Bugpie said:
I'm trying to create a system of reinforcement for my current/upcoming studies so that I won't feel so crunched as the MCAT approaches (which is closer than it may appear). And sometimes it takes an objective approach - to avoid overkill.
Hope you are looking forward to rotations! Have a great break.
yeah, definitely sooo looking forward to starting back up in july (not that i'm not enjoying the beautiful weather today in central park). finally after sitting on my arse for the last two years, i'll be actually involved in the care and management of pts in a month. lots of work, but i have to say it's been totally worth it. med school has been 94% super interesting so far (i feel embarrassed to say)
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as for your study schedule:
1) it's a good idea to start to at least have some idea about the exam early on, but seriously the material content-wise is not at all that bad (vs. the amount of material you need to know for a standard college science course). your idea of reinforcement is really really good, but i'd say that this will be of more importance when you are in med school and preparing for the national boards in 2nd year vs. for the mcat.
2) mostly, the difficulty that students have is more MCAT specific than anything else (you'll know what i mean when you start actively studying for it). in otherwords, the MCAT is like few other exams you've taken before. yes it's reading passages and answering questions, but a lot of the things the exam focusses on is quite unique (such as a adapting yourself to strange random passage topics and then applying basic science knowlege to it.) the verbal portion can be kind of wack as well (it's often one of the more difficult parts of the exam. no kidding). the time pressure in some/most can be enormous as well.
3) so my advice is: try to learn about the mcat AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE and it's UNIQUE characteristics. pick up a kaplan book, or a princeton review book, etc, and just learn about the exam (you'll also see that the basic science is not nearly as indepth as you might expect). do the SAME EARLY ON for the med school admissions process as you journey through undergrad (SDN has lots of great experiences, as well as books in the bookshop). this helped me tremendously to learn about the system early on.
4) ALSO, if you are not super strong in this area already: LEARN TO READ A LOT IN A VERY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME. this means, chewing thru all sorts of quality reading material: novels, literary journals, national newspapers, good magazine articles, etc.
from a person who has taught the mcat for 3 years and of course taken it myself, this might be my BIGGEST advice.
to sum up: i know this doesn't fully answer your question. but seriously, the best thing to prepare for the test so early on in the game, is to learn to read critically and really fast. as a year before the exam starts to roll around, think about picking a testing company of your choice and go thru/learn from lots of MCAT passages/questions (it's worth the investment for everyone 'cept for the most brilliant of folks). but as you can see, this is probably more useful when you are closer to the real thing. in the meantime. keep organized for organization's sake and try your hardest to do well in all your college classes.
remember, you'll be surprised how much you DON'T NEED to know on the mcat, knowledge-wise, but how MUCH you need to train yourself to THINK in an MCAT specific way. most testing companies do a good job at covering the high-yield information, but the real place where you "make" your score is in the practice questions and passages. i'm most familiar with kaplan stuff, but i've had friends/colleagues who've used exam krackers, princeton review with good results as well.
aight,
best wishes.
