Not only are you very talented, you go out of your way to share those talents with others. Thank you. What I really want to know you became the person you are today.
You're a stud. Congrats on an amazing score and thanks for taking your time to help out the rest of us on our journey to take it soon! Looking forward to following and supporting your channel :)
Also helpful is the Kaplan course. Little pricey but worth it. My score went up 10 points from it. Best way to learn 'how' to take the test. What to look for in questions, pacing, etc
@@kevincorrigan1754 I don't know why they are removing it. I'm guessing its because they don't have the funds and resources to keep it updated. If you go on the website for MCAT it will say we are removing it.
The mcat is so different now from when I took it in 2010. With writing lol wonder if anyone remembers that. Well keep it up! It’s a long road! But fun! -Jaskar, M.D.
Congratulations on the score of your test and thank you for the valuable information you provided. I only have one constructive comment related to your video. I think if you speak in a little lower speed will be fantastic. You will be able to keep the attention of a higher amount of audience. Great job!
Good morning! I was just wondering how you went about doing content review. Did you take notes from the books? I’ve found it to be very time consuming and not efficient enough for the amount of material there is. People say use Anki but isn’t that only good for definitions or memorization? Isn’t the MCAT about applying knowledge rather than memorizing it ?
Tbh I studied like this for my NCLEX (nursing licensure exam) I did practice tests/wuestions, the ones I got wrong I studied the whole subject. Example: What is the THIRD step in glycolysis?.... Don't just study the third step study steps 1-end.
Hey Michael! There are lots of timing strategies for CARS and science sections. I've come across a strategy that for the science passages (Chem/Phys, Bio/Biochem, and Psych/Soc) you have 8 min per passage, and 1 min for stand-alone questions. For CARS the strategy suggests you have 4 min to read each passage and 1 min per question on the passage. For example, if you have 5 questions on a CARS passage, then you would have 9 min for that passage. What was the timing strategy you used on the MCAT?
I would focus less on the exact timing of everything. The most important thing you can do is understand the passage the first time you read it. If you do that, the questions will go much more quickly. So I guess my timing strategy was to spend most of my time reading the article for the first time and less time on individual questions
Which book did you use? Kaplan or TPR? Did you also take any of their courses or self-studied? When you were doing your MCAT, were you already familiar with the content or was it completely new to you? I would really appreciate it if you could answer this one...
I haven’t taken physics, does that put me at a disadvantage ? Is it still possible to just study from the kaplan books and practice problems and be fine?
If you've never taken a physics class (even in high school), then it would put you at a disadvantage since learning to think in a physics-minded way is a process. However, that's not to say it isn't possible to do well on that section without having taken physics. Personally, I would recommend watching the Khan Academy videos and doing those practice problems since they go into more depth about why you use the equations you do.
Thank you! Nice video and thank you for the notes!! Question: if I study the all the notes and take the aamc practice test should I be good for the test. Anything else you didn’t mention I should know ?
I think that as long as you're adjusting your studying based on how you do on the practice tests you should be good. If you find that the notes aren't enough to do well on the practice tests, you might need to use another resource though!
That's exactly what I'll be doing this July...I just finished prepping from the Biochem princeton study guide. So good luck to us if you decide to take it without Biochem too! LOL
@@juantorrez2607 I am almost sure I won't be able to take the class. I do have some time to prepare at least, I will be using Kaplan books. Best of luck!
Thank you! Which review books did you use? Kaplan or TPR? A lot of people say that TPR contains more info and will better prepare you for a top score whilst Kaplan is more compact but will lead to a plateau. I want a 90+ percentile score and don’t care about being over-prepared. Which set should I buy? Again, thanks!!!!
Hey! In terms of CARS, how did you practice? Did you start scoring low and then improve dramatically, and if so, how? I can’t seem to score better than 124 in CARS practice. I wish to score at least 127.
I believe my first CARS score on the Kaplan test was a 125 or 126. As I focused on reading more efficiently (using techniques such as the 5-second break in between passages) so I didn't have to keep rereading the passage, I found that that helped increase my score, but I honestly think it came from doing a lot of practice problems and knowing how they like to ask the questions!
For Physics or even General Chemistry, did you memorize all of the equations and constants that were found in the content for test day? If so, how did you tackle that?
I didn't end up memorizing every last equation. I had a basic idea behind how all the different units were related to each other, and I had just taken physics and upper-level chemistry so I was already familiar with most of the equations and was able to reason through the ones that I didn't know - or just memorize them after I missed them on a practice test.
Michael, could you please help me with the khan academy notes? I link throws an error. I am an engineering major trying to pursue medicine and any help on this regard will help me take a step towards my dream! Thanks
Unfortunately, I didn't take any notes that would be understandable by anyone else (they were more random details that I would write down to help remember them). That's how my studying typically works, but I know that's not very helpful to other people. I wish I had something to give you!
I know you said start getting your mind and body ready for the strain of the MCAT by waking up at like 8-3:30 and doing work then but what if you have classes during that time? If it wasn’t like that for you could you recommend me a way to find out how this would work?
I was not in classes at the time; I took the month of May off to study, so that made it easier. That being said, you could still at least set your sleep schedule to consistently waking up at 6:30 (or whenever you will need to wake up) and working on MCAT-related stuff until your first class. You could do practice tests on weekends following the same sleep schedule.
In all honesty, I didn't directly study MCAT content very much during the content review phase other than psychology and sociology, which I would spend a few hours of dedicated time a week. However, this only worked because I was in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and physiology classes and TAing for organic chemistry at the time and that situation kept my mind fresh in all of those subjects. So indirectly I was studying a lot for the MCAT. For the last month, I studied 6 to 12 hours a day depending on what other commitments I had and whether or not I was taking a practice test, so that was much more intense.
Congratulations on your score! I was wondering if I should take the MCAT right after my spring semester of next year ends (end of May) or if I should take the summer to review, then take it in the beginning of August. I wasn't sure if taking that additional time to review would be a good idea considering the fact that I will have just finished other courses covered by the MCAT. Thank you in advance!
Hi Rachael! You might have already made your decision at this point, but if not I would say take a practice test, see how you do, and decide whether you think you know all of the content well enough to start taking practice tests full-time or whether it would be better for you to take the summer to review before going into that phase.
What I don't understand is that the MCAT is standardized. I thought the highest it went was 99th + percentile. Because the percentiles aren't scores they are telling you how much better you did than other test takers at the time. Intrinsically, if you can't compare your exam to itself it's impossible to get 100th percentile. Is that the adjusted score that you get after the scores settle (I took the MCAT back in 2016 and remember the score adjustments that came after the original release of the scores)?
@@elookah3337 while AAMC considers 99.9 to be the same as 100th percentile, by convention a percentile by definition is " measure used in statistics indicating the value below which a given percentage of observations in a group of observations falls." So by definition, if a person is in the population that is being considered then it is impossible to be in the quote "100th percentile". I am not saying that Michael is lying because I have seen the AAMC reports where anything from a 524 to a 528 is considered "100", but just because they call it that doesn't mean they are using correct statistical nomenclature. That's all I was saying lol.
You're right, it's not technically correct statistically because you can't score better than 100% of people. However, the AAMC has labeled it as the 100th percentile - likely so medical schools recognize the difference between a 521-523 and a 524-528, which would both technically be 99th percentile.
Hey man, what're your thoughts on Exam Krackers? A lot of people say TPR and Kaplan are too extraneous in their information and bulky. I was told that you should read the books the first time through for enjoyment and then the second time through, reread what you didn't retain thoroughly and take notes on them. Is this what you did? I'm worried if I use Kaplan/TPR it will be too bulky and I won't be able to get through them twice. Finally, did you take notes on your content review books?
In all honesty I'm not too familiar with it, but if you've heard good things I'm sure they would be fine. My strategy was a little different in that I never actually read through all the Kaplan books but instead just used them as references and learning guides for the material I didn't already know from classes. I did take notes when I used them though.
I never actually wrote that part down, but it essentially consisted of me dividing up the psychology, sociology, and biology Khan Academy/Kaplan topics that I didn't know over the span of 4 months and setting weekly goals for which topics I would cover (I had strong background in biochemistry, chemistry, and physics, so I didn't spend a ton of time on those outside of my college classes). Sorry I don't have an actual schedule to give you!
AAMC and Lecturio were the best resources for MCAT. Highly recommend these two. Lecturio helped me a lot in acquiring long-term knowledge that I needed for the exam. Definitely worse investing in it. I liked some videos of Khan as well, but comparing it with those that I used, their platform wasn't that good
There is no such thing as the 100th percentile. If you scored better than everyone that took the test you would be in the 99th percentile. Why? Because you didn't score better than yourself. I would expect my (future) doctor to know this.
In this video, he references online tools and self studying versus paying thousands of dollars for an MCAT course. The Kaplan/TPR books are like $50 used online. Please don't undermine his accomplishments because you can be the richest person in the world and get a score nowhere close to that.
Just become a CRNA, you’ll make alot of money real quick... but you’ll hit your ceiling real fast. Just kidding, good work!👍🏽 Love to see these young kids excel.
this is dope advice, didn't know about the reddit doc that would've saved time haha. i also crushed; if you're having trouble with CARS, HIGHLY recommend nextstep's 108 passage book. CARS is all based on practice, improving comprehension and speed and learning what the examiners are actually looking for in a right answer, and the hardest thing for me was reconciling with the "correct answers" that I disagreed with, so I basically had to condition myself to not have any opinions whatsoever while reading those passages, and in doing so, you learn how to pick the right answers based solely on the information being presented in the passage and nothing else. Also in each group of 9 passages, there's usually 1 or 2 hard ones (0-3 correct or less than 50%), 2 or 3 easy ones (you should be getting 99% of the questions right on these), and the rest are so called medium difficulty (4-5 correct out of 6). The key is to remember that each passage is worth the same points +/- 1 because of the # of questions for that specific passage. When you're taking a test (practice or real), learn to identify the hard passages and skip them immediately. They're usually philosophy themed for me, and can depend on the person taking the test, but if you skim the first paragraph and think wtf did I just read, skip immediately. Go get easy points from the easy/medium passages first. Once you finish 7 passages, you should be left with 1 or 2 hard passages depending on how many you decided to skip. Take whatever time you have left and salvage what you can. The goal is to spend time and maximize points on easy/med passages (high yield passages that you're getting 75-99% correct) first rather than spending 15-20 min on a hard passage early on (where you probably won't get half of the questions anyway). I can elaborate further but this improved my CARS and I eventually plateaued at a 130 and kept it on test day and that was my worst section. if you run out of practice tests, gold standard had some good ones, they're crazy hard and demoralizing but it'll translate on test day. good luck everyone!
tymd130 how did you do content review? Taking notes is so time consuming and it doesn’t seem like things are sticking as well as they should. It’ll take me about 3-4 hours to read over a chapter then go back and take notes on it. That time doesn’t even include practice questions...
Congratulations! You worked really hard and earned your score. All the best future-Dr. Gongwer. I think you'll do well explaining concepts to your patients well. ;-)
Hey man, great job on this video! Very practical advice that will help a lot of people structure their study plan. Totally will recommend to my friends!
Hey Michael. What is your undergrad GPA, if you don't mind sharing. I wanna know if you're just ridiculously smart so the process was easier for you, or if I can still follow these steps with a 3.4 GPA and still hope for a similar outcome.
You are right in that your performance in science classes will have an effect in how much you'll need to study. As of now, I have a 4.0 (still have one semester left though), and having done well in those classes and already knowing the information well certainly made the process easier. However, you'll notice in the video that I really emphasize figuring out what you do and don't know. So if you struggled in a certain course, you will likely need to spend more time learning the material better than you did the first time, but that all falls under the category of information you don't know, so I would say that these tips should still work even though the process will look different for each person!
Linus Bantilan MD have GOD status I don’t know what you’re talking about mate is not about money.. is about respect and status. Respect is the ultimate currency. Fuck your filthy $$$$
It honestly came from having been in a research lab and thoroughly reading a ton of journal articles so I understood the background. This forced me to look up all the words I didn't know (which at the beginning there were a lot) and taught me how to be efficient in connecting information in the body text of the article with the information in the figures. If you want to have a place to start, I recommend choosing a cell biology professor at your school, looking her/him up on PubMed Central, and thoroughly reading through a few of their papers until the process feels easier and starts going faster!
How do you study those 4/5 weeks prior to the exam for those hours while taking classes? I am truly curious because I would love to follow your amazing schedule but not sure how it would work with college classes in the spring?
I was not in classes at the time; I took the month of May off to study, so my schedule probably won't work for someone who is in classes. That being said, you could still at least set your sleep schedule to consistently waking up at 6:30 (or whenever you will need to wake up) and working on MCAT-related stuff until your first class. You could do practice tests on weekends or other days when you don't have class following the same sleep schedule.
