the entire passage again to find an answer.
Quantitative Ability: I thought Kaplan had good practice tests for this section. The only way to do well on this is to practice practice practice. You can spend all the time you want learning different rules and laws but until you practice them you won't know how to apply them. The calc i thought was pretty basic overall. I think that a lot of people slow down in the middle to spend more time on a question. If you know that this question will take a while to answer then skip it. I think they purposely put in questions like that in the middle of the test to mess you up. On my section I ended up actually skipping about 10 of the slightly more time consuming questions completely- i just put in B for all those questions. This allowed me to get the easier ones right near the end. There are some faster ways to do certain problems. Like simplifying fractions so you don't have to multiply big numbers. Things like that can help a lot during the tests. Find someone thats good at math and knows these tricks that they don't teach in school. DO NOT rely on kaplan to teach you math.
Chemistry: I took this test before I had finished the first semester of ochem. It had a few questions on some nomenclature and some basic E1 E2 SN1 SN2 reactions. Some hydrogenation and dehydrogenation. In my ochem textbook, everything on the PCAT was covered within the first 7 chapters. Most textbooks go in a similar order. For the genchem i reread about 10 chapters from my genchem textbook. I didn't really do any of the problems or anything - just read it to refresh some knowledge. I can honestly say that I was not the best at genchem. I got an A in the class but whenever I try to answer people's questions about their homework or anything now in genchem I don't know how to do it. Most of the questions on the PCAT were conceptual. I don't think there were any calculations. There were a few gas law questions. Maybe a couple stoichiometry questions. I think they will always ask whether a reaction is endo or exothermic. A few standard definitions that one should know after going through genchem.
My opinions about Kaplan and PCATprofessor.com
Kaplan is good for some practice problems. It helps build confidence. I did very poorly on most of Kaplan's practice tests. They use the DAT material to prepare you for the PCAT. I guess they say if you can answer the more difficult DAT questions then you can do the slighltly more simple PCAT questions. Kaplan builds a little more confidence knowing that you have been exposed to types of problems they may ask. I honestly do not think I got 1000 bucks of advice out of the class. I would say i got about maybe $300 dollars worth. This is just my opinion of our Kaplan center in Phoenix. Maybe some other centers are better.
PCATprofessor: I signed up for it based off of everyone's advice on SDN. I took a few of their practice tests to test my knowledge. I was getting about 70% correct on most of their tests. Im not really sure how that correlates to PCAT scores though. I would say learn the material first and then sign up for PCATprofessor.
Sorry for this extremely long post...
If anyone wants any more of my opinion then feel free to ask or email me
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GPA: Overall - 4.0 Science - 4.0
Second year student at ASU majoring in Biology
Age: 20
Applying to Midwestern Glendale Campus, University of Arizona and maybe Southern Nevada
